Dave has been working hard to get Apsaras ready to leave. Yesterday he and Steve took down the sails, and today Dave put up the newly sewn canvas cover that Melissa made before she left.
He cleaned out the fridge (Saltydog inherited the leftovers), dumped and treated the holding tanks and w…
For the past few days, Melissa has been visiting her Dad. He hasn't been feeling well lately, so she figured before interviews start in earnest, likely next week, this was a good chance for her to go and hang out with him. Dad and Marla seem in no hurry for her to depart as she has been cooking up…
Today Apsaras' new pet gecko decided to come inside. He is pretty good at camouflage and was lucky that Dave didn't step on him and squish him! Dave managed to capture him and move him outside despite the gecko's objections. One of the last tasks Dave will do before leaving the boat is to set off…
So Melissa has been helping a friend with a franchise business develop some training materials for their annual convention. He wanted to create a fun game that would teach people who run small businesses how to read a Profit & Loss statement. After a couple of months going back and forth developin…
This morning Melissa bid good bye to all the monkeys. Amazingly even the famous Party Monkey has survived this entire adventure - never once needing more air.
Meanwhile, Dave finished phase 1 of the Saltydog navigation system installation. Step 1 yesterday was to tear out the existing syte…
As today was to be our last Sunday here in Panama with the gang, it was decided another big brunch was in order. Wanuskewin brought pancake mix and spam. Yes, spam. It had become the topic of some debate the night before. Wanuskewin swore that it was actually pretty good. The rest of us were in…
This morning Holly and Melissa again dragged the sewing machine up to the cruisers lounge to finish the shade cover for Apsaras. Holly threaded the machine, but alas the machine wouldn't stich a decent stich no matter what we did. We feared that yesterday's fiasco with the thread getting wound aro…
While Saltydog was sitting in the marina in Quepos Costa Rica over the summer, their Amp Meter died. The Amp Meter is important becuase it lets you understand the health of your batteries, and how much power you are using. Which isn't a big deal when you are plugged into shore power, but becomes a…
Today Melissa spent the better part of the day doing interviews via phone for one job that could be interesting back in Seattle, and interviewing with recruiters. No details yet, you will just have to wait for information to become public. Meanwhile, Dave spent his time studying modern techniques f…
After a nice breakfast at the Market Resturant in Panama City, we checked out of the hotel and piled in the car once again. Today's big task was to go find fabric for Melissa to make a deck shade cover for Apsaras. Since we are going to take down the canvas cockpit material while she stays here in…
This morning we set off for Panama City with Mike and Holly. Alas as we were loading up the car, Holly noticed this:
Doh! So we stood around for 15 minutes watching Dave change the tire. Notice how "helpful" we all are. Yeah, ok, might be a one man job...
Then we drove into …
This morning we hopped on the shuttle bus early into Colon where we rented a car and then headed to the dentist. $40 each for a cleaning. In a clean office with a dentist that spoke perfect English. Gotta love that.
Then we headed over to the hospital to pick up Steve and Joan. Steve was g…
Melissa cooked like crazy for the big game day. Chicken wings with herb dip and blue cheese dip, chili, chicken/bacon dip, cowboy caviar, cowboy cookies, and cheese balls. Joan made deviled eggs, and Holly made bread to go with the Chili.
We thought there would be tons of leftovers, b…
Melissa spent the day cooking for the big Superbowl party. Cowboy cookies took forever because she can only bake 8 at a time on her tiny little cookie sheet pan. A couple of dips for the chicken wings. The cheese balls, and a marinated bean salad. Yesterday Melissa bought a new crock pot at the …
Remember the incident where Joan's fridge on Saltydog smashed her finger and she needed stitches? Well, apparently these marine fridges are more menacing than one might think, because today ours bit Dave but good. The gas strut that holds the door up popped off its mount and the fridge lid slammed …
Melissa has spent the past two days emailing everyone she knows to let them know we are headed back to Seattle and are looking for work. Not surprisingly, she has been overwhelmed with responses from folks who are happy to help. Nothing firm yet, but nice to know there are so many people happy to …
Previously we had blogged about how the navigation systems aboard Apsaras work. Dave has wanted to make several improvements to this system. First he made it so that the ship's built in auto pilot can be controlled from the Open CPN moving map system. This means he can program a route around obst…
This morning the plan was to go up Saltydog's mast and replace their anchor light with LED, if we happen to have the right bulb on hand in Apsaras spares stock. But we have to climb the mast first to figure out which type of LED it needs. And Steve also wanted the WINDEX light bulb replaced as it …
This morning it was time for haircuts. Venus, the captain aboard Sea Renity (our buddy boat with Wanuskewin through the Panama Canal) also cuts hair. So she came over with her scissors and gave us both haircuts on the dock.
After that we headed over to Saltydog where Dave helped Steve get the…
The past couple of days have been dedicated to our computers. Melissa has been working on a flyer to Real Estate agents that will market her book.
And Dave has been working on building a Seatalk protocol analyzer. Seatalk is the protocol that the navigation systems on the boat communicate on. H…