Monitor Wind Vane and Other Things

I've established contact with Scanmar International for the installation of a Monitor servo-pendulum wind vane self steering unit on Pachuca. Tomorrow I will send a comprehensive set of measurements to Ron, their designer. I hope to place an order next week. I can expect shipment from California within 5 days after placing the order, and 2 working days for the shipment. I will install it myself with the help of some friends.

Opinions of my wind vane plan from my fellow sailors has ranged from "It's a great decision" to "You would have been suicidally insane to have gone out there solo without one."

For information on the Monitor wind vane see http://www.selfsteer.com/products/monitor/index.php.

To give myself plenty of time to install and bed down the Monitor and to take advantage of the improving weather over the North Pacific I have delayed my departure from Hawaii until the first week of May.

Yesterday Wally and I went to a map shop and I picked up a 2009 nautical almanac which I will need for celestial navigation, pilot charts for the N. Pacific, and a pad of universal (i.e. for any latitude) plotting paper.

Lenny dropped off Navionics cartridge 12XG which contains the charts for:
"Covers entire US west coast and Baja to Cabo San Lucas, Hawaii and Alaska from Dixon Entrance to northern Alaska including Dutch Harbor and the Pribilof Islands"
This will thus provide me with charts from Hawaii to Seattle and then down to Baja California.

The leak repairs that Arnold and I did to the cabin ceiling and port stanchion over the head have been successful. Soon I will test the starboard stanchions, particularly the one over the wet weather closet.