I've been to dreamland

Boy I was beat yesterday after being up 30 hours and wired tight from the offshore passage.

After dinner I went to bed at 8:30pm and slept non-stop till 4:30am. Longest stretch in years. I've conditioned myself to get up and look around 3 - 5 times a night when I'm on anchor. No problem because I can sleep on command and go right back to sleep. I never feel tired in the mornings. Last night I was dead to the world.

I went back to bed after a short inspection and then I entered dreamland. WOW what dreams -- all were nice none were scary. The most interesting was one were we were at party in West End Grand Bahama with Jim and Barb from Skat and many old friends from work of which some are dead now. I remember being at a table eating little Debbie Cake cookies, Karen showed up with a treat -- Hostess Cupcakes, then a waiter shows up with a large portion of Tirmasu dripping in honey. Oh boy I get to eat all this and Tirmasu too and wash it all down with Amaretto -- Jim said "that's too much sugar".

Other nice dreams but I can not divulge those details without getting in trouble.

Today was a low energy day. My bilge counter indicated that the pump ran three times during our offshore voyage. Water was coming in somewhere. I checked the stuffing boxes and sure enough the rudder stuffing box was wet and there was a trail of water coming from it. I tightened it. My prop shaft stuffing box was fine. It is supposed to drip a little and never drips and never runs hot so I don't touch it.

All the other equipment looked fine.

Kudos to the engine and fuel system that never clogged in all that rolling and the autopilot that did 99.9997% of the steering. Not bad for a couple of pieces of 24 year old equipment.

I cleaned the interior of the boat, updated the inventory log. and just relaxed.

Karen went to town and walked for a couple of hours but I hung on the boat and puttered around.

Dinner will be on the grill tonight. No one wants to socialize tonight but tomorrow the crews from Skat, Victoria Gaye and Temptation will take the town of Fernandina by storm!

Note to offshore cruisers: Turn your cell phones off when going more that 10 miles offshore. The phone will exhaust its battery pretty quick. Both our phones had dead batteries when we arrived here in Fernandina yesterday.

Was the offshore passage worth it? Well I met some cruisers who did come via the ICW and one who went out Savanna river after hearing several boats in Fields Cut calling Boat/US for tows. I think so. It would have taken 8 days on the ICW and lots of worrying and action through the low water areas. I'm glad we did it -- just wished it wasn't so rolly.