Time off

A dusting of snow overnight, but the skies are already clear and the roads look to be in good shape.  My first "furlough" day ever.  It will go down on my time card at the office as 8.0 hours/UT.  The UT is "unpaid time".  The economy has hit home as we all are being furloughed for five days spread throughout the year.  Better than being laid off for sure.  Two of those days fall in the time periods for my spring and fall trips, so they give me a little more time to explore.  Otherwise I just have to tighten the belt.

That's Bruce in the photo, we were anchored off a sandy shoal near Beaufort.  It's either Bird Shoal or Horse Island, hard to tell from my chart.  It was a beautiful place.  I did talk to Bruce the other night.  In fact we video-conference on Skype.  It worked well.  He getting his flight reservations worked out for the spring sail, plus we talked about food and equipment.  He says his bivy has shipped which is good as I heard that they were hard to get a hold of for a while.   He also says he can make the fall sail.  That will be a sail up the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay with a stop in at St. Michaels for the annual Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival.

I had a birthday over the weekend and the girls came through with a nice gift card for books and some cash for equipment/supplies.  I'll probably be over at Bass Pro Shops soon to use the cash on technical clothing they sell for fishing -- it works great for sailing too.