We are getting ready

Renne’ and I, it seems, are moving into the modern world.  Last night we met a couple here at Cooper River Marina in Charleston, Sam and Nicki, who have introduced us to Twitter, new ins-and-outs of Blogspot (The Blogger), and Flickr.  I assure you we are going kicking and screaming, but we have found new ways to keep the blogs up, get our pictures added, and expand the number of contacts we have out in the world.  It actually is pretty exciting.  

We know most of you are aware that Renne’s first book, The Last Payload, The MECS Experiment, has been out in the public for two years.  By expanding how we reach people on both blogs, “S/VJonne” and “Sailady Passages”, we might be able to increase her readership and continue interest in her book.  

While here in Charleston, Renne’ has completed her first children’s book, Nighty Night Sailboat, a book for the Pre-K audience – well actually parents of the Pre-K audience, and she is working on the illustrations for it right now.  Nikki spent last night with us introducing Renne’ to the wonders of publishing for e-books.  It was a lot of information, and frankly a bit overwhelming, but with some concentrated study, this might become a bit more fun.

On another avenue, R and I start packing today and prepping JonNe’ for our trip to Spain.  Well, no, JonNe’ is not going with us this trip.  So as we begin to pack, we have to strip the deck of all material that might blow away or be damaged in a storm or hurricane while we are gone.  That involves removing her three sails (main, staysail, and yankee jib) and folding them for storage below, removing the dinghy from the davits, deflating it and storing it under the staysail boom (the way it was stored when we sailed out of Houston), stowing all of the canvas around the cockpit below decks, and then tying down all of the ice chests, jerry cans, and bicycles so they will be here when we return.  It has been raining yesterday and this morning so we are hoping it will quit and dry out a bit.

Tuesday, we are taking Amtrak to Jacksonville to pick up the car.  I expect we will head farther south to St. Cloud to check in on Renne’s parents before heading back up here.  If the sails are dried out by tomorrow and are packed away, we may continue on up to Glassy Mountain to see Buzz and Carol again before heading to Ashville, NC for Renne’s son’s birthday.  Otherwise it will be back here to finish packing up the boat.  We will have to see.

In the meantime, come see us tonite for sundowners here at the dock.  There aren’t many here who are live-aboards, and we definitely enjoy the company. 

JonNe’