not today

There will be no notes from sailing in the notebook today.  The forecast, as of a few days ago, had called for sunny and mid-60's with breeze of 9 or 10 mph.  Instead, I wake to grey skies, periods of heavy rains and blustery winds.

I do have plenty of chores that will keep me busy as I gripe about the bad weather and my bad timing - Why did I have to pick today as my comp day off?

I will catch up on some blog reading as the crew of Mosquito has rested enough so that they can post the last few days of their Florida circumnavigation.  You can read about it here.  Below you see Dawn and Alan at the finish line collecting their awards of shark teeth, a gator took and a whale tail carving - not the usual sort of fare seen in a trophy case, but it was not the usual sort of event.

And Melonseed sailor Mike Wick has posted an article here about sailing with Kevin MacDonald on Kevin's Marshcat, below, from Key West to the Dry Tortugas.  Mike tells me that the park service crew at the Dry Tortugas said that the Marshcat was the smallest sailboat to make the 70 trip from Key West in recent memory.  Good for them.  Someday I would like to make that trip in Spartina.  What do you say, Bruce??

I'm also following Webb Chiles as he readies his new, smaller sailboat Gannett for the coming season of sailing on Lake Michigan.  He sailed the boat, a Moore 24, a little last summer.  I expect he'll be out quite a bit this summer, sailing with the thought of having Gannet on an ocean somewhere soon.

As for myself, bits of supplies are trickling in.  A stack of Rite in the Rain notebooks, no. 393, arrived in the mail.  They are hard to find locally so I ordered these through Amazon, enough blank pages for me to jot down notes, both daysailing and cruising, for the next year or two.

A handful of new batteries arrived for the Pentax Optio W90.  I have a total of six, enough to get me through a good trip.  My preference would be to buy a new, better camera - but I cannot find one that I like.  These batteries will serve as a band aid to get me through the year and hopefully a better camera will emerge by then.  (In the meantime, though, there may be evidence that the Optio W90 is not as bad of a camera as I thought -- more on that later).

steve