Endgame

It's been a long, at times frustrating day - or I should say it was, as it's now after midnight - and I'm dog tired, so this will be a short update. Here's the gist of it: there's a good weather window to cross from Ft. Lauderdale to Great Harbour Cay in the Berry Islands on Sunday and Monday. My brother is flying in tomorrow morning, and I'm not sure when the next window will be, so I really wanted to make this one. In order for that to happen, we needed two things to happen today: 1) Get Piper's pet import permit from the Bahamas Department of Agriculture and 2) Complete our SSB repairs, or at least get the radio back on the boat. And I'm happy to say that both of those things happened. The pet import permit was finally faxed this afternoon (they received our re-application via FedEx on Tuesday and I called every day this week); at 10am tomorrow Piper has an appointment at the local vet clinic to get his certificate of health. Atlantic Radio Telephone tested out our SSB in their shop and found absolutely nothing wrong with it, the only problem being that their shop is in Miami. They sent it north tonight with one of their employees that lives nearby, and I have it installed. The tech said I should look very carefully at my grounding system, so that's what I'll do over the next week or so. We have two grounding systems, actually: one for the autotuner, which is a KISS counterpoise, and one for the radio itself which is a homemade copper foil strap connected to a seacock or two. I'll see what I can do to improve that and hopefully it'll fix our reception & especially transmission problems. Heck, simply leaving Ft. Lauderdale might do wonders - there's lots of RF interference in this anchorage, I'm sure.

Other things worth mentioning: we moved from the dock back to the mooring yesterday and did a damn nice job of picking up the ball in strong wind and current if I say so myself; we got our SUP and it's currently bungeed to the port lifelines and looks great but I haven't had a chance to use it yet (due to the long frustrating part of my day); our friends Jack and Linda on Lani will make the crossing during this window, from Key Largo to Bimini but potentially continuing on to Great Harbour Cay; Dan and Isabelle on Epiic will be a bit further behind as they're staying in Miami for the boat show; our old dockmates Lee & Linda on Sea Turtle just crossed from Miami to Great Harbour Cay and may still be there when we get there; we'll have a nearly-full moon for the nighttime portion of our 22-hour crossing if we make this window; it's been one month since we left Charleston. Ok, time for bed.