Casting Off!

Today we hoisted the dingy on the foredeck and are ready to sail away. The last month has been non stop preparation and modifications to our little sturdy ship. My high school buddy Rich came and helped us for a while, it was great to see him again and I still have to get him back for the "incident in Miss Eggo's class". I installed an additional battery bank so we can run electrical items while under sail like electronic navigation, autopilot, frig, tunes, whatever. This is "house power" and is separated from the engine start system. Also installed new marine refrigeration and tricked the bottom portion of the frig into being a deep freeze, it works great and consumes way less power. We had some great neighbors for a few days, they took us to Bayboro on a provision run(groceries and such). We filled the trunk of his rental car and stuffed it away on Godspeed. George is a wealth of sailing knowledge, spends 9 months a year on his 40' Island Packet, how cool is that. They left at dawn this morning and will take the ICW for 2 days until the weather clears and then jump into the ocean until they reach Brunswick GA, we hope to see them there in a couple of weeks. Lorrie has been little miss pack and consolidate, making boxes smaller and then they disappear. Our waterline is getting smaller and smaller, we raised it by two inches when bottom painting and when we finish provisioning it should be just right-lucky guess.
Cody and Beth sent us some climbing gear to get up the mast, so I tried it out and changed a light bulb at halfway up 26' or so, Great fun! Lorrie was the supply Sargent passing tools and such in a bag tied to the flag hoisting lines.
I snuck away from Godspeed for a few minutes today and walked down the dock with my fishing pole when I heard the slave driver giggling as she caught me playing. Just as she walked up wham, a nice spotted trout joined us for dinner! If the weather is OK we plan to head to New Bern tomorrow for a shakedown cruise and visit our new friend Helen(cruiser extraordinaire), ride bikes, maybe a little provisioning, anything but boat chores.