Well, since we’ve been at a marina in Lake Charles, La. the past couple of nights, with electricity and time on our hands, I can send another email. We think we’ve resolved the air leak in the fuel system that has plagued us since we left (the engine dies every few hours). I discovered a new problem a little while ago. The steering quadrant is broke! Not the quadrant itself, but the back half of it that bolts to the quadrant around the rudder post. Since the autopilot has it’s own connection to the rudder post we would not have completely lost our ability to steer the boat, but it’s not the kind of thing we’d want to head offshore with. I’ll be looking for a machine shop tomorrow that can make me a new piece. We may be here a few days so drop us a line so I know that we’re getting through.

Even though we’ve had a couple of mechanical failures, there is a lot that is working great. The autopilot is wonderful. The wind generator and solar panels easily keep up with our needs. The CAP’N navigation software with connection to the GPS is way too cool. I can sit in the cockpit looking down at the chart table and watch the radar and the computer screen with the ship’s position maintained on the nautical chart and steer the boat with the handheld autopilot control.

We walked over to the Isle of Capri riverboat casino this morning just to have something fun to do. We didn’t gamble (it’s really pitiful watching all those losers sitting there throwing their money away) but we had a great lunch buffet. We also saw an advertisement that we could have caught a bus at the WalMart in Webster and come here and back for only $10! Hey, maybe someone wants to come visit us for real cheap.
Well, that’s all for now.

Later,
David and Claudia