Getting rid of boat smells with a solar fan

I had diesel leak a few months back and even though I had it fixed, the boat smelt like diesel. West marine were having a sale on their nicro vents, down $85 from $185 so I bought a couple of them to replace the ones I bought through amazon and which lasted only a couple of months.

I installed the new ones and the smell dissapeared overnight. Here is a new one installed.

I am hoping that these new ones are a bit more robust than the last ones I bought and they ae supposed to have a 2 year warranty.

Replacing an old mainsail

On my way up north to New England back in July, I tore my mainsail. Now I had ripped it last year at this time in the Chesapeake and the loft told me then that I needed a new one. When I took my newly torn mainsail to a loft in Newport, RI, they told me it was not worth repairing. So I did a a search for a used one and found a pretty good match at Bacons Sails in Annapolis for $800. The trouble was, it was a light air one with just a 5 oz Dacron with no reef points. It did well on my sail down from up north but now it is being relegated to the "spare" category. I went ahead and ordered a new mainsail from Kerns in California for $2,700 and yesterday, I hoisted it for the first time.

It is a really good one but being new and stiff, my sail cover no longer covers it. I still have to organize some reefing lines for it and select some battens but other than that it is ready to go.

New York City to North Carolina

Before I set sail, I produced a float plan from Predict Wind and it ended up being a quite good description of my journey.

I more or less stuck as close to the coast as I could because I wanted to stay out of the gulf stream but also I wanted access to the internet to download the latest forcast to keep up with progress of tropical storm Erica. Here as an example is my first day run down the New Jersey coast in yellow.

I clocked roughly 110 miles each of the 4 days on my trip and you can see a short video of my journey here.