17 December 2020 Southport, FL
This boating stuff is so much PHUN! Frank has turned to with a will collecting all
the equipment he wants us to load aboard for the trip. He came over the other day while he was
estimating a nearby dock job (BTW, his black lab is named Dock) and dropped off
the company credit card, and by nightfall I had raided Harbor Freight and West
Marine to the tune of about 560 bucks! That’s on top of the 600 bucks of
my own money I had paid to order three critical shore power cord adapters
(seller keeping them). Yesterday, Frank
showed up with a Weber gas grill new in the box (NIB) which weighs a ton. I think I’m going to have to wheel it down the
pier and open the box on the pier in order to load it piece by piece where I
will assemble it. He had a fully charged
brand new 8-gallon propane tank with it. Today he showed up with a second
100-foot 5/8” stern anchor rode with stainless thimble already spliced in (I
had already bought and spliced one, but he is determined to have two), a NIB
40” TV, NIB blender, and NIB GIGANTIC toaster oven. Tonight, he informed
us he had bought towels and sheets and pillows for the boat. I think the thrust of this outfitting became
clearer to me when he mentioned that he intends to show up in Orange Beach at turn over with
five or six adults to help him finish the voyage to Bay County. Party barge anybody? He informed me today that the survey went well
with wide open throttle (WOT) achieving 4400 RPM running 22 MPH. That is at the high end of the Crusader 7.4L WOT
RPM range; so all seems well there.
