Any project that requires EIGHT holes to be drilled through the hull deserves the term BIG.  And so it was that my good friend Jon Eberly and I spent last Sunday installing the new Monitor Wind Vane on Charisma.I have to say that while the project was a bit intimidating, the instructions provided by Monitor are/were excellent.  The main thing that made this an all day project instead of just a couple hours was the fact that we checked, double-checked, and triple-checked each and every hole to make sure it didn’t go somewhere it shouldn’t.  The total time to hang the vane: about 5 hours.  We started at 9:30, with an hour for lunch, and we finished “hanging” the vane at about 3:30.  Another hour or so the next day putting the wheel adaptor on, leading the steering lines and attaching a double-turning block to lead them to the wheel and it was done.   (OK, it wasn’t quite that easy; I torqued the head off one of the bolts and had to back the stub out of the vane mechanism and put in a new one before we could finish).  Here’s a couple pics of us hanging the mechanism and getting it bolted to the boat.  The first one shows the use of the spinny pole to help hang it while were squaring it to the boat and drilling the holes.  The second shows the final “at the dock” install.                                  The Monitor install guide has lots of caveats about giving yourself time to learn how to trim the boat correctly to use the vane.  They say to give yourself a couple weeks or more to learn how to use it, so I was worried that sailing with it wouldn’t be so easy.   However, it worked like a charm first time out.  Aim the boat, set the wind-vane, lock the wheel; that’s it!  If it’s not exactly going where you want, there’s a fine adjustment where you can rotate the vane (see the picture below) to adjust the final wind angle.  Great stuff.                                  At the end of the day, the install was easy.  Monitor is a great company and very helpful with any questions you might have and very supportive.  Best of all; it’s really fun to sail with the vane.  You do have to trim the boat properly, but once you do and you set the vane, you now have a whole new sailing experience ahead of you.  And you don’t have to worry about amp/hours! Many thanks to Geoff Byrne for many of these pics (he took the good ones).  He is an excellent photographer and was gracious enough to let me use his pictures of our first day sailing with the Monitor.  If you like great photography, I encourage you to go see his work at www. gmbyrne.com.  Thanks Geoff!