i dont even know why i bother planning anymore. today after giving up on the welder ever coming and starting to make plans to leave, he finally called looking for me. i managed to get the goose neck off before his arrival and shot this pic which i sent back to the mast guys. i even got "jim" on the phone again this time he was much more negative about the situation and recommended fixing it now before "the crack ran away". the good news is the welders did show up and actually think it can be done for a reasonable amount of money. the bad news is it has to be completely calm to weld aluminum and his guy is going to Morocco this weekend so we are looking at next week at the best. by then we will have another weather pattern. perhaps this will give me time to line up someone to go with me but i was kind of looking forward to trying a (short) offshore passage alone!

the plan by the way is to just weld all the cracks and then eventually replace the goose neck outline shown in solid with one shown in dotted sharpie. i asked "jim" what the cause was and he told me "you use your boat the way people only dream of using it" and in that configuration apparently the stock goose neck bracket is insufficient, go figure. i will try to use the time to work on a few other projects. my current thinking is to try to get south to the verde islands as fast as possible where the water is actually warm but who knows perhaps this plan with change as well!

i got to talk to stu this am about his generator exhaust leak. he is still in ibiza in an 80 euro per night marina trying to get it fixed. he was talking about the "civilized" way of circumnavigating again thinking about shipping his boat across the atlantic. at least he made me feel better about my 18 pounds per night slip but also reminded me i have a genset oil light problem i need to fix!

cheers, roger