Yahoo! The stock market has improved albeit briefly...

...for the last couple of years we have been looking at maybe 5% interest on our fund accounts unless you throw caution to the winds and have all your eggs in a high risk basket. We don’t so we are quite happy with our tiddly little interest when we can get it. At least we aren’t losing anything. Who knows, we might be getting to our fund target earlier than I’d have thought and we can take off earlier.

I am going to take a huge risk and say that the weather is getting milder and milder here these days. Hopefully we will have seen that last of the dreaded s-word and I can start to plan work aboard Nelleke. There’s a lot to do since the poor lady have been a wee bit neglected over the last year but now with a clear objective in mind we can set goals and targets to accomplish. Hmm....lets see.....sanding, bottom painting, hull waxing, brightwork varnishing etc. Ahhhhhhh....I am so looking forward to it. Then we have the launch day and subsequent weekend excursions. I am going through salt water withdrawal. Weird!

Windy as all get out today but at least we aren’t getting what our friends in New England are experiencing – more wet snow and freezing rain. Brrrrr! If this keeps up we won’t be able to call ourselves the True North anymore. That sobriquet will have to be bestowed on the northern USA. Of course my current experience is only for the Maritimes and central and western Canada are still going through the “normal” winters.

As I mentioned in a previous blog we now have at least one and perhaps as many as three other boat owners who might like to join us for weekend parties aboard. We are planning to simply put up a notice on the club bulletin board announcing the raft up – location and timings and see who shows up. I am hoping that after a couple of good reports of good food and great company more and more might be inclined to join us. If not, well then we will just have to do it solo, which is hardly the end of the world.

The more that I think about Barb’s surgery or lack of it the more I am happy that the surgeon, for whatever his motives, chose to advise us that she should try it without first. I have seen the procedure several times both on video and in the operating theatre and I can assure you that when I left Barb in the hospital for the first one I was very apprehensive. In the procedure that she was having it was a total knee replacement which basically means that they take the knee cap and dunk it in the burn bin and then saw off a segment of the upper and lower leg bones to which they attach the prosthesis using a combination of threaded rod, screws and cement. Orthopedic instruments are like something out of a medieval torture chamber – saws, chisels, hammers and tongs.... nothing subtle about it at all! I was so glad to see her after it was all over especially as she had a smile on her face that I don’t think came from the drugs. If it’s not absolutely necessary, and if the same result could be accomplished through exercise that I would vote for her to wait for a while until she is really ancient and then neither of us will be looking at sailing or anything too strenuous. Oh well. Time will tell.

One thing as I am writing this, here in the town hall we have just upgraded to a supposedly better i-net system and of course nothing is working. We can’t even connect! Of course, if you are reading this the problem has been corrected but for now as I am writing, I need the opportunity to vent.
OK. Venting over. They got it fixed.