The year started pretty good, then after my post in March I was ambushed by health problems that slowed me to almost a total standstill. I have made it past that for the most part, still battling things from time to time, but for most part I am making it. More on that later.
Okay, for the big update. I was finally able to get the SSB radio hooked up and it works. I was wondering if it was working but once I got clear of all the interference in the marina I was able to hear stations some as far away as Hawaii, now to work on the getting the proctor modem so I can set up email.
I did go ahead get the Hydrovane, I am pretty happy with it so far. I have only used it once, but it worked nicely just as I expected. It was nice to sail along with out the ships autopilot eating up battery power. I can see it being a great addition to my gear.
The next big thing to happen was replacing the dingy, the old one had to go, the transom was made of marine plywood and had rotted out, it cost almost as much to fix it as to by a new one, so I got one from West Marine, a RIB, has hard fiberglass bottom as well as transom. I also moved the dingy to the foredeck and removed the davits from the stern. This frees up room for the Hydrovane to have full range of motion, takes the weight of the dingy off the stern, makes off shore passages safer. Having the stern free makes room for the Jordan series drogue the I am getting as well as bringing a fish aboard when we are fishing. Nothing like fresh fish for dinner.
I also took time off at the end of September and first week of October for my annual sailing trip with Rob. He came down and we spent a few days in the Marina and then motored over to Horn Island spent the night there then sailed over to Ship Island, visited the island, explored Ft. Massachusetts and the beach. I think we saw a sharks fin. We then motored back towards home stopping and spending the night at Petit Bois Island, taking the time to explore here, collected some sea shells had a great dinner from the pressure cooker. Sailed and motor back to the marina the next day. I will take time a little later post a better log of the trip.
As I get closer to moving aboard Surprise I plan to take more time updating the blog and my hope its to link it to my YouTube so that there will videos to go with the blog. I am not sure that it will be as fantastic as some of the blogs and video logs that I have seen but I am going to try and and I am sure that over time it will improve. I do have one helpful addition that make my videos a lot better, I bought an iMac what a great addition to video production it will be.
