Well, a little more progress was made on the boat today. She got her first coat of bottom paint. She'll get one more tomorrow, then when the rudder arrives, they will put a couple of coat on it, slap it on and we should be back in the water. The pictures below are of the first coat and the blue taped area shows but if gives you an idea of what she'll look like. I also re-added an earlier picture for comparison.

If I haven't already mentioned it, we were told yesterday our rudder should be here Friday or Monday. Then we can go back in the water and our A/C should keep things nice and cool. Soon after, the exhaust pipe should be here and once that's on and a couple of minor things are taken care of, we should be headed north again.

Several days ago, I mentioned that I had sanded the boat's wood and Nancy was in the process of refinishing it. Her efforts really paid off and the wood does look nice.

Unfortunately, Nancy learned that one of her brothers has cancer and is in the hospital undergoing extreme chemo treatments so she flew back to Arkansas this afternoon to see if she can be of help to his wife and family while he's in the hospital. I'll be bach'in it for a few days but I must say, I'm already looking forward to her return. It seems that we have been a team fighting the problems with this "demon boat" and I believe we drew strength to continue on from each other. I'm sure our time apart will do us good and when she gets back, the boat should be ready and we should be ready to finish this trip. Then, we'll have to decide if we want to continue sailing or come up with another adventure to pursue.