Big congrats on the boat!
What are your intentions with her? I would suggest skipping the direct delivery and heading to your home harbor by way of Catalina Island.
We really enjoyed all the Channel Islands when we were passing through. I recall sailing to San Diego by way of Catalina Island from Marina Hell Rey, it was a really easy cruisy sail. Took a while though, best not to rush! We were sponsored by a CA cannabis company back then, so I didn’t mind a nice easy slow passage…
What kind of sail wardrobe does she come with? Any light wind kites? Code 0? Motoring from San Diego N for 50nm sounds so unappealing to me considering how well these boats sail in light winds. If it’s on the nose, tack a few times! The aparent wind forward will help boat speed anyway.
I would opt to replace that ancient garmin unit. Especially if it doesn’t power up. In the mean time a couple of phones in waterproof cases will do the job. In the long term, most modern plotters can take 0183 feeds and digitize them to the N2k network, wouldn’t worry there. Good chance you can get the old sounder to pipe data to a new plotter too (it’s likely not 0183). I was amazed at the bottom image I am getting with the old airmar sounder connected to a BnG Zeus3 display.
Depending on the rigging age, it might be wise to pull the mast and go through everything when you hang new shrouds. I’d agree that price seems high, but when you consider removing the spreaders/boom/etc and inspecting each piece for cracks/etc, a riggers time starts to add up. I did something similar at Canal boatyard in Seattle before we left, inspected everything methodically including dye testing the old nitronic 50 rod. I swapped all the running rigging for new and that alone was over 1k, with me doing all the splices. I had the rig in the yard there for 2 weeks.
Dyneema is great if you intend to sail far afield and want to make repairs yourself. We have had it installed as shrouds since 2018 and it’s holding up well. Last time I had to tune the rig was prior to our passage to NZ from Tonga back in 2018. It wasn’t really needed, but it seemed prudent. Before that I tuned the rig in Tahiti before we set off for the Cooks. Haven’t touched them since. I would opt to replace them with covered dux if we were planning to sail back to the tropics. Once you have the fittings, changing the dyneema is relatively inexpensive. That said, I haven’t noticed them stretching yet, but we now have 6 UV heavy years on the shrouds, nothing lasts forever.
I have systematically removed all wire from our boat and swapped for some type of dyneema, I hate meat hooks! Rope shows signs of wear prior to failure, unlike SS 1x19 sometimes. Insurance agrees that both dyneema and SS have the same life expectancy when crossing oceans if uncovered. Covered, dyneema *should* last far longer.
I recently redid all the lifelines including adding toddler netting, price was $1000NZ for materials, over $300 just for the netting, but I did all the splices/etc myself. She’s beyond NZ CAT 1 offshore spec’s now. Would be much cheaper if I had used regular dyneema, but I decided on the covered stuff this time, without the UV exposure it should last half a century. Our old lifelines were standard sk78 dyneema that I fitted in 2016. Once red, the outer strands faded to grey over the years. With the new little crew aboard I didn’t want to risk it, but I still have them and intend to pull test them to failure at some point. Those lifelines were even used as temporary lowers when we had to jury rig in the Tuamotus, couldn’t have done that with wire…
As for engines, I hate them, so you probably don’t want my opinion there . In the 8 years since we installed an electric drive, I think I spent $30 replacing the drive belt twice. The old yanmar sucked 2k out of my pocket in 6months and still died on me when needed.
-p