Time to Head South (again).

I don't want to jinx the trip, but it is time for Patina to head south again.  After the return from Florida last April, Patina has been in Oriental, North Carolina, mostly just in her slip.  We had some needed repairs (remember that bow thruster?), and had some help from friends to take down the canvas in anticipation of Hurricane Earl. 

With Gay's new business venture (Naked Pizza) requiring her presence in Denver, Ken stayed close to home over the summer.  We missed our North Carolina friends, but remembered our love for Colorado in the summer.  Still not quite as excited about the cold winter weather (thankfully, in Denver proper, with over 300 days of sunshine, we have fairly temperate winters overall, but that makes the cold days all the more annoying).. 

Ken had planned to head back in early November, but with Tynan's plan to come to Colorado for Thanksgiving (and family ski trip to Beaver Creek (near Vail for you out-of-staters)), Ken decided to wait until tomorrow, Monday the 29th, to head back to North Carolina.  He has been working for weeks on getting things done so that he can quickly provision the boat and head out before the holidays. 

Will Flannery and Ken have been working on the details for some time now.  Here's hoping its a great trip for them. 

A little bit of a strange start--Ken had a diver check on the zinc and the condition of the bottom of the boat and he called to report that all was well, except.......the bow thruster prop was broken (again).  For those of you following the saga, we had the boat built to be single handed, which included installing an expensive bow thruster.  So far, the bow thruster has run properly for a total combined running time of maybe 15 minutes.  Its loss last year was the final straw that prevented Patina from continuing on from Florida over to the Bahamas.  So......Patina is back on the hard (again) to fix (again) the bow thruster that has not been used at all since it was fixed in April.  Not exactly doing the happy dance about that. 

We will keep you posted.