Family Expansion

We can add a mainsail trimmer to the list of potential crew. Aiden Christopher weighed in at six pounds three ounces and a month early. Anything related to boating has stopped for the time being as we help out around the kids house while they come out of their initial shock. You forget how small these little ones are especially when they are early birds. Funny how it all comes back to you in a flash and you find yourself making baby talk and burping them on your shoulder in no time at all. One thing that didn't come back to me is diaper changes. I swore after our kids I wouldn't change another diaper ever again unless it's mine. So far so good and I can safely say I have escaped another round of excretions.

One happy Grandma

Happy Gramps as well. Do we look tired?

Eat, sleep, poop

Looks like a blondie

Mother and baby are doing great and grandma and grandpa are smiling but now it's time to head up to New York to visit more family and friends while we have the boat parked in a safe and reasonably priced location. It's crazy but if you go over seven days  in a marina you are better off paying the monthly rate, so as long as we are paying for another month we might as well go see some family during this hurricane season and soak up some family love before we vanish to warmer climate in the winter.

On the project side of things I can tell you that the new solar panel was installed and working. How well it works we will find out when we get back to the boat. We left the fridge AND freezer on this time. Hopefully I am not looking at buying a new battery bank when we get back. I have a partial install on the autopilot we bought. I still have to mount the display and the linear drive unit. I needed an adapter plate to mount the drive to the quadrant and I asked for a quote from the marina. An eight inch stainless steel adapter plate with five holes would have run me about four hundred dollars. I told them to stuff it. I was pretty much insulted by the price they pulled out of their ass and I really wanted to relay that fact to them but I figured as long as our boat was tied up there I am better off just saying no thanks. Seriously though, what the hell kind of labor are we talking about here for a machine shop to make a plate? I got prices from friends and other sailors that were way less than half of that. I think sometimes these guys just throw something at you and see if you'll bite or they are too busy to bother with you so they price it to scare you off.

Thank you to my sailing friends for the info you provided me on installing the linear drive, especially Magnolia and Veranda. Very helpful and appreciated.

So, after our trip to NY where are we off to? We are going to hit the bay, install the autopilot, re-bed some deck hardware, and sail. God do we need to sail. We plan on skipping most of the ICW on the way back down. Our goal after this summer is to avoid marina's like the plague and sail as much as we can. Our little adventure down A1A was kind of a shakedown cruise and we learned a lot about how we want to proceed in the future. Should be fun times so stick with us.

Cheers!
Grandpa Pauly