Wednesday February 21, 2018 - Big Majors Layover

Not a lot to report today because there wasn't a lot going on.  My boat work for the day was to replace the top leech tell tale on the mainsail.  It will be so nice to again know whether I have the correct amount of twist in the mail. 

Today, I began work on a blog I've been wanting to do for some time.  I have a Garmin chart plotter and I have a companion program on my laptop called Homeport.  It uses the same charts that are on the chart plotter but has lots of tools for planning etc.  I use it a fair amount and have found a few aspects to be somewhat confusing.  My plan is to make 4 or 5 videos showing what I know about it and to show the features I have found to be most valuable.  I read somewhere a while back that the key to a good YouTube channel is to find a niche.  This might be just what my channel needs to go viral!  Actually, it's fun to do, I learn more about the product and how to make videos and it may actually help some other sailor that has used the product.  Garmin has a very similar product called BaseCamp that is for land (hiking and offroad) devices and a guy by the name of Joby Byrne made several excellent videos explaining the use of that product.  My videos will be similar but for the marine version.  Here is a link to what he has done: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTMK2KBJk45Fyv4EEkeTvKg

So today, I wrote the script for 4 of the videos and played around with my webcam and editing software.  I also learned how to do a video recording of what's going on with my laptop screen. 

Almost every day since I've been here (at Big Majors), there has been one or more late afternoon squals.  They often come out of no where (it's hard to see far to the east because of the bluffs), give a little sprinkle, and fly by. Within 3 or 4 minutes the sun is out again.  But this evening, around 5, we got a downpour that lasted almost an hour.  I wished I had rigged some sort of rain catching device.  I could use the water.  Anyway, the boat got a really good fresh water rinse that it needed.