Just an update
08 February 2012 | Kemah Texas
Lester
We have been busy getting Seanna ready for our trip. Almost everyday we get to check off something on our to do list. Although, some days we end up adding something to the list. It seems like a balancing act trying to reduce the size of the list. Take last Saturday for instance. We went to the grocery store for what we thought we needed for the next few weeks along with what we needed to stock up on for our trip south. We were at the store by 8:00 AM, and by 6:00 PM Sunday we had built shelves behind the settees, arrainged storage containers, and finally put away 2 dock carts of food.
Our SSB radio has been a pain. The SSB is a single sideband high frequency radio used offshore for long distance communication, kind of like a HAM radio. In fact ours has HAM capability too. We needed it to be hooked up to the computer, so the computer could remotely control the radio for our high frequency airmail service and our weather faxes. Well we are receiving weather faxes and test emails now but we think the radio is not transmitting right. So we have a radio tech coming to Seanna this week to help us out. We have decided that the SSB is such a safety issue, that we won't leave until it is working correctly.
Lastnight our neighbors, Jim and Sharron took us out to a farewell dinner. It was a good time. They got us a Saint Christopher medallion for our travels. Sharron even took it to a priest and had it blessed. We are the ones who are blessed. We have met so many nice and interesting people already. We have new neighbors on the dock behind us. They are John and Cindy on SV RUTHLESS. They are from Montana and they plan to start cruising around the first on April. Their plans are to do the East coast this summer and winter in the Bahamas. We (I) invited ourselves onto RUTHLESS for a beer the other night. I think we'll return the favor tonight. They are such nice people, and like us, they have tons of work to do.
Robyn will be going back to Oklahoma for a week next week for a grandchild's birthday. Then, the weekend after she gets back, we're hoping for a visit from my mom and dad before we take off. Our plan is to leave on the first weather window after the last weekend of February. Our friend, Larry G will be down around the 16th and he will work from his boat until we are ready to cross the Gulf and then he will join us for the crossing. So, we have lots to do, but we're getting it done. Until next time...