In my seemingly endless quest to fill in all the boxes and questions on the *&$#@& insurance applications, which are SO CLOSE to finished, I must write down what kind of life raft we will carry.

We do not own a life raft. We usually have the inflated dinghy on the foredeck, and in an emergency, we'd get in that. We would not leave Kaholo unless she were sinking from underneath us. Commonly said "you only get into a liferaft when you have to step UP into it!" It's much safer to stay with the larger vessel, which is easier to find if you need rescuing.

In addition, a quality six-person offshore-rated life raft costs between $3 and $6K. PLUS you have to have it inspected every year ($100-$250) and every five years have a major service ($500+). Kinda like a car....

So, since we can't have our dink inflated on the foredeck if we want to use the spinnaker, and since we have confirmed that there are pangas at each stop, we decided - forget even BRINGING the dinghy, we'll just rent a life raft.

So yesterday I tried to find a place that rents them. For those who believe all search engines are the same - I tried google, froogle, BING and finally Yahoo. MUCH to my surprise, Yahoo was the ONLY website that provided a link to a local company, in Wilmington, that supplies the LA and Long Beach harbors. AND, again to my surprise, Marty had a JOB in Wilmington today. So, he is checking it out. Hopefully he'll find something appropriate that I can put in the insurance apps and they should be mailed out this week, or Monday at the latest. I will be SO glad to have that done....!