"Roger Long" wrote in
:

Sheesh. It's raining so hard here I don't even want to go down to the
boat to see if the leak around the lazarette hatch hinges onto the
autopilot keypad is fixed. So, I decided to try the alternate
newsgroup readers sooner than I though I would get to them. Sorry for
the drama. I didn't realize that all I had to do was enter their
addresses into Outlook Express and they would come up just like they
used to on TW. I thought they would be sites I had to go to
separately and log in. If I'd known who easy it was, I wouldn't even
have mentioned it.


Me, too! I don't think anyone missed me for a few days. I got an
invite to sail up to Charleston from West Palm Beach in a Jeanneau 40DS
one of the guys on the dock bought.

Nice boat....quite fast, but we were nearly unloaded...only one tool
box!...(c;

The previous owner said the Yanmar was losing coolant in its heat
exchanger, but I fixed that by fishing around in the damned coolant
recovery tank until I found the damned stupid piece of hose Yanmar uses
for a pickup tube that stupidly mounts to the CAP of the little plastic
tank.

We had some rough weather but she's got roller furling main and genoa
all the way back to the cockpit....first class. We sailed her right up
to the marina. Only added 1.9 hours to the engine trying to get out of
"Manatee Country".

With 4 aboard, we even got some sleep and ate better than
sandwiches.....

As usual, my seasickness only lasted about 6 hours out of initial
port....(c; It had been a while since I was offshore for any length of
time. After that I'm fine for weeks.....

It was a quicker trip than I wanted because the other guys had to get
back to work...(sigh) Turning to port into Charleston posed a problem
with me resetting the autopilot to 094 true, trying in vain, to bring
her to stbd for the run to Bermuda....(c;

We took Amtrak to West Palm where the seller met us. The tracks from
Charleston to West Palm jerk you back and forth something awful all
warped up like they are. How awful. People in the ends of the cars
really got jerked around.... At least they didn't bitch about our extra
sailing "luggage". It wouldn't have fit in a minivan...(c;

We shoulda gone to Bermuda. We had plenty of beer aboard!

Dammit....

US Passports sure are getting expensive....