I'm amused and flattered at the amount of space our (well, of course,
my, as Lydia doesn't post nor write about this sort of thing,
preferring the Sunsets and Animals side of our travels) activities has
generated here.

As a long-term bother to this group (asking questions when I'm not
sure, including more than once, looking for clarification, and,
occasionally, when I've been there, done that, posting some solutions
I've found effective to others' queries), I've grown accustomed to
being told that it can't be done, or that I'll kill myself and any
around me, so I take those with a grain of salt. The boat name - you'd
have to go back those more-than-10 years to understand fully -
suggests the former is inaccurate, and, with the grace of God (or to
whomever you may direct your thanks for your good fortune), nobody's
been hurt (including ourselves), let alone killed as a result of our
learning curve. We're diligently and assiduously (Lydia sez nobody
uses that in regular conversation, but I do) working on making the
latter true until we die.

In the meantime, sitting here at anchor in front of Belhaven NC, I
type while I also look at the screen, a luxury (see prior
discussions), and don't have to maintain a 360 scan every minute or
two, nor look at the instruments or gauges (more on why the trimetric
isn't among my get-up-and-look-every-couple-minutes any more, in a
future post). I don't enjoy the ditch, at all, other than the neat
places and people we get to see, so look forward to getting outside
again. Until then, we'll continue to motor a lot, putting more time
on the engine than I'd normally (recall "normal" isn't, until it's
happened a lot, so that remains to be seen) do in a year, each week,
sailing being a rarity forced either by environment (canal, e.g.) or
weather (dead calm, as has been the case mostly, other than yesterday
afternoon in the Pungo, where we had a lovely sail here). Second oil
change approaches, e.g., on this trip alone.

So, stay tuned. Things are coming into place nicely, and, amazing to
me, we've not yet even cleaned the slime off the bottom, let alone
polished the keel, something we'd expected based on the other horror
stories of the ICW. Perhaps my dual redundancy of hard charts and a
working chartplotter and radar contribute - I don't know - but staying
between the reds and greens has been all that's been required so far.

So, y'all continue to berate us, we don't mind (really - it makes for
entertaining discussion/reading, as Roger has noted in his dock
incident, and occasionally we get a nugget of useful info rather than
just red ears), and where merited, I'll come back on them with
clarification. And, in case you're wondering, I don't even look twice
about carrying my wife's purse when she needs me to, so I'm not
uncomfortable in my own skin. And, as noted previously, it's pretty
crispy-crusted, so well insulated :{))

More later on the continuing saga, but it's starting to get boring.
Not that I crave crisis - but I do enjoy troubleshooting, and problem
resolution. However, boring is nice, currently :{))

L8R

Skip

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
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(and)
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