"The time has come the walrus said . . . "

We are sooooo ready to begin this trip.
Preparing for this has been like birthing an elephant:
It just keeps getting tougher and tougher, and seemingly never ends - until it's finally time to be over.

I won't go into the minutia of all that happened today.
But, I will portray the essence, by describing the scene at 5:30 this evening:

There were 3 people working on the boat besides me:
One was replacing the oil sensor that he changed out - only to discover that the new one is defective, and the old one wasn't.
One was trying to show me how to download all of the routes that I had created on my I-pad onto the GPS unit. Only to find out that apparently there is NOT an app for that, and that a slight glitch was discovered today - that apparently no one knew about until now. (It's a good thing that I down loaded and printed all of the data).
The other person, was my dear friend - and fishing buddy, Andy -  who came to say goodbye and as usual wound up helping me solve unfinished project #27 for the day.

Bottom line, we got it all sorted out.
We've had dinner, and yes a few - nerve calming - cases of wine.
And, the time has come to do this thing.

We have a short weather window that we have to catch tomorrow, and so we leave the dock at 5:00 a.m. in hopes of appeasing Poseidon, and arriving at Block Island tomorrow afternoon with our back molars intact.

We must really send our apologies to all of our friends with whom we had so hoped to catch up, in our brief stay here. We sincerely hope that you understand our sudden departure, and do not take it personally. It' not you, it's us.
We are slave to the winds and waves for the next several weeks, and must do their bidding.

We love you all. This is not good-bye, but "hasta la vista" - until we see you again, and can tell you the stories in person. Meanwhile, we hope that you will follow us along the way via the "blog".

If you want to write on the blog, open one of the comments, and there will be a window to send a reply. We would love to hear from you.

Hopefully tomorrow, we will be writing from Block Island.

Ready or not, here we come.
Beaufort or Bust . . .