Wednesday, December 31, 2008

RADIO LABS WAVE RV MARINE WI FI SYSTEM

The subject antenna and card was installed on Charmed today. Well, it
was laid on the the deck and fired up. It works great. The card in
the laptop would not reach any network. The Radio Labs antenna
reached about a half dozen. Speed 3800 kbps down, 480 up. Much
better than Verizon broadband over the Motorola Q phones on board.


Craig
Charmed IP 440.33

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

PROVISIONED TO THE HILT ... BUT THE WATER LINE STAYS THE SAME!

What Craig forgot to mention was the water line! Yesterday we took (for the umpteenth time) provisions to Charmed, and after we unloaded and I was leaving the boat, I made a point to check the water line. I was sure I would notice a difference. Surely the 14 new bottles of liquor, four cases of beer, and 48 bottles of wine would weight us down. Nope! I didn't notice a difference at all. In any event, as Craig wrote, tomorrow we leave our land-based home and happily return to Charmed in Daytona Beach. We have been at our home in Florida for about six weeks while Charmed waited patiently for us to return and take her to the Bahamas. We looked forward to spending the holidays with family and friends, had a great time, and now we are happy to be returning to our water-based home. While in Florida, we spent a lot of our time visiting family and friends and preparing for and enjoying the holidays. As Craig hinted, we spent the rest of our time provisioning and provisioning and provisioning some more for the next 4 or 5 months in the Bahamas. While I started the shopping early, I never realized how much work it would be. I am sure glad I at least made my provisioning list before we reached Florida! We made several trips to Charmed with our loads and loads of provisions and then spent hours finding a place for everything and then organizing and making a list of where it all (or most of it) was. Nonetheless, I have great confidence we will forget the whereabouts of many things! We depart Thursday, moving south to a jumping off point to the Bahamas. We know of many others going to the Bahamas, but we hope to make the crossing with our friends Jenny and Charlie on Lady. They are already in Hollywood and promise to wait if we're not too long, so we're hoping for continued good weather the next few days.

BOUND FOR THE BAHAMAS

With Charmed 99.44% provisioned for the voyage to the Bahamas, we will soon be moving again. We will depart Daytona Beach Thursday, looking to make south Florida and possible jumping off points as soon as convenient.

Debbie has done a fabulous job of provisioning. My contribution has been mostly as pack mule. There is no question we must think there are no sources in the Bahamas for food or drink, or the other goods we might consume in the next five months. If we put ten pounds of stuff on the boat, we put a thousand. We did read a lot about how to make this trip, and collected comment from those who have gone before us. When shopping we just always put one more, or two more, of whatever we were buying in our cart, especially if the item wasn't a perishable. We should have taken pictures. Thank God for the storage space on Island Packets!

Thursday, December 25, 2008

GRUNDIG G5 RADIO

Santa brought us a Grundig G5 Radio! It looks well built. We'll have to see if it works well getting far off stations. Right now I have it scanning SSB frequencies. It finds one that a spanish speaking operator is using, but nothing else.

The labeling is poor. The manual is horrible. There is not one picture in it. It will take some study and practice to get the most out of the radio.

The radio has an antenna connection, ANT. Maybe a reasonably priced external antenna can be located. It would likely improve performance.