Off the freighter, back in Washington and on a nice vacation. I'll be up
visiting Ole Thom in a week after doing some needed catch up on the business
side of life plus checking progress on the boat upgrade/refit. Then back
out for another four months.

Managed to keep busy during the off watches (besides 1100 hours of overtime
in seven months!) The long term project is the dictionary/glossary and it's
now up to 8,000 plus entries and no end in sight. Did some training on some
side aspects of celestial navigation such as determining sunset/sunrise,
checking compass accuracy, amplitude and the like plus learning enough of HO
229 to pass the coasties examination. The bigger news is I submitted an
article to Lats and Atts and it was accepted. Concerns the interplay
between small craft and large vessels in SOLAS and COLREGS situations. A lot
of the content, after some careful research, stemmed from discussions on
this very newsgroup.

In the works is emergency navigation for sailing folk. Should get me
through the next voyage.

Another good thing I used from this group and two others is refit/upgrade
ideas for Se Lange. The yard is busy deciphering my wish list and
converting it into a work plan and budget but guaranteed a lot of what we've
discussed is going to be part of the project.

So for that . . .all you diehard proponents and opponents of just about
everything . . .THANK YOU!

Michael