Trailer wires and other things

Salt water eats everything. On the way north from Florida, the lights on my trailer failed one by one. By the time I got home all that was working was a single parking light.

After a half hearted attempt to get them running again, I decided to replace everything. A set of trailer lights only runs about $30, so it wasn’t too bad. I’m glad I did. All the wires hidden inside the tow bar had been spliced -badly. Salt water did the rest.

The trailer is all wired and so is the hitch on the van. It’s ready to go.

Now all I have to do is to wait for weather and our schedule to line up. Sailing on my little lake is fun and all, but it’s nice to go places where I haven’t seen everything a zillion times.

I’m thinking a day trip to a large wilderness lake 25 miles away would be a good first trip. That’s far enough to test the new trailer/van combination, but not too far from home.

In other news, some new friends of ours just purchased a Cape Dory 27. They had a really nice Flicka, but lost it in a storm. I blogged about it over a year ago. Now they have this new boat and took it up the Hudson River to Lake Champlain near their VT home. Along the way the wife ran into a friend and was offered a 2 year contract job in China. She took the job and won’t be sailing that Cape Dory until that contract is up. Life takes interesting turns.

My lovely wife and I are planning next winter’s sailing adventures. There are some places we’d like to return to on Florida’s Gulf coast. We’d also love to spend a decent amount of time sailing the Florida Keys. We only had a small taste two years ago and would love to really sail the area this time.

With a trailer sailer, it’s possible to sample a lot of different sailing areas. When people with big boats ask how fast my little boat is, I say it can do 60 knots against the wind. (on the trailer)

-Sixbears