Adventures of Luck of a Fool: July 7-15, 2015 work and flight to MN

Work, Work, Work
Wednesday, I was the net controller for our cruiser’s net. It went well and was actually kind of fun. Dave made it more interesting. He had our hand held VHF radio on the dock and he said he was Rico and advertised a couple things that Ricardo had for sale. You never know what to expect from him.

Friday we finally had a diesel mechanic come to the boat. Since there wasn’t much room for me to do anything, I went to lunch with another boater. Then she dropped me off at the church rummage sale set up. I had a couple things to deliver and decided to stay for the afternoon to help with their set up. It was nice meeting more people from the church. The only think I bought was about 6 chick flick DVD’s.

We were both hot and tired tonight, so we went out with another couple for pizza, since they offered to drive. This couple have a fig tree and Amy brought me about a dozen figs. I had tried them on July 4th and loved them. She also returned my book, Changing Course. It is a compilation of interviews with women making the decision to live on a boat. Now she thinks she is ready to move aboard. Her husband thanked me.

Saturday
Dave took off the solar panels today. So far they are in the cock pit. But they’ll come inside when we leave. I used my new vacuum sealer to seal several bags of food that we will leave on the boat while we are gone. I even read where you can use it to seal batteries that we put in our “ditch bag”. And you can put ice cubes in a bag and seal it. Then you can either keep them frozen and use as ice packs. Or drink the water at some point. We have commercially sealed bags of water in our ditch bag. But that was a cool idea.

I ended up playing dominoes in the yacht club with 6 other boaters. I am getting my “social time fix” while we are here.

Sunday
Rode bicycle to church again.
Continuing to clean, fill, and fix everything on the boat. You don’t want water coming in anywhere if there is a storm while we are gone. And you don’t want anything blowing away. Dave was putting the finishing touch on some project that needed one more thing from the hardware store, which he goes to by bike.

Monday
All the canvas came off of the boat today. It sure looks strange. Dave worked on getting the dehumidifier ready to run while we are gone. He cleaned the raw water filters to be sure they would work properly.   He also had to clean a one way valve that had gotten rusty crusty from our old air conditioner and water wasn’t draining as it should. Always something else when you think you are on track.
I defrosted our freezer today. We plan to leave the refrigerator/freezer off while we are gone. Then laundry for me and packing. While I was out of the boat, Dave brought the solar panels into the boat and stored them in our aft cabin.

Tuesday
Last minute projects and packing and showers. Our Brazilian friend, Ricardo, is going to check on our boat while we are gone. So he came to the boat to see what we had running-dehumidifier as part of our air conditioning unit and a dehumidifier unit sitting on the galley counter that will drain into the sink. And we gave him any food we had left in the refrigerator/freezer.

Our boat neighbors, Jim and Maryann, offered to give us a ride to the airport. It’s probably 20-30 minutes from here. They are leaving for France tomorrow to look at sailboats. They want to travel the canals in France by boat. They have their sailboat for sale.   So many different options.

We flew to Minneapolis through Atlanta. Our flight to Mpls left late. So instead of arriving in Mpls at 9:15, we arrived at 11:00 pm. After picking up our rental car, it was about an hour drive to Dave’s mom’s in LeSueur, MN. She had fresh corn on the cob waiting for us. Even though it was late, we loved it.

Wednesday
We had a nice day of relaxing at Dave's mom's place. She had a new car, so we went for a drive around town. Enjoyed home cooked meals.