Abacos October 2010---With Bernie and Jane

Well, as I think I mentioned in an earlier post, we made our 2nd (my 3rd) trip to the Abacos for a week long bareboat charter--this time with my old (and I do mean "old") Army buddy and wife Bernie and Jane Boryc from Madison (that hot bed of liberalism), Wisconsin. Bernie recently retired from a career with Sears and Jane, as a teacher. When I emailed an invitation to join us on this trip they immediately jumped on it---a great leap of faith considering a. they had very little sailing experience and b. we had only seen each other once in the last 30? years, and that for just a couple of days. "Bernie? Do you think Dave is still the great fun loving wonderful and generous in every way Dave that we remember from Fort Hood????" : "And that Diane---I just don't know!!!" It was GREAT!!! We had a wonderful time. The weather, as you can see from the photos, was perfect. What a wonderful way to renew a dear relationship with 2 really fantastic people from our past--Oh the stories we could tell!!

Well, we're back now and back into preparations for our upcoming life change. Because of all that lay ahead in preparations, on our return we decided to put off our departure another week--to the 20th of November. This we did not knowing at the time that our son, Scott, was going to have such trouble getting his work visa to return to Beijing and his new job with his new firm. (As I'm sure most of you know, Scott has spent the better part of 3 years living and studying in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan with a brief sojourn of 3 years at the University of Texas School of Law . He recently completed a 1 year intensive language course of study at Taipai University
in Taiwan and then landed himself a position with a "small" (350 lawyers) Chinese law firm--The Allbright Law Office---They are actually located in Shanghai but are establishing a new Beijing office under the managemant of another American attorney who has hired Scott to assist) Since it now looks like Scott won't be returning to China for another week or so we decided to just put the whole departure off until after Thanksgiving---Soooooo--looks like I'l be leaving around the Friday or Saturday following TG.

So far it looks like I'l be joined by a couple of sailing friends from the marina for the first leg of the trip which I hope will be offshore from Galveston to south of Morgan City (Atchafalaya Bay), then inland to New Orleans. This will take 3 to 4 days depending upon wind and weather. (Diane is not keen on encountering all the offshore rigs and the inland barge traffic on this part of the trip--so she'll join up with me in NO and the crew will then use the same car to drive back to Houston.) Anyway--thats the curent plan. In the meantime preparations go on. I've had the steering checked out by professionals; we've added a new charger inverter that will allow us to have 110 volt electric capability when "on the hook" (not secured to shore electric power at a marina) and to much more rapidly recharge the batteries once they've run down; also to assist in this process we've added 2 Honda 200 watt generators that do everything we require electrically, from recharging batteries to running all the energy draining appliances even (and especially) our on-board air conditioning system-----Hurray!!!!! I don't intend to use it much for this purpose given the time of year that we'll be out, but I know we'll encounter some muggy, buggy nights from time to time and it will sure be nice to be able to go below into cool, dry air when necessary. We've aded a small convection/toaster oven. We've purchased a bunch of see-through plastic bins for storing everything from clothes to shoes to paper products to our precious wine. I suspect we've about doubled our ballast, but she doesn't appear to be riding too low on the water line. We purchased a new folding, 6 speed bicycle--really cool---it folds up to about 1/3 the size of a regular bike and stores easily. Last week-end I purchased a bunch of spare parts for the inevitable breakdown---fuel filters, oil filters, fuel injector, water pump, bilge pump, macerator pump (that's the thing that grinds up the youknowwhat before its dumped overboard--offshore---in deep, deep water), serpentine belts. We hung our cockpit screens. This week I'll install some boards along the lifeline stanchions to secure our numerous gas and diesel cans to. Still need to overhaul the anchor windlass. We've been obtaining all the charts and cruising guides we'll need for all the places we'll be going. Our friends, Rusty and Linda' turned us on to a free download of over 400 NOAA and Coast Guard charts through a free program called "Seaclear". You add a usb connection GPS antenna and the software and the GPS integrate to where you have automatic GPS tracking on an actual navigation chart on your lap-top. Really cool!!! (We will have 5 usable GPS systems on the boat---our Raymarine GPS Chartplotter at the helm, a handheld Garmin, the Seaclear program on the lap-top, my TomTom and navigation software app on my new Droid phone. If we get lost it will be because a. we are really stupid, or b. the world as we know it has come to an end.) Oh yeah!! Almost forgot--Even if we do get lost (or something should happen) we will have our "SPOT" sending out a signal to the rescue authorities to come find us at Lat and Lon xxxx. So--those of you who are worrying for us---Don't.

Well--fingers getting tired now so will post again soon. Remember what that famous sage, Bob Bitchin said---"Don't dream your life--live your dream"