Okay, so maybe not Wednesday

Change of plan!  We are now leaving Friday morning, July 3.  So all of you guys scrambling for a last bit of contact with us while we are on dry land can take it down a notch, at least until Thursday night… Leaving four days later than planned isn’t so bad…

Captain Richard has joined our crew!  He has recovered from crewing on the first boat to arrive in the Azores during the ARC Europe — another Leopard 48!  He was very brave walking onto our boat, which is still a mess since Greg disemboweled it a couple of days ago, electrically-speaking.  Of course, after Richard was aboard for a few hours it was back again to Home Depot for more bins.  This is after Greg returned a bunch of bins to them a few days ago, as it was deemed they were too clunky to fit anywhere.  However, this time the reason for more bins was a good one: “Just fill the port forepeak with paper towels?  Bah!  This boat was built to carry 6000 pounds!”  Well there you have it.  Now that is something Mel can work with!  Yes, so far Mel has just collected two opinions on the storage problem.  Ideally, one would have a third opinion settle matters.  But as a doctor she learned a trick: when you have a complex patient and are wondering what to do to treat him/her, seek the opinions of other doctors, but stop once you find someone (you respect) that agrees with you!  Of course, what Richard said sounded more like a fact…

Richard has already installed our water filter and registered his opinion about our Watt & Sea hydro-generator, which is off to a rocky start anyway.  Yes, we know Richard, you want to throw it in the drink.  Just you wait until Greg fixes its plug, its hinge, its support line…

Things are going better regarding the décor.  In fact, our dinghy is officially named!  Susie was Calvin’s nemesis in Calvin & Hobbes.  Since we decided not to name the boat Hobbes, we still wanted to tip our hat to Bill Watterson with our dink name.  I conceive of Susie as The Amazing Marvin’s noble assistant who keeps everything running in the background while he records his observations in his travel journal.  However, she likes to mess with him.  Because stuffy people are fun to mess with.

Finally, I figured out a way to email my posts using a WordPress plugin called Jetpack.  So I will try to update the blog with brief posts via our sat phone while at sea.  Please don’t panic, though, if you don’t see a post one day.  One should not rely on anything coming from the middle of the ocean.  Just do what normal people would do in that situation: scan the internet news services for the article, “Former Mayo Clinic doctor, driven from her job by excessive paperwork, lost at sea.  Have the insurance companies gone too far?”