9/2/2010 - Nice day

Another beautiful day in Charleston. Sun was shining when we got up and continued all day. It was t-shirt weather. Lulu rode the bus to town to get a couple things we forgot yesterday and she said the locals were complaining about how hot it was. Poor things.

I spent the day getting ready for sea. Replaced my aged incandescent port and starboard nav lights with LED lights. The fixtures are more or less the same shape and the style is called (are you ready for this?) "retro". Retro?? Good grief, the originals are only 34 years old fer criminy sakes! They're not old enough to have their style called "retro" yet.

They sure are bright, though. The pictures above were taken with a flash and the lights are still bright. And they consume about 1/10 the electrical power as the old ones.

Also filled the water tank and secured stuff on deck. Lulu secured stuff below.

We're still keeping an eye on the weather. So far it still looks promising for tomorrow at least to Brookings. As nice as it was today, things must have gotten a little ugly out there as the bar was closed to vessels 26' and under about 2:30 this afternoon. And, this was during the flood which, according to what I read, is when the bar is more likely to be safe to cross. We'll hope for better conditions tomorrow since, when we left Newport, the bar up there was also restricted to vessels 26' and under and we know how that turned out.

Tomorrow morning, high tide is at 9:12 so we'll probably want to be out by then. We plan to get up early-ish, like maybe 6:00 AM and then call the Coast Guard for a bar report. If everything looks good, we'll make sure everything is secured for sea and head over to the fuel dock to replace what we burned coming down from Newport. Then, if everything still looks good, we're outa here.

I'm going to rely on scopolamine patches again and Lulu is going to try the Bonine (Meclizine) that our friend Judy gave her. She's also going to use her acupressure wrist bands for good measure. Our friend Rod Hill e-mailed me some info on using the main to help stabilize the rolling so we'll try his tactics as well. These are things that worked for him when he and his family sailed to Mexico a few years ago.

As before, don't worry about us if you don't hear from us for awhile. We may stop in Brookings or we may be able to press on. We'd like to get as far as we can without taking a beating. So, it's anybody's guess where the next blog will come from. Depending on the bar and weather conditions, it might even be from Charleston, but we hope not. Although, as the aforementioned Rod Hill pointed out, it's better to be stuck on our boat in Charleston than to be stuck in a cubicle at work just about anywhere.

By the way, we found a stowaway today:

Seems that one of Cody's garden gnomes got tired of the rural life in the Silverton Hills. Since he's small and doesn't eat or drink anything, we decided to let him stay. I did make sure that he sent an e-mail to Cody to let her know he's alright.

Well, wish us fair winds and comfortable seas.