Getting out of town is hard to do!

It's probably a good thing that we have been delayed in getting out to sea. We spent most of Saturday rethinking and redoing things on the boat. Ed worked on getting the fuel jugs secured on the deck, and I dismantled the radar reflector, put it together around a cap shroud, and went up the mast to the lower spreader and secured it there. Yesterday Ed and I went to Safeway and got some groceries, Teri found her foulies, and in general we decided that we are ready to venture out there. The wind was still from the south today, so we decided to wait until tomorrow morning. The forecast is for pretty good sailing the next few days, but in my experience the weather is usually worse than the forecast.

I have been trying to figure out how to get my passport reissued with a needed correction for about 2 years. To be honest, I have not been trying every day for the past 2 years, but on several occasions I have gone to the passport website and tried to figure out which form to use and how to fill it out and what other documentation to include with the application. It is not as simple as the State Department would have you believe! Amazingly, through Facebook I reconnected with a high school classmate who is the director of one of the regional passport offices. He helped me out and I got the application sent off about 3 weeks prior to leaving Portland. I paid the extra fee for expedited service and overnight delivery both ways. Unfortunately, the national passport center in Philadelphia would not accept the application because (according to them) I used the wrong form. It took the post office 1 week and 1 day to overnight the rejected application back to me, and it arrived the day after we left Portland. It's no wonder the Post Office is going broke! Any way, today Julia brought the application here to Astoria; I filled it out and she took me to the county clerks office to get it signed and sent off. Whew! I hope it all goes well now and the new passport is waiting for me when we reach San Diego.


We stopped at Safeway on the way back to the boat and picked up a tub of Tillamook Vanilla Ice Cream. Ed and Teri picked some blackberries this morning, and the ice cream was perfect on the cobbler!