Thursday, 6 April 2017 - A cold front is supposed to move through here tomorrow, so I thought I'd better buy groceries today. I walked to the grocery store trailing my hand cart and three milk crates, realized that I'd forgotten my phone with the grocery list in it, bought all the groceries that I could remember, and went outside to load the crates, which I had left locked to a "No Parking" sign. As I started to load the crates, a woman pulled up in her car and asked where I was going with the groceries. I told her the marina and she said, "That's a long ways, if you'll wait while I go in to buy three small items, I'll drive you to the marina." How could I turn that down? By the time I got the bagged items packed in the crates, she was back and gave me a ride. If she'd been a boater from the marina, that wouldn't have surprise me, but she wasn't. She is a retired international flight attendant, and said she remembered having to schlep food back from grocery stores to her rooms all over the world and would have appreciated a ride, so she gave me one. Very nice and much appreciated by me.

Friday, 7 April - Remembering that I have a small canvas sail onboard that my parents had made, I wasn't even sure if it was a mainsail, or, maybe, a storm jib, so I decided to take a closer look at it. I dug it out of the forepeak locker, inspected it, measured it, and decided that it's probably too lightweight to serve much purpose on this boat. I'll see if I can sell it. I think it will be hard to find a new home for. Although it is well made, it is light weight and it's not as nice and fancy as most people would like to see on their boats nowadays.

Saturday, 8 April - Today's main job was to get the new, spare mainsail out of the forepeak storage locker and take it to shore, spread it out, and take some photographs of its details and full, spread-out surface. I'm getting better at removing and repacking its storage area. Getting it out only took 45 minutes today and re-storing it only an hour. Last time it took almost 3 hours to repack it. I paid a lot closer attention to how it was packed in there before removing it this time, plus I bundled it tighter this time before putting it away. I also took a couple of small child's lifejackets to the office and donated them to the cruisers group for people to use when the have visiting family with small children. While on shore I took advantage of the WiFi and updated all the apps on my iPhone, too.

Sunday, 9 April - I stayed onboard today, put the water I brought back to the boat yesterday in the tank, and took it easy, reading and finishing the book, "Life Of PI."

Monday, 10 April - I was probably a little premature changing the oil for my Honda auxiliary generator today. I had thought it was supposed to have the oil changed at 50 hours, and I thought I was probably late, but during the process, I needed to look up how many ounces of oil it holds and discovered that it not only holds 13 ounces, but that the oil needs to be changed only every 100 hours, so maybe I'm actually ahead of schedule.
                  Later, I went over to the Hurricane Bar to hear Fiddle Rock play and have some pizza for dinner. It had been awhile. Fiddle Rock is a duo, one guitar and one fiddle. They play a good mix of Beatles, Santana, Eagles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and others; mostly music someone my age would know the words to...and the pizza is good, too.
                  It was really beautiful coming back home to the boat; breezy, warm, and a full moon brightly lighting up the harbor with all the masthead anchor lights twinkling.

Tuesday, 11 April - The wind has really been blowing here lately, in fact I haven't had to start my engine or auxiliary generator in the last week and a half. The wind and solar generators have been keeping my batteries topped off beautifully. Not only that, but I've had the opportunity to turn off the wind generator at night and still keep the batteries fully charged by the end of each day. Unfortunately, I've had another problem. The water gets blown out of the harbor and I have been bumping the bottom in a certain spot near the channel where I am anchored at low tide. Today I finally decided to try setting a second anchor at 90° to my main anchor and pulling the boat to one side so that the boat can't reach that shallow sand bar. I'll probably find out how well it is working by tomorrow afternoon about 4:30 at the lower low tide of the day. The wind is predicted to stay out of the same direction, north to northeast, and continue to blow about 25 mph for the next several days. That's good. If the wind switches to southerly, it may overpower the little Danforth anchor I deployed. I was assuming the larger Bruce anchor is holding the main drag of the boat and that the smaller Danforth should merely need to keep it from veering to the port without nearly as much pull on it with the wind coming from the northeast. The boat seems to have really quit wandering from side to side like it was previously.

Wednesday, 12 April - Well, I'm really just killing a little time here waiting for my sail to be repaired, so I didn't get a lot done today. I did go ashore and try to find a very small grapnel, or grappling hook. I think it might be fun and useful to throw it overboard in some of these harbors and see what I drag up. I wouldn't be surprised to come up with some good chain, anchors, and no telling what else. I did find one at one of the four stores that I went to, but it was just a little more than I wanted to pay. I'll probably end up with it. It was missing one feature that I'd like and that is a ring on the bottom of the hooks that I can tie a second line to so that in case I get hooked on something that I can't pull up, I can pull the second line to release the hooks. I can probably figure out some way to accomplish that without the ring.
                  I did hear from the sail repair shop. He's just put in on his table to get started on it. There shouldn't be but a couple of hours of work to be done, so maybe I'll get it back tomorrow, but I'll believe it when I see it. I hope so.

Well, I guess I'd better get this out.

            Until next time.
                        "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!" - Hunter S. Thompson

                                          Rick