Pensacola FL Sailing Blog – sailingnightwatch

It is getting close and thing have been busy. I have another part time job in retail, which started the day before Thanksgiving, so I got to participate in Black Friday. That was good. The hours I work are just right, so thing are good. I had been slowly going nuts sitting on the boat while all it does outside is rain.

The other thing I have been doing, especially last week is studying for my General License as a Ham. Thursday night I passed. WAHOOOO! I do not think I have ever done so much memorizing and not knowing what I was doing. The electronics still are going over my head, but now I am challenged to learn about them. I am working at Radio Shack, and all those little resistors, diodes, capacitors, etc. are there waiting for me to build stuff. There are always articles in the ARRL magazine about things you can make. After Christmas, I will start. Have to get on there site and find something simple to start with.

The Granddaughter, and her parents dropped in the other night and had dinner. It was great, we got to show her all the Christmas decorations and the wrapped packages under the tree. She was good, we allowed her to touch the ornaments, and not grab them. She also left the presents alone. She does not have any decorations at her house because of their Snow Bird status. There is only so much you can stuff in a SUV for 7 months. It will be interesting to see if next year she remembers all this goings on for the holidays.

Yesterday was the day. I had the outside lights out before breakfast and knew 1-1/2 strings of the line that goes to the top of the masts did not work. The lines are 12 years old and at various times part of them go on and off by themselves. It was time to get new lights. Off to Lowes.

I tie a heave string along the light strings of lights to take some of the pressure off the electric wires. That is good for a couple hours of boredom. Then it is up and down with the string getting the lights aligned between the masts. Luck. It only took three raising and lowering to get it right.

More luck, the lights and holly I put around the gate worked the first time. The two old strings that worked I used to rap the booms. It anything fails on them, they can be taken off in 5 minutes and be in the trash. Plugged it all in and the circuit breaker on the boat held and the circuit breaker for the pier held. Merry Christmas to me.

The wife was busy doing her beautiful decorating of the inside. She had equally good lock and we only had to replace one short string of lights in her decorations. After 3 trips to Lowes, I was getting to know the check out people on a first name bases.

It is a good thing this is the beginning of the season and not as bad as the ending when you have to get that stuff all stuffed back into the boxes and back into storage. I try to keep my “Baa Humbugs” to that fateful day.

There was not a lot of choices this year since I got the chart plotter last year and the auto pilot goes with the system. I therefore put the bucks down yesterday for the Fruno auto pilot. We are going to use the old hydraulic pump and see how that works. That saves about $500.00. Fruno had a price increase last spring, even with a world wide recession going on. I figured they would have discounted that away. Well not much. I did get a little discount, but not much. They will be putting it in sometime before Christmas, they say. I am working part time again and matched with the low tides at this time could be a tough for finding a time to test the system. I know what are you doing at 2 am. We will cross that bridge when we get to it.

Check the list and see who has been naughty or nice. Auto pilot, wind generator, solar panels, generator, water maker. Well, after getting an email from Boater’s World with a nice price reduction on the auto pilot I need, I contacted my local supplier and asked for a match. Fruno does not discount suppliers individually. That is why you do not see them at West. Therefore, the lower price has to be either a loss leader or an across the board price reduction. I do not care, I just want the lower price. We are now on our third round of emails while I wait for my local man to get right. Time will tell.