I'd like to be able to say, "Back by popular demand....!", but truth be told, the reality is that I am merely frustrated and bored at not being aboard the boat and being dirt bound I didn't feel like I had too much to say. Now, however, I am feeling like I need to communicate however banal and mundane that communication might be.

Last time I posted Al the cat had just passed on to the big litter box in the sky and I was concluding the wonderfulness of kidney stone treatments. Nothing will replace Al and I certain hope that I have seen the last of the kidney stone phenomena and Barb and I have been putting along at our jobs and fighting to pay down the credit cards, build up the cruising kitty, and develop an ongoing source of income for future cruises. Fortunately we have our investments and my small military pension and I have just initiated the first of two government pensions to which I am entitled so our cash flow, once we have reduced the debt loads a little, for future cruises should be a lot better.

We have seen off several of our friends: Al and Heather have flown out to join up with Moonlight Maid in the Grenada and Ron and Pye have started their cruising adventure aboard Jambalaya and are on their way south. Add to that several other folk including friends that have been following us in our blog that have also departed Halifax such as Iolite and others whom we have physically met having first done so electronically through the blog just as Al and Jen aboard Close Knit, and we are feeling like quite the stay at homes. A bit of a switch following other people on their blogs.

We are not alone. Our good pals Jay and Mary Lou aboard Screech are spending a good slice of the winter in Newfoundland. Mary Lou's family are Newfies so it was a bit of a homecoming for her and Jay gets his first full exposure to the culture. From their letters it would seem that he is quickly becoming an honorary Newf.

I made a flying trip to visit Nelleke and inspect the work that the folks did at the Deltaville Yachting Centre. She seemed very lonely up on the hard although she was bounded on all sides by other boats I know that she doesn't feel right without us aboard and without exploring new seas and ports of call. Our plan now is to head on down to reunite in the middle of April 2011, spend two days getting the hull ready and then launching her to spend two or three days at the transient dock provisioning and doing some initial electrical work. Then we will go out to an anchorage for as much as another week to finish some of the other work that I would like to do before starting our trip home. We intend to travel up the Potomac to visit Washington DC. Barb has actually spent a half a day there whereas I, although I have been there several times it was always to fly in, jump in a staff car or a cab and be whisked off to a meeting somewhere, from which, after its conclusion, I would be rushed back to the airport and launched on home. So, I have never visited the memorials, or parks or galleries or museums for which the place is so deservedly famous, and Barb's half day really doesn't cut it.