DETACHING THE DOCK VELCRO

A lot has happened since the last post. Elaine got her cast off and fitted with a "walking boot," we got the house buttoned up, spent ALL of Saturday getting from the West Coast to the East Coast and are busy with last minute things getting ready to leave the dock soon.

It's a funny thing with boats, but the longer they stay at a dock, the harder it is to get them away from it. People talk about "dock velcro" growing between the boat and the dock, so if you don't break that bond on a regular basis, you may never get away. Well, it looks like we will be ready to take off on Wednesday morning, with our first stop probably being Vero Beach. We actually would be able to go now, but, at the last minute, I ordered a cell phone amplifier for the boat and it is not scheduled to be delivered until Tuesday afternoon.

Cell coverage is pretty good all along the Eastern seaboard, but there are many areas with weak signals and some with no signal. When we were cruising south from Annapolis a couple of years ago we stayed in touch pretty well until we hit Georgia where we lost all cell contact. Ironically, I hear that the coverage has gotten worse over the past year or two since the telecommunication companies have upgraded and replaced their towers. There are more land-based towers, and perhaps better land-based coverage, but the range of each tower has been reduced. The customers they are trying to please are their  land customers, so the boaters get the worst part of this deal. The cell amplifier should increase the signal strength up to 50X, and since we are depending on a cell-based signal for internet service I figured it would be worthwhile.

Our "To Do" list is getting shorter and shorter. We did a grocery run to stock up the galley, a run to the liquor store for those essential "Dark and Stormy" elements, replaced the ship's clock battery and checked out all the systems on board to make sure everything worked. Other than waiting for the amplifier, we are down to just a couple of things left to do. I've been working on the outboard motor for the dinghy today and at least have it running, although it doesn't idle well. I had to clean the fuel system of a water/gas mixture, and I may consider disassembling the carburetor tomorrow to make sure there's no water in it. The last thing we will do is fill up IMPROV's fuel tanks on the way out of town. We haven't spent any time cleaning the exterior of the boat, but the torrential rains have helped a bit. I figure we can clean along the way.

I got a phone call from the oncologist who ran the investigational drug trial I participated in. Apparently the results of the trial hit the major news outlets today. The results of the trial were quite impressive and he wanted to know if I would consent to an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, representing the 22% of patients who had complete response with the drugs. We'll see if the logistics work out...