The Great Onload

Sheesh! It's a lot of effort getting the boat out of the local, mostly ICW cruiser mode to coastal operations mode including crossing lots of open water. Our list of to-dos and go-buys is dwindling, and the waterline is at least and inch higher than it was a couple of days ago. I'm going to give the old boat a good bath tomorrow to clear off the last of the winter grime and work on polishing up the clear vinyl of the flying bridge enclosure so I can see where the heck we're going.

While the boat is relatively inactive, I keep a blind plug in the 2-inch through-hull where the depth sounder's speed and water temperature transducer fits because I don't want bio-fouling clogging the speed wheel. It's always a thrill of the negative kind to exchange the sensor for the plug, what with a head of three feet of water pushing through a 2-inch gaping hole in the bottom of the boat. Swapping as fast as I can, there is still a big ol' gout of water wetting me down for a second or so. Anyway, tis done so we'll have speed through the water as well as SOG from the GPS units.

Speaking of that miracle, GPS, what a wonder! Well do I remember being on the bridge of a destroyer one summer night in 1971 as we sneaked into the waters off the Vietnamese DMZ after a long ocean voyage with overcast preventing any celestial navigation. There was no electronic navigation other than iffy LORAN A, which was maybe good to within 5 miles. We ended up with an almost eight-mile error which had us running right into the large North Vietnamese coastal batteries on Tiger Island. Luckily, somebody discovered the error before the enemy did.

I am taking our computer router with us so we can have both laptops on line, if desired, giving Mary access to her email and other internet interests while the primary computer runs the chart plotting program, which will put us within a few feet of the arrival mark off Tarpon Springs on Tuesday morning.

Sail boaters would hate the weather forecast for Monday afternoon through Tuesday from Dog Island to Tarpon Springs; little to no wind (all on the nose) and 1-foot seas. Great trawler-crawler weather, though.

Once the idea of transiting the whole 90 NM to Dog Island in one day seized me, and it became clear that we would need to be leaving earlier Sunday than Mary's desired time of rising in the morning, she suggested we sleep aboard Saturday night. You see, Mary is well aware that I need no assistance in getting underway from our home slip, and you can guess the rest about where her "sea and anchor detail" station will be that day. This happened more than once while we were on our sojourn up the Tenn-Tom and Tennessee in 2006. You can see what sort of slave ship I run!