What can I say? I've been really busy!

Since our last post, we have been really busy and there have been a lot of non boat tasks, but somehow the upcoming cruise has still managed to creep in. Barb has had all her medical prescriptions renewed so we can take six months supply with us (I already did mine); we had a flying trip to the Binnacle to buy a couple of key items for the boat - a galley manual pump, had the chart plotter cartridge renewed, and bought 130' of halyard for the jib. In between we managed a visit with our daughter, a meeting with our banker, and a grocery trip to Costco.

Sigh. More jobs to do. More old ones to repair. Some of the repairs I have done already may have exposed additional ones that need doing as well and some have shown me jobs that definitely need doing before I trust Nelleke on blue water.

On top of all that, the boat chores seem to be getting done in spite of the fact that most days I have to restrain myself from banging my head repeatedly against the nearest wall in frustration. So many of the things that I did years ago that I thought were so clever and demonstrated such great skill and know how, are turning out to bite me in the gluteus maximus and chewing off a sizeable chunk of my ego.

I believe that I have already mentioned in a past posting that a number of our current problems have been due to half baked things that I have done and with my current stream of tidy up projects, this has only shown to be true more and more. For instance, I am constantly being reminded that the more connections that you have in an electrical cable the more points you have for failure. Both the ground and hot circuits had far too many connection points in them, and I am reminded that every connection point is an avenue for corrosion, and any corrosion offers resistance, and every point of resistance represents voltage drop in the circuit. Today was another example of just that in the hot circuit from the house bank, which wasn't providing enough voltage to the house utilities. I was lucky that there was enough heavy wire that I could shorten the whole circuit and eliminate 4 connections. I can't imagine why I had all of those in the first place! Any way. Now I don't!

I hooked up the ship's computer and put three coats of varnish on the cockpit seats. The boat is starting to look like someone cares and is ship shape and Bristol fashion. We have bent on the storm jib and brought the inflatable dingy and kayak from the house to the boat. The outboard still need an overhaul and we need to test out all the electrical and electronics aboard. I don't want to be underway when we find out that something doesn't work. Barb, in turn, has been finding a number of canvas projects to do before we leave.

Everything is starting to look good, though. I hope I don't jinx myself saying that!

Weather dependant we should be underway before the end of the month after a delayed Thanksgiving dinner with our daughter and her fiancé. I may even be able to help out at the club to take the docks out. There's a free hamburger in it for me.