The day of the boat show, the largest in the world! Barb and I are quite excited about this and have been looking forward to it since we realized that we were going to be in the area.

First, my little job yesterday to clean out the carb on the Seagull seems to have worked marvels. The float valve is no longer sticking and none of the 2 stroke oil goop is still there to clog up the car intake. The little engine is back purring away and taking us reliably to where we want to go.

We met Mary Lou and Jay at the Navy Football stadium and took the shuttle bus into the show where Jay scored some comp tickets to get in - yea, Jay! That's $36 we can spend elsewhere and there certainly were lots of opportunity to do just that - spend. We had to watch ourselves as it's too easy to go nuts with a credit card. As it was there were enough items that we had to have to spend money on. For instance we were able to get a good deal on the tubes for our Walker Bay dingy to turn it into a RIB, surprisingly though not from the manufacturer, but rather from an unexpected source - West Marine! We also got an exceptionally good deal on a new wind instrument to replace the one that went belly up just before the RHSP race. In addition both Jay and I wanted a dual filter system for the fuel system for the boat and lo and behold we found a fellow that has designed one complete with an electric lift pump, and alarm and pressure gauge, a polishing cycle and all rack mounted ready for install, all for the boat show price of $1450. I had thought of building one for myself but having priced all the parts this is simply the way to go. Add to that Jay and I both want the same thing so we are going to try to get an additional discount due to the fact that we were going to get two of them. The final thing that we found is a davit for the outboard that may allow us to leave the Seagull on the dingy when we haul it up. In any event it will make taking it up and putting it down to the dingy much easier.

After the boat show we went to an Irish Pub that the Signalers on Chimo II recommended - Galloway Bay and had a nice light dinner with some good beer. We walked back to their truck and showed them the way to the dingy landing as they will be joining us for dinner tomorrow night.

When we got back to the boat we fired up the genset for the first time just to try it out and to work out the kinks. It is much louder than we thought that it would be so we will only be running it during non quite hours, plus there are one or two small features that I need to put in, most notably a ground connection. I will do that tomorrow and try it again during the day.

We plan to spend one more day in Weems Creek to get a pump out and to work the kinks out of the genset and then on Sunday we will depart for a spot further south where we have been told that we can get access to a dock. Tomorrow I will call Old Fort Comfort Marina and ask if they will accept some deliveries for us and then I'll order the fuel filtration system and the outboard davit.