Day 42, Year 8: More Online and In-store Christmas Shopping
Date: Saturday, December 15, 2012
Weather: Misty and Cool
Location: Lightkeeper’s Marina in Coquina Harbor, Little River, SC

‘Tis the season. Mark and I spent most of the morning searching the
internet for the perfect new computer at a price we can or are willing to
pay. Then we spent the afternoon out searching in stores. Needless to say,
we didn’t find that perfect computer. Mark’s Acer is six years old and is
barely hanging in there, but it is hanging in, so at the end of the day we
have decided to make do with what we have. We will strip Mark’s computer of
everything except our navigation software and use it only for navigation and
sending and receiving email via HAM radio. We’ll do everything else on my
computer which was last year’s Christmas gift. And when the perfect
computer comes along, we’ll buy one. Just not right now. We will, however,
search for a good external hard drive or two to back things up. I think
that will be my Christmas present. I also did a little more online shopping
for grandchildren. I’m almost done, just not quite.

The beautiful weather we had between Thanksgiving and now has drifted away.
We are having a lot of misty, drippy weather with very little sun. The
daytime temps are still in the 50’s and the nighttime lows are in the 40’s
and upper 30’s. That’s really not too bad, but it is certainly a lot
chillier than it has been since we arrived here before Thanksgiving.
Thankfully, we still don’t need more than a polar fleece jacket or a polar
fleece vest with a windbreaker. I checked the weather in Boston for
Christmas week, and it will be significantly colder. I didn’t mention in
yesterday’s log that Mark has had to change his flight home. We were both
going to fly home on Friday, December 28, but he learned this week that he
needs to be in Boston on December 27 so that the surgeon who performed his
colectomy last January can do the follow-up colonoscopy. So we changed his
flight and he will leave here on late on Christmas Day. The flight change
was quite expensive, so I will stay here and fly home on Friday as planned.
Stupidly we left our winter coats in storage in Concord, New Hampshire, so
we are going to have a rude awakening when we arrive in Boston. It makes me
feel cold just to think about it. Burrr . . .

The other thing we did yesterday that I didn’t write about in the log was
‘osphoizing’ our anchor chain. We finally made a decision and took the
plunge. We dipped the 300 feet of anchor chain, 30 feet at a time, in a
five gallon bucket containing a product called Ospho. It transforms rust to
iron phosphate, an inert substance, and turns the metal black. Lee came
over and helped Mark with the process. We left the chain on the dock to dry
overnight (covered with a tarp since it was raining) and today we put the
anchor chain back into the anchor chain locker. You are supposed to paint
over the Ospho coating, but we are skipping that step. We are just hoping
that the coating will keep the stored chain from rusting too badly. If it
works, we will apply another coat in the spring.

Our friends Dominique and Dominique, aboard their catamaran KEA, sailed in
through the Little River Inlet today. The ‘Doms’ are from France and are on
their way around the world. We met them in Chagos in the middle of the
Indian Ocean and haven’t seen them since South Africa, so we are very
excited about their arrival. They emailed to let us know that they anchored
just inside the inlet and will be coming here to Lightkeeper’s tomorrow
morning. They are on their way to the Bahamas for the winter and are just
stopping here for three or four days. We can’t wait to see them tomorrow
and catch up on their adventures since we last saw them and talk about the
new adventure of going to the Bahamas. Can’t wait to see them.

121214 Day 41 South Carolina, USA–'Osphoizing the Anchor Chain'