I was looking at the calendar last night and the combination of work left to be done with uncooperative weather, and waiting for the bureaucrats in Ottawa to sort out my military pension (I don't want to be underway somewhere when they come up with yet another delay), it will probably be best if we wait for the 15th. If a miracle occurs and we can get away sooner, great, but otherwise better play it safe. There is still tons of time. Let's see, departure on the 15th, a Thursday; arrival in Shelburne on the morning of the 16th, a Friday; dinner that night and departure if the weather permits on Saturday the 17th with an arrival in Newport on the evening of the 19th. That would work very well, but I thought that I'd better explain why it looked like we had restarted the clock.

Last night, just before dark, Derek the welder brought over the solar support to check out the fit on the davits. It was almost perfect and now he has a little adjusting to do along with some polishing and he promised to be back today to put it on. Yea!

And just to add some spice to things, our friends Al and Deb arrived on their way to pick up their son Aaron, who is mate on one of the jack up rigs that is in the harbour. Funny, I had noticed an odd looking boat over on the Dartmouth side that looked like a normal Coast Guard boat except that it was hanging in the air on four legs that were obviously planted on the bottom of the ocean. I thought at the time, now there is a neat concept, and here we know the first mate and didn't realize it. A ship with four legs? Who-da thunk it?

Today is a day for tidying loose ends: the solar panel support, the radar, the secondary bow roller, getting our retinal scan for the NEXUS pass, as well as a couple of other little items that I have been thinking about.

Yahooooo! Derek arrived with his fellow welder and they installed the solar support and the new panel and boy-o-boy does it ever look good! I just don't know how much it is going to cost me as yet but whatever, it will be worth it. Not only that, I have finally figured out how to get the radar working. There was a problem somewhere in the NMEA wiring that I had put together when I had installed the new pass through unit that I bought last winter in Florida. I fixed our difficulties by disconnecting all of the NMEA inputs and outputs that were going to any other unit, there were only the VHF radio and the AIS, and hooked up only the radar and chart plotter. They work! Now I will rewire all of the connections to those devices that I want to talk to each other, very carefully, and see what they do to the ones already in place. Any problems and they get disconnected! After all they will operate quite nicely on their own.

From Barb:

Lest you think that I have been curled up in the bunk in my cozy sleeping bag reading novels and eating chocolates...

I have been continuing in my position as tool-passer-extraordinaire over the past days of our equipment adventures - what a freaking frustrating trip that has been.

In between these sessions I have been stomping out the creeping mildew on the boat while rewriting the lyrics to Ï'm Always Chasing Rainbows" in my head - replacing rainbows with mildew - think the Tilex and Windex fumes are getting to me??? I took the cockpit lee cloths off and laundered them, repaired them - they are in sorry shape but will last through another season. I will likely have to make new ones next summer - no shame for them as they came with the boat - item 1 for next year's boat list. I took the cabin curtains off and laundered them and washed the windows and the aluminum trim - lots of mildew and grunge there. They are re-hung now and the cabin smells pleasantly detergent-y tonight. I took all of the food out of the storage lockers and gave the lockers a good scrub down before re-stowing and inventorying the non-perishables.

The provisions list is now complete and I will go shopping later this week - the objective is to get everything labeled and stowed before KT arrives for the weekend. I expect that someone will need to dial 911 when I see the total on the cash register at the Superstore BUT we need to remember that it is money that we will not need to spend later in warmer climes where we have been warned that food is really expensive.

I spent time tonight after a great treat of supper out at the RNSYS photocopying our important documents to make a packet for the safety deposit box and the ditch bag.

With all of our trips lately to the Burnside and Bayer's Lake Industrial Parks and the airport I have been enjoying the lovely fall colours that we missed last year by leaving in September - such a beautiful display that almost makes up for how cold the nights have been of late.