Whoooooeeeee! If we needed any reminder that winter is on its way we got it last night! Around about midnight a cold front passed through with all the symptoms, sudden drop in temperature, wind shear and increase and HAIL! I can tell you that lying in the bunk and hearing that frozen water hitting the deck and skylights was a very powerful reminder of why we are heading south and that we had better pick up our socks and get on with it.

Dinner last night was a roaring success. It was great to see Kayt and her new extended clan, and Pat and Lisa made some really great appetizers to start us off. These are definitely going in the Sea Cook's Cookbook - thin sliced ham wrapped melon chunks, asparagus wrapped in cream cheese and smoked salmon, and grapes coated in a blue cheese cream cheese mix rolled in walnut pieces - yummm! In fact the leftover asparagus and smoked salmon went into a quiche for breakfast this morning.

Watching the weather picture again this morning and the download has a slightly forecast - Wednesday still looks crappy and Thursday is OK for traveling but the forecast wind has backed a bit and we'll be beating and then in the afternoon it will become confused and Thursday night Friday morning it will come 'round to our stern at a 15-20 knot blow. I am starting to think that we'll leave as soon as we can on Thursday and see how far down the coast we can get. We may be motor sailing (quelle surprise!) but at least we'll be making southing and there are loads of spots that we know of that we can tuck into if we decide it has stopped being fun. Our co-boater (is there such a word?) has also suggested that we could skip it and head directly for Plymouth and check in with customs there. That is another solution - a 2 day 17 hour solution in travel time from Halifax.

Today we ran the wire for the new solar panel which meant that Barb had to clear out our hanging locker so that we could pass the cable through. You can only imagine how much she enjoys doing that. The only saving grace is that this should be the last time that we need to do that for a while. The new solar panel has a high enough wattage that the cables are at least a No 8 so we had some rather stiff wire to feed through the hanging locker, head bulkhead, companionway cupboard and down to the meter and the regulator. I had hoped to get the entire install done, but part of it includes a diversion load for the excess current. Their recommendation is to hook up the overflow to a hot water heating element. The AC element is supposed to be good, but I want it confirmed that if the boat is plugged into shore power and there actually is AC voltage sent to the heater that it won't hurt the regulator nor the solar panel and especially not the batteries. I had hoped to get that advice from the techies at Xantrex but, curse them, they were on holiday. I think that they are supposed to be separate from anything else, but I'd like that confirmed.

Kayt came over for lunch before they set off for Saint John and they brought the soup. It was pretty good and quite exciting when Kevin spilt some really HOT soup on his crotch. My folks used to say that fire and water will move anything and they were right. Kevin went from calm sitting to on his feet dancing around in the blink of an eyeball. I'll give him credit that his vocabulary was pretty laid back - no expletives nor deletives.

After Kayt left we made our final trip to the storage unit with the last few things to put away. We are stowing away things on the boat and getting everything ready to leave. We are also having visits from old friend - David Gough and his wife dropped by and we hope they will come to the Wednesday evening "do" at the Squadron. David was an old friend of Barb who was kind enough to drive us from the church to our reception at our wedding. All the best people are boaties!