Cheryl's Notes:

We had a great evening with Barb and Trish. Barb barbecued hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill, and I was able to contact my mother. She had hip replacement surgery last Friday and our phone service has not been good. She is recovering fine and is out of the hospital and settled in at Southview Care Center getting the physical therapy she needs to go home. She is hoping to be home in four more days.

Barb played chauffer today, after making a McDonalds run for breakfast. Boy those Egg McMuffins tasted good. We started at Home Depot stocking up on more wiring supplies and some tools that we are missing. Our next stop was West Marine. Tom picked up a guide book of the East Coast and is studying up on all of the places that they will see without me. John needed an extra ball for when his current two can't do the job. (I will let him explain this one.) We also picked up a better oil changer. Next time we are hoping to actually change all five quarts.

The last stop was the grocery store. After almost three weeks we were out of fresh fruit and salad fixings. The boys had a craving for Fritos, so I think we ended up with four bags. We bought more crackers to go with all of the cheese that Carol sent with us. The guys are going through two pots of coffee every morning, and that is about a bag of ground beans a week, so I grabbed two bags this time. By the time we got to the end of our list, we had about $170 worth of groceries. We threw in a bag of Sugar Babies for Barb as a thank you for driving us around.

Barb drove us to our marina home and we loaded all of our purchases on the boat. We can no longer see the water line in the very center of the boat. Barb helped fill the water tanks while stowed all of the food. Their wasn't much wind, but we decided to take Barb out on the water, as she has never been on the boat with us. We motored out past the break wall and put out full sails. It wasn't a wild and fast ride, but she got a feel for what we have to do to handle the boat. After we doused the sails, we motored up past the stadium for more picture opportunities. Barb, Winston and Teddy spend some time sunning on the Lido deck. I thought that I caught Winston hanging his head over the side, but he emphatically denies it.

After the boat was safely back in it's slip we loaded back up in Barb's car. She gave us a tour of Cleveland while we looked for the restaurant that she wanted to take us for dinner. (Next time turn left at the light, not right.) She picked out an Irish restaurant with a view of the water. We had a great meal and the best part was the dessert. It was actually Guiness flavored ice cream with hot fudge and caramel topping, brownies, honey toasted pecans and whipped cream. It sounds weird, but was hands down the best sundae that I have ever had. Barb brought us back to the boat again and we said our goodbyes. We will try to leave tomorrow morning heading up to Geneva.

John's Notes:

Had a fun time with Barb and Trish and their psycho cat Gizmo. Well, Cheryl says that I should say "high strung." Tommy is just thankful that he still has all his fingers from a Gizmo attack.

Had to acquire more "stuff" today. The waterline really is disappearing. I'm loving these ball fenders. I just had to have another one. I'm thinking about naming them Ball-1, Ball-2 and Ball-3. Then I will take our old regular white fenders and name them Strike-1, Strike-2 and Strike-3. Then when we go to pull into a dock, I can tell the crew how to set the fenders in baseball lingo. Like, give me a 3-2 count on the port side. You get the idea. So far the crew has not accepted this novel idea. With the new oil changer I'm thinking about doing a 2/5ths change. That would make a complete change. Well, maybe not.

I'm not sure where it was that we ran into some returning racers from the Chicago-Mac. They knew Dave West and his Farr 395 though. Anyway one of them asked me about un-stepping and re-stepping the mast. He asked me how I liked the current tune of the mast and I said that it was just fine. He gave me a tip for when I re-step. He said that I should get a caliper from Home Depot and measure the upper and lower distances on the turnbuckle. Got a caliper today and it worked great. Have a few more places I can use it for my never ending challenge of keeping everything in perfect balance.