Well, things are progressing!

The new auto pilot has been installed, and we are connected to the wind instruments and the chart plotter, and I have prepared the surface and I'm almost ready to paint our friends boat.

I am starting to see light at the end of the commissioning tunnel, something which I was afraid, for a while there, would not happen.

Now I’m looking at the nice-to-do jobs. For example, I am looking at bringing up a different way of strapping the diesel and water tanks on the deck, a different way of fastening the radar reflector to the mizzen mast. I am looking at bringing up a different way of strapping the diesel and water tanks on the deck, a different way of fastening the radar reflector to the mizzen but first I think I want to see if I can get the mizzen floodlight working. There is one in place and I’m not sure if it doesn’t work because the power isn’t getting to it or because the light is burnt out or any number of other things. The idea of having a flood light so I can turn on from inside the pilot house is of great interest to me both for security reasons but also so that we can entertain her up on the deck in the cockpit on warm and bug-free nights. I also want to hook up our ships computer monitor and the large screen display so we can watch our DVD movies, Plus I want to run a LAN cable from the ships computer forward to my office so that I can link it up with my laptop and share the printer and the Wi-Fi booster antenna. Also, and this is perhaps a little bit more important than nice to do, I want to get the single side band working.

So, today, Barb and I ran the cables from the automatic tuner for the single side band back to the actual radio itself, and we are ready to hook it up and tested as well. This will be a great addition to our repertoire of communications device is on the boatAgain, it is one of those things that we’ve actually had for years and have never hooked up properly. We are hoping to get weather routing information from Chris Parker on the trip this winter and if I can find another SSB radio that’s not too expensive I will see if either of our kids would like to have it set up at their house so we can talk to each other while we are underway and not have to wait to get ashore to a Wi-Fi connection.

I can’t remember if I’ve posted this before but Barb and I are involved with the ocean cruising club to the extent that we are the port officer representatives for the town of Shelburne. This is a really interesting and fun appointment to take on and has given us the opportunity to meet a lot of wonderful people from all over the world whose cruising plans have brought them here to Shelburne. This year alone, besides a number of US yachts we have met a number of Brits (English and Scots), Australians, Germans, French, Belgians, and Norwegians just to name a few. The opportunity to meet these people and discuss their cruising experiences and compare them to ours is simply wonderful.