New Bern To Be History - No pictures: This Town is Not Worth It.

The skipper escaped the life trogloditic last night about 11:00 p.m. or so he thought.

His work was done.

He left the bilge with all structures constructed, all wires wired and all logic.... well sadly some of the logic, seemingly so important in this day of boolean tables and computing machines, had visited a place where logic is not generally appreciated.

Three days of careful contorted construction and his new autopilot did not work.

He knew it was the final relay. A relay to operate a solenoid that operated a valve. What? Why?

All night the skipper tossed it around in what was left of his brain. Dawn brought a brilliant insight which as with most overnight schemes of brilliance tarnished quickly into a failed leap of faith.

Two more failed fixes and the brow of the skipper resembled a freshly ploughed field, each crease the product of worry and growing concern.

It was enough to cause a man to doubt his general superiority over others of the species.

No terror of the sea had so thoroughly challenged the ingenuity of the skipper. At least at sea he could fake confidence and rely on his boat to bring him home.

He had quite a boat.

This time the jig was up.

Oh. But check the fuses. The second from final fix which was guaranteed to correct everything, restore order to the universe and supremacy to the skipper had blown a fuse. This meant the final fix had yet to be tested.

Could it be?

Meredith leaves New Bern tomorrow and no one on this boat will lament the leaving. What a pompous, boring overstated stop. If it were not cheap it would have no personality at all.

In the meantime we have achieved the following while winds blew and rain pelted other boaters at anchor:

Cleaned the topsides,
fixed numerous blemishes in the teak inside and out
polished the stainless
washed everything in the boat whether it moved or not
installed the new Balmar alternator
troubleshot the Bluesea battery combiner
installed and troubleshot the autopilot.

Quite enough for 5 days. We want to leave - badly enough that we will leave tomorrow even though we have a free night of dockage tomorrow night..

Meredith has never shipped in such shape.