I am about to chew nickels and spit pennies. Barb's second knee is starting to act up and if ODing on anti-inflamitoriess doesn't get it back in line we may be looking at changing our plans yet again! Why can't we catch a break?! The last time this happened we were looking at a four year hiatus in cruising and at this stage in our lives that would totally pooch any future cruising plans. We have two and a bit months before we head back to the USA to store the boat. If it hasn't been fixed by then we may be heading home instead.

The last time we had a significant rainstorm here there was 5" of rain. One of the boats in the harbour catches rainwater by simply blocking their deck scuppers and opening up the water standpipe. On that rainstorm they not only filled their tanks but there was an overflow. Barb and I have come up with a design for a rain catcher that will give us 80 gallons of water for every inch of rainfall. Our main water tanks are 120 gallons so it would only take an inch and a half of rain to fill the tanks if they were empty. We just need to buy some light sail material to make it out of. We have been working on the details of suspension points and wind tiedowns.

And speaking of water, with the exception of the open control panel, the water maker is finally installed and I won't have to be filling jerry cans and humping them up to the deck to pour down the standpipe. Huzzah! I will be testing it and the connections tomorrow with the flood tide. I'd do it today but we have plans for the evening so we will miss the tide.

What plans are those you might ask? Well, remember yesterday I think that I might have mentioned about the Arts for Parks Exhibition that starts tonight over in Marsh Harbour? I turns out that Froggies, one of the local dive operations, has a launch that they have dedicated to the cause and will be giving people from here a free round trip across and back. So, our intent is to have a late lunch, toddle off to choir practice, and then dart down to the dock to catch the Froggies boat over to the show. They have an art auction, cocktails tonight, and the same plus speakers on Saturday and Sunday. We won't be going to those since the free trip is only tonight, another reason for getting our own larger runabout.

Barb has begun to measure for a binnacle cover which has drawn a fair amount of attention from some of the other boaters in the marina who were not aware that we had such a skilled crew member aboard. Who knows, she might get some barter work out of the deal. There is a canvas worker already who has offered that Barb can have her scraps if she will help her to adjust her sewing machine to work on thicker material.

Interestingly we are beginning to hear that the Christmas cards that we sent home early in December from Bimini are starting these last couple of days to arrive at their destinations. Hmm. Nearly a month and a half time to make the trip. Must have traveled by dolphin!

On a separate matter, yesterday I mentioned that we were planning on heading further south to "see" the rest of the Bahamas. I m afraid that I wasn't particularly clear about it. What we are really trying to do is travel down as far as we can in two weeks +or- so clearly we will only be able to go a short distance in the two weeks that we have allotted ourselves - one week down and another back. We should be able to get as far as some of the northern most cays in the Exumas but not much further. I just gotta since the original plan was to be spending most of our time down there rather than here in the Abacos.