Hurricanes & Babble

I guess this hurricane season is upon us with full fury this year. We have been lucky thus far this season. We had gone to Panama City a couple days before Fay was due to make landfall so we could take care of adding more lines and bumpers to Tybee Time. Dirk also rolled up the Gib very tight and we even tied up the new sail cover securely. We have a public marina camera and this is one way we keep an eye on the boat. You get to take control over the camera for a short while and are able to direct it to your boat and zoom in. This is how I was able to watch the install of our new main sail and lazy bag system. So Fay came and went dumping about 4 days of rain on us. Yesterday Gustav passed to the west of us and we didn’t get even one drop of rain. I can’t say the same for my friends and family in and across the state of Louisiana. Fingers crossing I haven’t heard of any damage yet. Now we look to the Bahamas to see Hanna heading for our friends in Georgia. Then of course there is Ike and Josephine pulling up the rear. Wow…Soon this season will be over and summer will be quickly turning into fall. We find ourselves getting more and more anxious to leave. We are now officially under 300 days to go before our journey can begin. Sounds like a long time when you think about it, but thinking of all the things needing to be ordered, installed and done, it’s really not that long. Seeing as we live two hours from the boat it’s not like we have time during the week to attend to it, and most things are taken care of on the weekends. A few things left to research and purchase is a wind generator, and a solar panel. We have also been replacing our existing interior lights on the boat to LED with the ability to have red LED in the same housing makes it nice for night vision down below. Also the power usage on the LED lights is wonderful. Our main power hog right now is the refrigeration. The last owners tried insulating the box a little better but it still runs a lot. We have been also tossing around the idea of getting an Engel refrigerator/freezer. Doing research on them they look as if the power usage is minimal and I like the idea of being able to have my ice cubes for sun downers in the tropics. It will also give me a few more options for long term food storage. As time draws closer we have pulled and tossed a few things off the list that we thought we couldn't live without. Heck, it’s only a 40 foot boat, how much can we take. Plus I know that so many people have taken the same journey with a lot less and are just as happy, if not happier as there aren’t as many things to breakdown. On a different note I was given a book to read by a dock neighbor which is a nice read if anyone is interested. It’s MAIDEN VOYAGE written by Tania Aebi w/ Bernadette Brennan. It’s a story of an 18 year old female whose father basically gave her two options, go to school or sail around the world single-handed in 2 1/2 years. She chose sailing….Talking about what people can do without on a boat, wow. I find that I have not found too much these days to blog about. As weather gets cooler and the major projects begin anew I will be keeping in touch much better. I don't want to bore any readers as I would love for you all to continue following the blog from a land based life to one of life on the water. Uuuugh, I hate the waiting, I wanna go already......