Well, we are starting to see some signs of spring in the boat yard.  You know, the sounds of sanding, scraping and polishing!  I normally like to be ready to sail by around April 1 here in Virginia, even though nice warm sailing days still are still elusive early in the month.  So I need to get started myself.

This quarter we have an article on replacing the bearings in the Shaeffer furlers that were standard on many of our boats.  Second, I will share my findings and a response I received from Westerbeke on my raw water pump seal failure.  Lastly, I also will provide the quarterly summary of Yahoo discussions that I started in last quarter’s edition.

I hope that you have a great sailing season in 2011 and I look forward to receiving many future helpful and informative technical articles to publish here in Mainsheet.

—