Day 109, Wednesday October 9th

Day 109, Wednesday October 9th

Today is a Salty Dawg seminar day, prior to the opening day of the Boat show.  This is a good opportunity to network with some of the people we will be doing the ocean cruise with.  The weather is overcast, and it is much cooler than we expected.  We head out early enough to allow for screw ups on location and parking, but all goes well and we are one of the first to arrive.  The seminars are being offered at the Mears pavilion and upon arriving we realize that we will be outside in the wind and cold  all day.  We take a seat at the picnic table on the lee side of the pavilion in the hopes other attendees will be blocking the wind.  It did seem "less cold" however it was still quite frosty.  The washrooms were heated so we visited often.  Finally about 20 minutes before lunch we decided to drive back to the hotel and get some more clothes.  Dawson had his lovely llama sweater from Peru, but other than that we had not brought many warm clothes so we layered.  Two pairs of pants, 2 pairs of socks, 3 shirts etc.  This helped a bit, but it was still cool.

The talks were all good.  We realized a single sideband radio is a must, an EPIRB should be considered.  Steve Madden spoke on rigging and also gave us more food for thought on things to look at and consider regarding sails and rigging.  All in all we were reassured that the boat and our sail inventory is up for the job.  We have 5 sails on board and they have been cursed a bit for the room in the cabin that they take up, as generally only 2 of them are installed at a time, but after listening to advice we are very happy we have brought them all.  We are also very happy we have a full batten main with our batten cars, and the cutter rigging.

We networked some more meeting 2 other Caliber 40 owners, and planned on meeting them for lunch tomorrow at the boat show.  We then left and headed over to Bacon marine to start buying some stuff.  We got our jack lines and a new anchor tending system. 

We then got hold of Brad and Lori who are friends of friends of ours (Mark and Cathie) and arranged to meet them for dinner which was fabulous.  So far we are having a great side adventure.

Cheers
Julie and Dawson