We’re Ready to Get Out of Here
The Chesapeake in the middle of the summer is very hot, has a lot of jellyfish and no wind. Our ideal day consists of sailing, getting in the water and not running the air conditioner. So we’re ready to sail south as soon as hurricane season ends. Ironically, as you will read below, this is probably not going to happen.
Lightning is a Bitch
Recently we had a lightning strike, as close as we can tell, roughly 50 feet from our boat. We think we got some stray current that destroyed our battery monitor and our main house bank. We run all of our systems from our house bank, so this is a big deal.
So, we’re currently going through the process of replacing our batteries with a lithium bank. In the long run this is going to be way better than what came with the boat, we will triple our useable battery capacity.
Hopefully we can have this done before the end of August, we will have to limp along with our damaged batteries until then.
More Dophins
Sometimes in the morning, if it is really quiet, you can hear dolphins by their breathing. I woke up a couple of weeks ago and was enjoying my morning coffee when I heard a tail slap as well as a bunch of dolphin breaths. Roughly 20 dolphins had surrounded the boat.
It’s tough to capture this on video, but here is what I got.
Scrambling Jets Out of Langley
Recently we spent a couple of nights anchored right in front of Langley Air Force Base. One morning we woke up to a pretty good storm that switched the wind and pulled our anchor, so we were dragging which is not good.
Just as we were pulling up anchor to re-set it six F-22 Raptors flew over us in quick succession. When a F-22 Raptor takes off it is loud! You can actually hear them very well from several miles away. We were right underneath them a couple hundred feet away at most. We had to halt operations for a while so we could actually hear each other.
The plus side is we got our own air show the entire day.
Major Delay
When you get close to retirement you plan out these things you are going to do when you have more free time. For me and Nancy that is exercising more. So we were doing that. We were working out last Sunday on the beach and I ruptured my achilles tendon.
To make a long story short, although it is inoperable, the tear is where the muscle attaches to the tendon, it is a very long recovery period. We were planning on leaving for the Bahamas in November once hurricane season is over, the Orthopedic Surgeon said that is not going to happen. Apparently a 6 – 12 month recovery with physical therapy. We’ll see…
Before I retired I had two quotes that I kept on my desk for challenging moments, this is one of them, and I truly believe this is the only way to approach problems.
Attitude to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think, say or do. It is more important than appearance, gift, or skill. It will make or break a company…a church…a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day…I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our attitudes.
-Charles Swindoll
In the end whatever delay we have because of my injury was meant to happen. It will all work out, though I really don’t want to spend another winter in cold weather.
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