Boy did I luck out yesterday at work! Nelleke has a small homemade table in the cockpit for us to have drinks and a two person dinner while watching the sunset. The operative word here is homemade and although it is fully functional and not unattractive there are better options and yesterday one presented itself. The store had four cockpit tables shipped to them for sale (retail price around $400) and sadly one of them was damaged in transit, and I don't mean a small scrape - one of the corners holding the hinge mechanism was broken off. The carrier made good for some of the wholesale price and for the balance (about $100) the store sold it to me. A couple of bar clamps and a little carpenter's glue and the table was back in order. We will always be able to see the crack but for those of you that do much carpentry you will know that a properly done glue joint is actually stronger than the surrounding wood. The table that we have in the cockpit will be brought below to use in the office that we are setting up in the middle cabin. I am thinking of a side table to hold reference material or stuff like that.

We have been slowly replacing all or at least as many of the cabin and exterior lights with LEDs as possible. They cost about 4 times as much but have a life expectancy of more than ten times plus they draw a fraction of the power and give off almost no heat. One light has the equivalency of 45Watts but only consumes 3! I have also replaced the running lights but found out to my very great surprise, that port and starboard lights have to be red and green ones respectively regardless of whether or not we have coloured Fresnel lenses in place. The LEDs are so intense that they wash out the colour in the lens so the light itself has to be coloured. I was totally unaware of that until we installed them and wondered what had happened to the lights.

I have discovered that I can get a second BP Solar panel for less than $800 which is a big load off my mind. With that second panel we will up our power generation from the panels to 8-10 A, and adding another 4 A or more from the wind generator we should be in very good shape this winder on our cruise.

Our planned holiday to McNab's Island is hanging by tender hooks waiting for the weather. As of this morning it was supposed to be thunder and lightning and neither Barb nor I would be too keen on spending the nights at anchor in those conditions especially as we could be comfortably alongside. We'll see. For Saturday night we have been invited out to our friends Al and Debs at Marvin's Island to celebrate Al's birthday. That would mean that we'd go out to visit on Saturday night and then with good weather conditions we could head out Sunday morning and spend one night at the island. That has its attractions too but again, it all depends upon the damn weather.