Hi to all...sorry about the delays...we've been out of the water and away from the dock doing time on the hard (hard time?)...anyway... The boat doesn't like being out of the water and neither do we...but it is essential. (It's miserable living aboard a boat ashore...not designed for comfort!).

Okay, so we went back in today. Totally exhausted with a 2 1/2 day marathon of scraping and painting the bottom (thanks to Sandy who had to do it all by herself!)...and we hung the new wind generator, radar reflector, new masthead light, new wind instruments new Wi Fi halyard, and a general inspection of the rigging. Ugh...not good for Ray at heights...spent most of my time calculating when I was going to get to come down...very distracted by my fear of heights.

Anyway...the first shock we got was the failure of the paint to keep grubbies off. It was supposed to come up clean...obviously it failed miserably...maybe West Marine will give us a refund as this is beyond failure. They hosed off most of them, Sandy scraped the rest and sanded things down to the finish, repaited and now it looks awesome! Pictures on the way.

So we put the boat back in the water...and taxied back over to our Marina and we leave now in one, maybe two days...we still have so much to do. I have the anchor windlass to deal with (the device that raises and lowers the anchor, hooking up electrical systems all over (including Wi Fi and our new alarm system. We still have solar panels to hook up, and the water maker, and the autopilot to check out and we need to install the monitor. There is some comments about being the most well equipped boat ever putting out to circumnavigate...I have a feeling it will all come into play as we go along.

Tire this evening...more tomorrow