Well thank you to all that responded with emails, Blog comments and FB comments. I'm going to keep the blog up and running for another year. Here's the plan for now:

First, I'm flying home to Illinois for a visit with my Daughter and her family then I'm coming back to prepare the boat for getting under way. Since she's been idle for nearly six months, I have a lot of things to inspect. My plan, as I take her up to New Bern is to go "off-shore" for a good bit of the trip rather than go back up the ICW. (weather permitting of course) This makes the pre-trip preparations a little more critical. As you can imagine, having a systems malfunction 300 feet from land is a little different than having one thirty miles from land.

Anyway, when I get back from my family visit, I will begin the preparations in earnest and, if it won't bore you too badly, I will describe them here.


Ps. Kristen, I may very well be there for that show. We'll see how it all works out!

Again, thank you everyone, its great to be back! I'm enclosing a pic from last years trip to the Bahamas of my friends' Pete and Heather's boat "Radical Jack" at anchor near Mangrove Cay.