I wouldn’t be surprised if you did. Barb and I planned to have the dingy lift points re-installed on the dink yesterday so we could put it (the dingy) back on the davits and not have it sitting in the water beside the boat. Unfortunately we hadn’t counted on two things, first the fun of trying to line up the holes on two pieces of wood separated by 6” of Styrofoam flotation bounded top and bottom by hard plastic, and second, by the fact that the new wooden lift points made of ironwood were nearly a half inch thicker than the earlier plywood model and we didn’t have long enough threaded rod to finish the job. Needless to say there were a lot of interesting words said in the heat of the moment. I am very luck that she-who-must-be-obeyed can both keep her cool and come up with good ideas to resolve such problems. At the end of nearly an hour of wrestling with it we had the stern one more or less finished. One that was done I had neither the heart nor the energy not long enough threaded rod to finish the job last night, but today herself is shopping for more rod so perhaps we will get it done this evening.

I think that the problem with our autohelm is due to the rudder sensor so I will be seeing if it is fixable or if that will be another $350 expense that I wasn’t counting on. (Sigh) Keep your fingers corssed for me. The owners manual says that it might be something as simple as a poor connection where the unit attaches to the autohelm computer. If not I can test the unit by checking the resistance through it while turning the helm from block to block. It is only a fancy rheostat after all, and the resistance should rise and fall as I turn the wheel back and forth. I’ll let you know what I find out after testing.

There still isn’t a line of other boaters willing to join us for our weekend cruises. Perhaps it’s us. Or maybe it’s the places that we are selecting as being spots that people are tired of having been there so often already. Oh well. We aren’t tired of them yet so we will head out and recce them and post our finding on this blog and on Active Captain for others to make use of.

Both Barb and I are enjoying the boat chores (except for when I get cross when things don’t go according to plan and turn the air blue) and are looking forward to our weekend trips. Son Chris will be coming down to join us over the long weekend. He won’t be arriving until Sunday so we might get away for the Friday night and Saturday and I have asked for Tuesday and Wednesday off as well. I have a friend from the USAF from back in my days in uniform who might be visiting Halifax on a cruise on the Queen Mary 2. If he does we will all head down to Halifax to whoop it up in the Warden of the North.