Last night we did a recce to the restaurant/bar where the NARC 2009 rally is holding all their social events, the Rhino Bar. They have specials every night and last night it was two for one entrees so Barb and I treated ourselves to strip steaks as a reward for the last three days. The town sure is dead during the winter. Here it was Thursday night and we were the only people there! We then took a short walk down the tourist street in town and it was equally dead except for an Italian place that looks like we should try it sometime while we are here it was that busy by comparison. It does look a bit pricy though. We picked up some of those "What's On in Newport" magazines to see what we can get up to while we're here. It turns out that the big fort museum, I believe that it's called Fort Adams, is rigged up as a haunted house for Halloween. For the normal price of admission we can go and get the pants scared off us. I think we just might try that although we will probably wait for Heather, Jim and Alan to arrive to see if they'd like to come too and protect us.

There is another boat here that we recognize, a schooner from Hubbard's called Peers Fancy owned and crewed by a couple of ladies who we have met through Armdale Yacht Club where they winter their boat. We have been briefly in touch through e-mail and hopefully, after we get settled, we'll get a chance to say hi.

This morning we awoke early this AM, or at least I did. Barb is having trouble sleeping for some reason. That, plus she is still fighting the battle of downloading her so called backed-up files from an on line service called Carbonite. Word to the wise, either get yourself a huge thumb drive and back things up yourself or burn them to a CD or several CDs if you must. Putting your faith in someone else or someone else's service is an invitation to frustration, especially if you have a large amount of data.

One technical plus from yesterday was that I was able to discern that more by good luck than good management, although I do seem to remember Chris from the Binnacle mentioning that we would use either 12 or 24V with the auto helm when he sold it to us 5 years ago, that we can power the 400G computer with 24V. This is stupendous news as it will mean that we can take one more big ticket item off the 24-12V converter. It also means that since we wired it for 12V it will actually be over wired for the 24V and since, as everyone knows, other than being more expensive, it is always better to use heavier gauge wire than lighter, we should have an even more efficient conduct of power to the auto helm - less power loss etc. This whole business of power usage on the boat is a lot more complicated than use at home especially if you like to have a lot of the same bells and whistles for creature comforts aboard as you do on the hard (fridge, freezer, pressure water, home entertainment). Our friends Alan and Heather aboard Moonlight Maid don't have nearly the same issues as we do, but I don't think that they have the same power consumption either.

We started work today after a brief struggle with the zipper in my CF issue coveralls that had chosen that particular moment, when I was hopping around in the cabin trying to get them on, to stick. Barb to the rescue with her small stick applicator WD40 and an elbow to hold me down to stop my thrashing.

After getting the steering sorted out and getting ourselves relocated to the dock where we will be staying, Barb and I went for a daylight recce which is when I discovered that I had left my debit card in the ATM where I got out some moolah yesterday evening. Brilliant, eh? The security company that tends these things simply shreds the lost cards so there is no getting it back. I have asked our banker back in Halifax to courier us off a new one and since we are here until 1 Nov, I think that we have a reasonable chance of actually getting it.

The rest of today will be spent doing laundry and more explorations. In the spring when we were here we didn't have time to check out the town properly so this is it. I can't really complain since it is free but the internet connection here is really spotty. Thank heavens we aren't paying for it except through our dockage fees.