Waiting To Cross

We now expect to cross the Gulf Stream this Friday. While the winds are cooperating, there is a strong northeast swell running, which would make for a very unfavorable ride. We took advantage of the continued stay here in North Palm Beach to install our solar panels. We were immediately thrilled with the results. On the first full day with solar panels, we ended the day with our batteries fully charged. The biggest energy consumer for us is refrigeration, and at least on sunny days, the solar power will replace all of the electricity used by the refrigeration for 24 hours. We have been passing the time playing cards and dominoes, sharing meals on each other's boats, and spending time ashore together. Star Shadow went on down to Fort Lauderdale and will cross to Bimini and then on to Andros. They expect to be in the Abacos in April and May.

SSB Radio

                     Radio (bottom) Modem (top)

Control Head

Lower Backstay Insulator

Upper Backstay Insulator

Antenna Tuner (to adjust antenna length for selected frequency)

Ready To Go

This was a very productive week for us. We are expecting Windsong to arrive next week, and then we will cross to the Bahamas at the first weather window, so we need to bring our projects and provisioning to a conclusion. We finished the cockpit enclosure, and as reported in our last post also finished the SSB radio installation. On Thursday, we rented a car for two days. Our solar panels, which had been on back order since October, finally came in. The manufacturer, Kyocera, had a huge contract for which they diverted production to fulfill, creating a backlog of orders for the panel size we needed. The panels were in Fort Lauderdale, so we saved the shipping cost by picking them up there. This also had an unexpected benefit of earning us a Florida solar energy credit. These two refunds were about twice the cost of the car rental. We also picked up our life raft, which is now good for another three years. We made a major provisioning trip to Super Walmart and also had a propane tank filled. We are now ready to go, or at least we think we are. Friday afternoon, with our work done, we went to visit Jupiter Lighthouse. We had passed the lighthouse at Jupiter Inlet, but hardly took notice, as it is a tricky area. The Gulf Stream is only four miles offshore in this area, so the waters are a brilliant blue, having been carried north from the Gulf of Mexico. The lighthouse is on Coast Guard property, so all the tours are guided, which is great since they provide a lot of history and point out other items of interest. We had a very unexpected surprise while at the light. Just at that moment, Jock's Lodge was passing by. We had not seen them since before Christmas. We got some good pictures of their boat from high atop the lighthouse. By evening, Star Shadow and Jock's Lodge were again anchored with us. We had made the decision to pass on the Exumas this year and visit the Abacos (northern Bahamas), and Windsong had agreed and will join us. As it turns out, Jock's Lodge is doing the same, so the old gang will be back together again. Star Shadow will be moving on down to Fort Lauderdale later in the week. Larry and daughter Claire are aboard. Janet and son Graham are back in Canada for surgery on Graham's ear. They will be returning in another week or so and will fly into Fort Lauderdale.

Jupiter Light

Long Distance Communication

We have finished our Marine Single Sideband (SSB) radio installation. We had everything in place except for the antenna. The antenna in our installation is one of our back stays. After the rigger inserted insulators, the middle part of the back stay, now isolated from the rest of the boat, is a long wire antenna. It took a few days of experimenting and tweaking, but we are up and running. This radio is designed for long-distance communications. Our VHF marine radio is only good for about 25 miles or so. The SSB radio is good for communications for hundreds and thousands of miles. Once we leave coastal waters, we will depend more on this radio for weather reports and to talk with other boats. We are also set up to send emails over this radio. This update to the blog was made using the SSB radio. We have had good success connecting to a radio near Dallas, Texas. I normally update the blog directly on the internet, but we are expecting we will lose internet access in some areas. We also transmit our position with each connection. We cannot attach files or pictures to our email, so the next post will include pictures of the radio installation.

General Delivery

We had our mail sent, the first since early December. Only main post offices will accept 'General Delivery,' and in this area, the only main post office is West Palm Beach, near the airport and not particularly close to our location. To make sure it was at the post office and not waste a trip, we paid for tracking, and we were notified it was delivered. We decided to drop our back stay at the riggers and then go on to the post office, plotting out our bus routes, which would require three buses and two transfers in each direction. The closest bus route to the rigger was on the wrong side of I95 so we had to get off either before or after the street we wanted to find a way under or over I95. We got off before and began what we thought would be about a one-mile walk. After going under I95 we turned and started working our way toward our destination, but soon found nothing but dead ends in a residential neighborhood. We asked a resident who was coming out to her car how to get through, and she informed us that there is a canal between here and there, and we would have to go back around, which would be probably three or four miles. The good news is that she offered and we accepted a ride right to the riggers ' front door. By the way, this whole time, on buses, walking, and car rides, we were carrying the back stay with us. Having dropped the back stay off, we were back on another bus and off to the post office. All was going well until they went looking for our package, reporting back that it was not there. I said this tracking number indicates that it is. They entered it in their system, decided they should look again, and returned with our package. We will always pay for the tracking after this experience. Three more bus rides and we were home in time for dinner, having started our journey right after breakfast. We are getting to see a lot of the area and becoming somewhat familiar with it by doing these excursions. In our package were all of our Christmas cards and letters, so we had a very enjoyable evening.

Happy New Year

We have been spending a lot of time aboard, so on New Year's Eve, we decided to get off the boat for most of the day. We walked to an area that has several malls in close proximity to each other and wandered the malls, went out to lunch, and took in a movie. We stayed in for the evening, but had a great location to watch the fireworks at midnight put on by West Palm Beach. To us, it felt more like Independence Day than New Year's. The temperatures here have been running a little above normal, so for us on the water, the evenings are still quite mild in the low 70's. The sounds of the parties carried across the water, and of course, at midnight, there was the blare of boat horns. Our landing for the dinghy here is a very small sandy beach next to the roadway. No matter how careful we are, we wind up with sand everywhere. We are still busy, but very near the end of building our enclosure for the cockpit. We had to order some more material, which should be here next week.