We are getting more and more ready for the big move and trip. The few extra days that I have been able to work at the Binnacle have been very helpful to be able to pay for the last few things that I wanted to buy to take down with us including spinnaker sheets, red and green so I will know what side to put them on, a Deep Six anchor rode, a new Canadian flag for Nelleke and a new US courtesy flag and last but not least a garbage container for the galley that will fold out of the way when not in use. I have been really looking forward to using the Deep Six line as it will flake down into the chain locker a lot more efficiently than three ply nylon will, and we will move the three ply aft to a stern chain locker that I will build and use it for the Danforth as a stern anchor.

I had been handing over the rigging duties to another fellow at the store and had forgotten how much the calluses on my hand had developed over the last year and more importantly how much they had faded in the last month and a half. This was brought forcefully home to me when I stripped my right hand along the piece of tight weave double braid to milk the cover back over the core on a spice that I was doing and gave myself a peachy rope burn in the process. What fun!

Tomorrow I will be driving Barb into the spa where she will benefit from one of the Christmas gifts that the kids and I gave her, a half day of being buffed and fluffed. After all the work that she has done getting everything ready for the move it is only a small repayment. My turn will come in the loading of things for the boat into the trailer and off loading the truck into the storage unit, but in the meantime – buffo and fluffo for Barb.

Meanwhile I will be continuing on the work on the cookbook. So far I have managed to reassemble all the pieces into which I had divided it and correct any technical errors that may have occurred to the formatting of the tables of the photos. Then I had, as a result, a 500Mbyte document that wouldn’t upload to Lulu the on line publisher so I had to use a File Transfer Protocol software package that I was able to find on the web. It was even free! How about that?! So far this seems to have worked and now I am designing the covers from some sketches and photos that we have taken during our cruising adventures.

The most fascinating thing about technology is that it is one of those things that you never catch up with. If, like me, you are a technophile, and like to have as much of the toys as possible, especially when they help with the boat, you always have your eyes open for new stuff. Problem is that almost as soon as you get the new stuff something newer and better comes along. Take wifi antennas. Currently Nelleke sports a RadioLabs wifi antenna that allows us to sit out at anchor out in the harbour and if there are any reasonably strong unsecure wifi sources within a kilometre we can sign on. I can’t begin to mention how many times this has allowed us to keep up our daily blog posting. Trouble is, when cruising, you often will anchor somewhere more than a kilometre from any source. Enter our friend Bob who is as much if not more of a technophile than I am. Last night he called us from Florida to tell us about a new amplified wifi antenna that he found that extend that reach to 4-5 miles! It costs less than $150 and will tie into an onboard router that will allow you to run several laptops plus your printer and link to the internet at the same time. Are we going to investigate further? You betcha!