PASSAGEMAKER SEMINAR, HAMPTON, VIRGINIA:  4/1/01 thru 4/8/01
Fred finished installing the cockpit speakers.  And they sound great.  He was sure glad to have that project done.  Thursday we took off for Hampton Virginia to attend an Offshore Passagemaker Seminar.  Its sponsored by West Marine, hosted by Steve Black and Hal Suton.  We arrived a little early, so we stopped in Virginia beach.  I've never been there before and I can't say that I'm anxious to go back.  The beach was nice, but I wasn't too impressed with the streets.  The buildings were kinda of run down looking and there was nothing special in the way of stops....unless you wanted a tee shirt.   Hardly any restraunts were open - guess it was just a little too early in the season.  But down the road we did manage to find a great Mexican place.  Great food and margaritas!

The seminar started Friday morning in Hampton - the same location where the Bermuda annd Carribean 1500 rallys leave from.  The room for the seminar was right on the water so we could see everyone's boats.  It was a great class.  Over the three full days we covered areas such as provisioning, dealing with medical emergencies, the gulf stream, weather, safety at sea, communications, email, diesel engines, picking your crew, heavy weather sailing, sail trim and inventory needed and lots more.  I even had a chance to deploy a life raft.  Pretty neat.   We met lots of great people there and exchanged numbers and emails.  Hopefully we'll run into them again in our travels up the coast and beyond.  One of the folks there, Harry, also owns a Caliber, so we shared a lot of ideas with him and his friend John over a delicious dinner at Good Fellas.
 

MOREHEAD CITY, NORTH CAROLINA:  4/9/01 thru 4/13/01
Arrived back in Morehead City.  The bimini and dodger went on this week.  YEA!   Looks great.  Its starting to look like a real cruising boat.  Not much left to do at the boat yard, so we moved over to the Morehead Yacht Club where John found us a slip to use for a couple weeks.   Looks like a safe place to leave the boat while we go back to Cincinnati.  We'll especially miss Friday nights at the boat yard and all the fun people there.
 

CINCINNATI, OHIO:  4/14/01 thru 4/26/01
Fred had several meetings he had to attend in Cincinnati, so I decided to join him to get my family and friend fix.  We left Saturday and drove our truck back since we hadn't sold it yet while in NC.  Trip home was beautiful.  Redbuds and dogwoods in bloom - took about 11 hours.   My fiirst reaction when I saw our home was WOW, this is a castle.  After living in a small space for the past three months, its amazing how big everything looked - especially my kitchen.  I enjoyed the long showers and flushing toilets the most!!  We had a great time while home and managed to catch up with a lot of our friends and family.   We didn't realize just how much we missed everyone until we saw them again.  I'm glad I came along with Fred.    Thursday came and it was time to head back south.   It was hard saying goodbye to everyone, but we're both anxious to get to the boat and start our journey up the coast.  We managed to sell the truck while in Cincinnati to Jason - who worked with Fred.  We were very happy to sell it to Jason vs. having to sell it to a dealer.  So we rented a car from National and started our journey back Thursday night around 7:00pm - drove straight thru and arrived in Morehead City around 7:00am Friday.
 

MOREHEAD YACHT CLUB, NORTH CAROLINA:  4/27/01 thru 4/29/01
We arrived at the boat early Friday morning.  Since we only had the rental car til 5:00pm, we tried to make the most of it.  We did a big provisioning trip to the local IGA.  That combined with all the food I bought while back in Cincinnati sure should hold us for a while.  I see what the problem might be though -- its finding it!  We have food everywhere...really need to organize it better.  But no time right now.  Made a stop at the Town Creek Marina - local Yanmar dealer - to stock up on some oil, filters and spare parts.  Then Fred left with the car to head back to the New Bern airport to drop it off and get a taxi back to the boat.   Its a scarey feeling knowing that you no longer have a car.  Suddenly things like going to the grocery, doing laundry, running to West Marine, became more complicated.  This will surely take some getting used to.  Its Friday now and we're hoping to be on our way Sunday morning.

Uh,oh - while storing the stuff on the boat, we noticed water in the starboard locker and in the forward head.  So it would appear we have a couple leaks.  Its enough to worry about, so we'll be sticking around a couple more days until we can find out where the water is coming from so we can get them fixed before leaving.  Apparently they had tremendous winds/rain and a close encounter with a tornado while we were gone.  Other than the leaks, our boat appears to be fine.

Saturday we had Bill & Ginny over to the boat for lunch.  We were scheduled to go sailing, but due to weather and the fact someone was coming over to look at the leaks on our boat, we had to reschedule the sail.  Saturday night there was a big bash at the Yacht Club and  John, our broker, invited us to attend.  It was a lot of fun and meant lots of people from the club.  The Beaufort Grocery catered the dinner.  Entertainment was the band XAVIER, Arlo Guthrie's back-up band.  Arlo's son, ABE, plays the keyboard in the band - he's Woody Guthrie's grandson.  Kitty West sang along with the band as well.  They sounded great.

Sunday we spent the day spraying the boat in hopes of finding where the leaks are coming from.  Good news is we were successful.  The one in the starboard sliding locker was coming from a screw hole in the toe rail.  It appears the hole was in error and whoever did it, forgot to fill it in with a screw or epoxy.  The one in the forward head was harder to find.  We did find one screw in the toe rail on the port side that they had forgot to put bedding compound around.  But we're not sure that's the only one.  We'll be watching during the next rain.  But for now, that's all our spraying of the boat could find.    Marty is coming Monday to fix the leaks.  We did manage to have some fun today - blew up the dingy for the first time.   Even took pictures along the way so we'll know how to fold it up and get it back in its case again.  After we get the leaks fixed Monday, maybe we can be on our way!