Wednesday, January 25, 2006

It has been raining quite steadily since Christmas, but every once in awhile the sun comes out and shines for a couple of hours, and like Barry says, you don’t have to shovel it. Last weekend we attended a seminar on provisioning your boat and we learned quite a few tricks of the trade. Most of it was pretty common sense, but there were hints about keeping food in the tropics and how to store stuff that I wouldn’t have figured out. I thought that putting things in baggies was sufficient, for example your flour and nuts and stuff, but this woman said you need to have stuff in plastic containers to keep out the critters (the thought of critters gives me the willies, but I guess they go with the territory)

At our fleet meeting last week we had a doctor come to talk to use about what kind of medical supplies you should have on board. She had some very practical answers for questions that were asked and good advice about how to treat everyday cuts and scrapes. She also talked about giving stitches, but only if there were wide gaping wounds, I told Barry that I would have no qualms about stitching up his wide gaping wounds, but I was not sure if I could handle him doing it to me. WIDE GAPING WOUNDS, WIDE GAPING WOUNDS I can imagine that image haunting my dreams. I have just finished outfitting our sail repair kit, so now I need to go to work on the medical supply kit.

This past weekend the rain let up so off we went for the weekend. It was lovely and warm with the sun beating down on us. We sailed up to Montaque Harbour and stayed over on Saturday night. We were headed back on Sunday and it was so warm I took off my floater jacket and pushed up my sleeves and suntanned for awhile. That is the first Jan. 15 that I have ever been able to suntan, what a treat!! I put up the staysail on the way back and we sailed Cat’s Paw as a cutter. It is a bit of pain to tack because you have to make sure the genoa gets around the second stay.

We are hoping to go to the Vancouver Boat Show. We are planning on busing over with a bunch of other Blue Water Cruisers. We are going to offer to man the Bluewater Cruising booth so that we get free tickets into the show. I feel like we would be posers at the booth, not actually having done any bluewater cruising yet but we do belong to the Association and we are making plans to go so what the hell, it’s worth a free pass. Hope all is well with all of you, keep in touch.