Log Entry - Wednesday, Jan 18, 2006

Sailboat | Crew | Log | Route | Track

Final Preparation New cabinet handles Tick-O-Matic Laundromat Danny Little at Bermuda Harbor Radio BHR built on top for Fort George! I was supposed to go the Dockyards (an historic English fort) today, but my sense of duty kept me close to home. Looks like it is really going to happen. The crew arrives tomorrow, and the weather is A-OK. I am getting daily updates from my son-in-law, Jeremy, which are now being posted on the log page of the web. In addition, The Bermuda Weather Service (BWS) offers free consultations. I spoke to Lou last week and Ian tonight. Everything looks good for a Friday departure. Thank goodness. I will buy the remainder of the food Thursday afternoon. Friday morning we will fill the fuel and water tanks, clear customs, and head for the Atlantic Ocean. I spent today making sure the boat was ready. I cleaned and sorted through the lockers, installed some new hooks, and replaced two broken cabinet handles in the galley. I have included a photo of the new handles so my father could see them. I made them while I was visiting my parents in Minnesota the week before I left for Bermuda. Dad, they work great, actually better than the original ones. I also put up a solar power cockpit light – very cool. It is nothing more than a stainless-steel garden light with a special mount. Unfortunately, while I as installing it, I dropped by Phillips screwdriver. I didn't think much about it until I looked down say a set of concentric rings in the water from were it disappeared into the abyss. It's a good idea to connect your tools to your body with a lanyard. The second photo is the Laundromat where I washed last week’s dirty clothes. It's clean sheets tonight. The remaining two photos are from Bermuda Harbor Radio (BHR) which is a government organization and performs many of the same functions performed by the US Coast Guard. They coordinate all search and rescue operations and are responsible for registering all Bermuda EPIRBS (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons) carried by ships/boats in case they sink or have an emergency. Full Circle has an EPIRB registered with the US Coast Guard. All boats entering and leaving Bermuda waters are required to report in with BHR. They processes approximately 1200 yachts per year, of course, not many at this time of year. I mentioned that BHR was like a fortress. This photo shows the moat left from the original fort and the bridge used to enter. It is the oddest thing to see this antenna farm sitting on top of an eighteenth century fort. You can't tell it from the photo, but that moat is six stories deep! Hey folks, how about some emails. You know everything about me, and I know nothing about you. Did I scare you off by telling you I had a slow communication line? Well I do, but any text email is fine, just don’t send photos. If you want to send a photo, you can send it too my regular focusware address, which I occasionally check when I have a fast connection at an Internet café. I would like to know who is reading the log as well as what is going on in your life. Feel free to ask questions or ask for additional information about something. My email address on the boat is fullcircle-at-kellyworld-dot-com I have written the email address like this to avoid having web-bots find my email and start sending spam. Just substitute @ for at and . for dot. I don’t know if you know it, but the same kind of programs that index the web like google also scan the Internet for email addresses so they can send junk email. They scan for at-signs and periods in the form of email addresses. The above format won’t fool all the programs, but it should fool most of them. I check for fullcircle email every day. I only look at focusware email when I have a high speed connection. By the way, while I was at BWS tonight I got some data from last weekends storm. They reported numerous hours with sustained winds above 40 knots and gusts above 50 knots. Have you every tried to haul a mattress or a piece of plywood on top of your car driving 57 miles per hour? Maybe now you get the idea. Remember, a nautical mile is 1.15 times a land mile. Knots are nautical miles per hour and are 1.15 times regular miles per hour. I finally got my watch converted to Atlantic Standard time. It was not a simple process since it automatidally sets itself by a radio signal from the atomic clock in Colorado, and it can't received the signal here. I was dumbfounded until I found the instructions on the internet. It was magic! I finished The Sea Wolf, by Jack London. What a marvelous writter. He is a genius with words. Did you know that by 1913, he was the highest-paid, best-known, and most popular writter in world. It was another bonus day: four photos Previous | Next