Leaving Adelaide

Yesterday we had a very, very pleasant day hosting Bob & Shirley Gray and their friends, who are now also our friends, John and Catherine. We gave them a good tour of the boat then went back to the club for a splendid barbecue with plenty of wine and beer. We all had a terrific time and Arnold and I were sorry to say goodbye to them shortly before sunset.

John from ICS visited the boat this afternoon and installed the new Autohelm display and the repaired Autohelm computer (it had a "dry joint"). We motored out into the calm gulf waters and he swung the compass and put the system through its paces to his (and our!) satisfaction. So it looks like we now have a working Autohelm self steering that for the first time has been integrated to the chart plotter which means that, for example, we can tell the autohelm to steer to a chart plotter cursor position, waypoint, or along a route. John also gave me some valuable opinions on noise in my HF reception that is resulting in very poor weather fax results. (He detected some noise from the GPS antennas, which means that we may shut them down temporarily during weather fax reception, and he adivsed that the Tx frequency should be set to the same as the Rx frequency for each weather fax frequency.)

Given that three days ago Luke from Adelaide Sail Loft returned the two repaired jibs it looks like we are clear to depart Adelaide. The boat is almost provisioned (I'll pick up meat, fruit, and veggies on the way back to the boat.), our water tanks are full, and our laptops and portable tools are charged up. We have also paid for our pen through today.

Pending a final check of the weather we plan to depart for Eden (via possibly Portland) tomorrow morning, Saturday.