Ham License Anyone !

Well we decided to go ahead and study for our Ham license (ARRL) so when we are really far offshore we may have a better chance of reaching someone farther away if we need too, that includes e-mails, plus the weather is really crappy here and this makes for a good way to spend our time waiting for the weather to get better. Boy its been awhile since I had to study for a test or memorize technical things, so it took a bit to get in the groove, on the other hand Jon had no problem and since his field is electrical he had learned a lot of the basics years ago in trade school so most of it is a refresher course for him. He has been helping me with the basic fundamentals of electricity, which really helped since that part of the practice test I got everything right (thanks to Jon). We figure the Ham course this winter and next winter we will take an EMT course (this will certainly help us with the winter blues).

Kasidah's Home for the Summer

Just received word that the Marina we will be docked at this summer has changed hands. The old name was “The Boat House Marina” the new name is “Fair Point Marina”. The new owners sound very nice and enthused about owning the marina and resort. We can’t wait to meet them and wish them lots of luck. The Marina is on the south shore of Ontario Lake in Fair Haven, New York. The marina has a great location on the point of a small bay. The marina is on the bay side so there is shelter, and on the other side is a very nice beach looking out over beautiful Ontario Lake and a small campground resort which is part of the marina. We fell in love with it when we first went up there seven years ago looking for a place for our pervious sailboat “Agapee”, but decides to go to Skaneateles lake instead but knew we would want to be there some day. Lat: 43:20:41N (43.3448)
Lon: 76:42:41W (-76.7113)

Spring is just around the corner

Well spring will be here soon and it will be time to bring Kasidah home. We have lots of things to arrange ahead of time. One thing was to decide on an insurance that would be a good choice for this year and also for heading down the coast and on, so we decided on the Agent IMIS the Boat insurance is with Markel. They are very friendly at IMIS and after talking to others that have insurance with them we are confident this is a good choice.

Syracuse, New York- Boat Show

Well, this was a very disappointing show to say the least. We went to look for a new dingy, windless and anything else that we could use for our refit, we even had cash for a deposit on that one item that we had to have (money was burning a whole in our pockets).
First of all we ended up having a snowstorm and pretty much only people with 4-wheel drive were out. Besides us there were maybe a dozen people there all night, I am not kidding. There were three large building with marine items, unfortunately almost all of it was new power boats and docks, There were a few new sailboats but we have a sailboat…..No Dingies, no windlasses, no davits, no filter systems….. In all three building there was only four booths that had merchandise that you could buy on the spot like clothing, maps, boat hooks ect… So we ended up buying Jon new Foul weather gear since he really needed some and we had the money. We ended up buying him an offshore Gul Jacket, bibs and neoprene gloves. We purchased them from The Sailboat Shop booth www.ShopTheSailboatShop.com . They are really good friends of ours and always are willing to help with anything we need for sailing. So needless to say we did not get any hands on knowledge of equipment there.

Dingy matters

We have been doing a lot of research on dingys and boy is this hard.... I think we are having more of a problem deciding what dingy to choice than we did on the boat herself. We will be purchasing the filter boss for the fuel right away then a windless, new dingy and motor and then a davit unit. The Syracuse boat show is this week so we will be going to it and maybe getting some more good ideas.