We are now ready to go, with everything packed and the first of many parties behind us. That was really enjoyable with a lot of people in halloween costumes. Plenty of free food, beer and wine. What helped in the last week was we were able to get on to the police dock, which made life getting those last minute repairs and chores done, so much easier. We have finally finished all the major chores. Yes FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!! We have had the Icom 802 reprogrammed and Paul got to talk to the guy about the RFI problem so he will slowly work on sorting that. That will always be a work in progress. The guy from Spectra came and replaced the circut board in the water maker...yes even the water maker is computer driven. Amazing to think of the technologies we have on board. It was free as it was still under warranty. We have been attending a few seminars. We went to on on fishing for cruisers which was ok and Paul won a fishing lure so maybe it will be the lucky one. We went to another seminar that same evening on cruising in Mexico and he won a set on binos so it was definietly time to to buy a lotto ticket. It was a lucky day for him. We also took advantage of the free shuttle that West Marine offers. Great service. Just call and they will pick you up and take you anywhere in town. You don't even have to shop at their store. I guess it makes up for the thousands of boat units that we have spent at their store in the past. We have tried to clean the boat but gave up after the fires started. For several days it has been raining ash. I don't know if the rest of the world heard, but they evacuated over 600,000 people due to the fires, all roads out including the freeways were closed at one time or another. It was quite a massive exercise even for the states but they did it amazingly well. They had practise as they had a major fire down here in 2003. Anyway all we had on telly for about 3 days was fire coverage. I do feel for the ones that lost their house though. Heart breaking. Anyway the Intersatate 5 opened just in time for us to go to LA and pick up Dave on Thursday. We are off to take him shopping today. We are essentially ready, just a last minute shop for fresh stuff, new operating system for Paul (leopard is out) and we are set.