where are you?

I've started getting "ok" SPOT messages from Bruce. He is off on a trip somewhere in the southwest. Looks like he is trying to balance out his life. To counter act his week aboard Spartina he is spending a week in what looks to be desert. The SPOT message map below shows him somewhere north of Las Vegas. He'll get back home just a couple of days before hopping on a plane to come back to the east coast for our trip. That is better than last fall when he flew in directly from a three week African safari for the Crab House 150.

The days seem to be flying by. I thought I had everything ready to go but now I find myself counting breakfast bars, cups of fruit (mandarin oranges, tropical fruit and mixed fruit with cherries are the favorites), instant mashed potatoes and boil-in-the-bag rice. The cups of fruit I consider to be a luxury. They are heavy and take up space (out of six gallon jars of food they will fill two of them). But we have them with every meal. Breakfast is a breakfast bar and cup of fruit. Lunch is tuna salad, crackers and a cup of fruit. Dinner includes whatever Bruce wants to cook on the coleman stove and a cup of fruit for dessert. On long hot days that cool, sugary syrup tastes really good.

And of course I'm looking over the charts still. On day one we'll sail from Potters Marine to a creek of the ICW. On the way we'll pass by Indian Island on the Pamlico River. That day's sail is just ten miles. If we are making good time we might stop to visit Indian Island.

On day four we head east fom Oriental to Core Sound by way of some canals behind Cedar Island. My plan was to anchor in Thorofare Bay. But now that I look at it I would like to make it further towards the south and reach The Swash. That would give us a shorter trip the following day to Cape Lookout Bight, more time to explore the beaches and dunes out on the Bight. It would be an extra eight or ten miles of traveling that day, but if weather is good we should be able to make it.

steve