Our diner last night didn't work out. Joey and Rhonda as working like mad to get everything ready so that they can depart for this Great Circle cruise that they are planning. This includes selling their house in Carlolina Beach (it's a really nice one, so if anyone out there is interested.....) and getting the pre-school that they own and operated ready for them to be able to run with the help of their niece and daughter. It is this latter one that kept them up much longer than they had thought and had to cancel with us. Since we will be staying over another day I had hoped to be able to persuade them to join us tonight, but unfortunately as they are getting ready to head off, their schedule won't allow them to do so. It's one of the happy/unfortunate things about setting off on the cruising lifestyle, there are so many last minute loose ends to tie up that there is very little flexibility for last minute invitations.

As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, we didn't do the flush of the heat exchange, but after I gave it some more thought and remembering the conversation that I had with one of the RydLyme reps, we can accomplish a partial clean by letting the heat exchange sit in the chemical for a few hours. I am trying that today. It will be a lot easier as I only need to access the hose from the exhaust end of the cooling circuit and pour the mixture down into it until it rises to the exchange level. Then after a couple of hours start the engine and flush it out. Although I'm not sure how much of an effect it will have since it isn't a complete process and I'm not sure how much chemical got to the heat exchanger itself.

We had a tour of Joey and Rhonda's boat which is called Rhon-Jo, by the way and it really is nice. I am beginning to see why people like the trawler lifestyle. The cabins are much more spacious and the fact that it is powered by a motor rather than by sails, there are a lot more of the normally accepted creature comforts aboard such as microwaves and larger fridge and stoves.

We have cleared the Rydlyme from the system and if it's not just my hopeful thinking it does seem like there is more water coming through the exhaust so tomorrow we'll see. We plan to head out to New River or perhaps farther if we can make this distance. Ideally we would get as far perhaps as Swansboro, but with all the waits for bridges and currents and the unknown performance of Paula Perkins I'll be happy with New River.