Provisioning Day

Wednesday, March 9, 2005, Fort Lauderdale

Fort Lauderdale at night was as quiet as West Charlton. I was surprised. We woke refreshed, but greeted by cold, damp rainy weather. It was a drenching rain and it lasted all day. Oh well, we hadn’t planned to sail anyhow.

Aha! Al wasn’t perfect. The light in the head doesn’t work and that gives me a chance to get out my Fluke meter and tools to fix it. [Alas! After taking everything apart and using, all my engineering skills, it turned out to be a second switch that I forgot about.] Al’s record stands.

We spent most of the day doing errands and shopping. I had to mail the documentation papers to the USCG. That made me very nervous because I had to send the originals of signed and notarized documents that would be very hard to replace. I didn’t trust USPS so I sent them FedEx.

I went to Home Depot and bought a smoke/CO detector (the surveyor caught the lack of alarms). I also bought some hand tools more appropriate for the boat. We bought about $300 worth of groceries. When we stowed them away on the boat, they hardly made a dent in the food lockers. It’s easy to see how one could store more than six months provisions onboard.

After dinner it was time to relax, and the result was amusing. Libby and I both pounced on the can of Brasso we bought at Home Depot. We both had the idea of polishing the brass hurricane lamps that hung in the cabin. Fortunately there were two lamps and enough Brasso for us both of us, so we didn’t have to duke it out. Polishing brass is the perfect alternative to Direct TV.

I also found a beat up and corroded big brass bell. It will take us months to polish that. Life is good.

I’ll continue to write every day, but it’s likely to be a week or so before I post again. Hang tight.