We ushered in the New Year with the cruising community here at Brunswick Landing with a party at the marina clubhouse. Plenty of food and conversation, and the evening was warm enough to be out without a jacket. It’s always interesting to share stories with other cruisers.
We had a visit on Wednesday from Susan (our marina owner at Stansbury), her mom, and her boyfriend Jim, on their way to Cocoa Beach. They were diverted from I95 as a result of an accident close to Brunswick, so they stopped in for a quick visit.
Our loose plan is to head south at the beginning of the week, we have a package coming Monday, and we just heard from friends Chris and Joyce on Celebrate who have returned from their holiday trip home and have resumed their trip south. They were in Savannah New Years’ eve, and will be arriving here in Brunswick tomorrow, so we’ll have a good time catching up.
The reality plan may entail a bit longer stay, since temperatures are predicted to be near-record lows in the 20’s for nearly the entire week. It’s nice to have the luxury to run the heat when it’s so cold! So much for global warming….. Still, we’re getting anxious to get under way again, and really anxious to get to warmer weather!
I spent a few days making some long-desired changes to the navigation systems. The original installation had the primary color radar display mounted in the flybridge console, with the mono LCD secondary display located in the pilothouse. It was never the most practical setup, since the need for radar rarely occurs when driving from the flybridge, and most of our piloting is done from the pilothouse anyway. It made more sense to have the larger color display in the pilothouse. Relocating it required cutting a larger opening in the pilothouse console, re-routing the scanner cable, and other wiring changes. I reconfigured the networking of the various components, and replaced a failed speed/temperature sending unit and added network communication of MARPA data to the computer nav program. It was a tedious task, but the results will be worth the effort. Never a shortage of projects to complete while we’re not moving!
We’re hoping the cold snap is short-lived, contrary to the forecast. At least we don’t have snow to go with the cold!
