Moored Rushcutters Bay, Port Jackson
Wind: N, F2 - gentle breeze
Sea: rippled Swell: nil
Weather: sunny, warm

This week has been mostly taken up with maintenance chores.

At long last on Monday I took delivery of a serpentine belt kit to replace the v-belt drive. I installed it on Wednesday and am pleased to say that the installation was relatively straightforward. It seems to have solved the problem of the belt slipping and I am confident that the new belt should concomitantly solve the problem of the belt creating a lot of black dust in the engine compartment. Time will tell.

In addition to attending to a spot of the never-ending chore of touching up the paint work, I have also attempted to replace the aft lower starboard shroud which has one broken strand. Unfortunately my spare shroud was made up to the length of the forward lower shroud which is a few inches shorter than the aft lowers, so I ended up having to reinstall the old shroud until I can make up a new one of the right length. I am not too concerned about the shroud at this stage as Sylph is heavily rigged so should have plenty of redundant strength in her rigging. Also, for the time being I am only planning on coastal sailing and as such will be mostly sailing in relatively fair conditions, thus I should be able to keep the loads on the rig well within their safe working limits.

And speaking of coastal sailing, I have refined my short-term plan. I will now be staying in Sydney for RANSA's prize night and ANZAC day, then will head north to Port Stephens to say hello to a friend. Then it will be back to Sydney to compete in the CYCA's Great Veterans Race on 11 May, after which we will start heading back south to Adelaide.

All is well.