Well, its been awhile. I know in one blog post that I said that I didn't like blogs that just seem to disappear, so i thought that I better show up again.
Its been a long 2 years and we have had an amazing time , met a ton of people and gone to a lot of places that we hope to see all over again this year.
To date we have gone down the canal system to New York and up Delaware bay to the Chesapeake. Down the Bay to Florida by way of the Intracoastal Waterway and some offshore hops. We've gone across the Gulfstream to the Bahamas twice. This last year we went through the Bahamas to the Jumentos and Ragged Islands and continued on to Cuba. We spent 2 amazing months in Cuba and than came back to the states and left our boat in Florida, in Fort Pierce. We will refloat the boat in October and head back to the Bahamas and than back to Cuba in April. This time we want to spend 3 months there.
We have enjoyed all our travels and made many special friends that we will hopefully see again this year.
If you want to read more about our trips, please go to our other much better maintained site that my wife does. Its address is:
http://travelswithpolarpacer.blogspot.com
Please go there and enjoy , theres many pictures and a good story of 2 people who managed to cut the dock lines and get out there.

Well actually Me and my wife are in Calgary but the boat is still in Toronto at our club. We are here to go to a familly reunion before we leave.
We have been living on the boat since the 1st of June. The turnover of the house went off without a hitch and into the boat we went. Since we have been on th eboat we have been very,very busy. We installed the motor just before we moved on and I finished it later. We purchased and installed 3 new 130 watt solar panels, Chris sewed a complete enclosure for the hardtop. It has clear panles with bug screens and the panels are removable. I purchased and installed the new Raymarine AIS 500 transciever, and just before we left for Calgary I recieved the new Katadyn Pur 80 water maker I had ordered from West \Marine.
We also purchased a small condo in downtown Toronto where our son will live and it gives us a mailing address. I also took time to compeltely renovate it. Its pretty small so we actually managed to do it in 10 days.

So some of you might be interested in how the upgrades went. I will give you a short breakdown based on the limited time we have hade them.

AIS 500 - actually pretty straight forward tio install. My understanding with the ones that transmit and recieve is that the factory was to program the info into them. Not so with the Raymarine ones. They give you a disc to do it yourself if you live outside the U.S.. It was somewhat irritating to find this out because I applied for the MMSI number and license and waited till they arrived to roder and then it didn't matter anway.
130 watt solar panels - well every boat is different. When I built the hardtop I made it with hardspots in for the panels and I know which ones I wanted. It was a matter of designing mounting brackets. I used 3x2 aluminum angle and cut it up into 3 inch lenghts then I fastened them to the panels then to the hard top, with some refitting of course. The panels come with connection boxes and I used 8 gauge to connect the panels. Everything was led to a connection box with breakers that I fabricated and then from there to the Blue Sky 3024i controller. We have been on solar power only for the last 2 months and it has been working amazingly well.
hardtop enclosure - Chris sewed the new surround it did an amazing job. She has been asked by several people to work on their projects but didn't have much time to spare.
Watermaker - just got it and still in box. Looks cool though

Thats all for now we leave the first week in August.
Later

One thing I've noticed is you have to have a cool title for every blog entry.
Well we are well beyond the first step and are stumbling along faster and faster it seems. The paperwork is in for retirement. We listed and sold our house in 10 days, got our price and a June 5 possession date ( what recession). We managed to accomplish very little up till now but the push is on. The new motor is waiting patiently to be installed. I have been collecting the parts to install it. A duel fule filter setup for one thing. ( I was going to correct the spelling for fuel but somehow it seemed fitting). We are on the cusp of ordering our solar panels. I had new stainless grabs made for the coachroof to replace the teak ones. (not a big fan brightwork, I'm sure there will be lots of other things to do).
I have 6 weeks till retirement and if I get any more jumpy I will need medication.
To be continued (eventually) (big fan of brackets and subtext)
Tom
Polar Pacer