We are doing well.

This is a quickie about what we have been doing since the middle of May.

I got really caught up in working on the boat that I am captaining this summer for the Boy Scouts. The owner put off getting the boat ready until almost too late. When we finally got the boat splashed we only had a week before the first trip, and we had planned on doing a four day shake down cruise for the boat and shake down for me so that I would be very familiar with the cruising grounds that I would be working in. That did not work out, although we were able to get two days in.

Even after the two days, we still had some things to get done before we went out on our first trip. When we got in from our shakedown cruise on Thursday afternoon, we got a call from the Boy Scouts asking if we could do a trip starting Saturday!! Our normal start day was the following Monday. The owner and I agreed that we could be ready and be able to help the Boy Scouts out, which we did.

In the meantime, the software for my bluetooth connection had died. All of a sudden the software on the CD would not load properly. I downloaded the software using Kitty's computer (33 Mbytes; took two days before success), but it did not work either. I had Kitty call Belkin and get a CD sent out, but that did not work either. Yesterday after the Boy Scout trip I was able to contact the Belkin support team, and get the problem sorted out. It turns out that one of Microsoft's security updates broke Belkin's software installation. Any way I got it working yesterday, and I was able to get all of my mail down loaded. Now I have to go through and answer over eighty emails!

While I was out on the Boy Scout trip, the heat was really getting to Kitty, so she coordinated and got the boat moved into a marina in Marathon. We have the boat settled in as a live aboard for $546.00 a month in a place called Faro Blanco, Oceanside. The price includes water, electricity, pump outs and cable TV, so Kitty is very happy. As I discovered late yesterday, there is someone around that has an unsecured wireless connection, so I also have a high speed connection. This will do until September, and then we will see what happens.

My first Boy Scout trip turned out to be very good, although the weather could have been a lot better. I got very lucky. Usually you have six scouts and two adult leaders on board. My trip had four scouts and thiner fathers who were all scout leaders. The fathers liked to eat well, so they did most of the food preparation and the scouts did most of the galley cleanup. Also one of the fathers was a rabid fisherman, so we did very well in that category. In fact we have caught the record cobia for the scouts. It was 49" nose to tail split.

After the first trip, I have four days off and I will be back to my normally scheduled rotation. That will be six days on and one day off for 11 trips. It will be nice when September comes.

regards,

jimk

WEB page http://www.dreamaway.net