Thank goodness, after almost 4 months I've found a method to post to my blog. I have not been able to connect to the editing/posting area of blogger since I changed my ISP in late April. I'm not sure why, but ACSonline will not allow me to load the editing page from blogger. I can access the published pages without a problem, but I am unable to edit for some reason. Blogger help has not been much assistance and neither has ACS. Fortunately I signed up for Google's Writely and can publish through this portal. Nice to be back in business, even if I haven't been able to do much sailing for the past couple of months.

The weather has been terrible for almost 6 weeks. Cold and rainy most of the time. Every day I have been off its been dreadful, cold, wet and either too windy or not any wind at all. But mostly just cold and wet. The temperatures have stalled in the low to mid 50s with the odd day getting up to 58 or 59.Likewise its been very grey with mostly only hints of sun late in the day or early in the morning. Today its partly cloudy with a cloud bank offshore to about 15 degrees off the horizon now at 7:30AM.

If the weather holds I plan to get the boat cleaned up and go out for a while late this morning. Its a mess, I've been puttering about working on the list of things to be accomplished. Most inside as the weather has not been conducive to exterior stuff. Will be nice to get out for awhile, even if I can't go anywhere.

I have found the way to reinstall the port lites in the main cabin. Thanks to the Bristol yahoo list and several suggestions. I had thought seriously about just glassing the openings over and putting smaller port lites in place of the large ones. I'll try replacing the current ones with 4200 and see what happens. The first one will be the hardest, then I will do the other 3. Its very difficult to clean the silicone off the aluminum frames and glass, but if I can stop the drip I will be very happy. If they are still plagued with leaks, I will close them off and put in opening ports. The other 2 projects in progress will wait til tomorrow. I've taken the wood trim out from the interior of the companionway and drilled out the stripped screw holes. Nest up is to fill the holes with thickened epoxy, redrill and reinstall with silicone-bronze screws. In the mean time I shall sand and add a couple of coats of Epifanes varnish to the wood. I also need to get the wiring damaged by the exhaust heat replaced. Access to the damaged wires is thru the portside cockpit locker so good weather is necessary to getting the work done. This winter I will work on a boom tent to protect the cockpit, but for now it will remain exposed.