Day Out

We were rescued from a day of leak investigations by a phone call from John McKay, who suggested that it might be a good time to visit his house so that I could deal with my 2009 Australian income tax papers. The task was simple: print out some documents emailed to me by Lachlan, my taxation accountant, sign them, then either fax them or scan and email them to his office as attachments. The thoughtful John and Priscilla also suggested that Arnold bring his laundry, which he did.

On the way to the house we stopped at West Marine and found that my in-hull transducer had arrived. The new one looked like the incorrect one but with a shorter cable with the same round plug and a long cable to convert the round interface to the simple 3-wire interface required by the ST60 display. A simple conversion plug at the end of the original cable would have been better and avoided the problem of having a join inside the bilge section subject to salt water immersion. (We'll probably have to shrink wrap this joint and tape it up well.)

While we were working on the tax job John and Priscilla overcame our weak protests and presented a splendid brunch of scrambled eggs and muffins. By then Arnold was working on setting up a wireless connection between the laptop in the bedroom and the printer in the office next to the MacIntosh. I started to fiddle with the machine's wireless environment and soon we could see a strong four bar signal that had to come from within the house. Soon we had the laptop connected via wireless rather than hard wire to an AT&T router that for some reason the technician had not been able to get to work. He must have done just enough work to get the wireless going because we did not even have to enter a security code.

Eventually Arnold downloaded the driver for John's HP printer and before long the laptop could see the printer via wireless. However, work needed to be done on the printer to make it talk wireless rather than USB. Then the Mac would have to be set up to communicate with the printer via wireless. Time was moving on so we decided to finish that work another day.

By then I was fiddling with a C-Map problem and got enough information for further investigation back at the boat.

John and Priscilla then drove us to the Cabillo National Monument (http://www.nps.gov/cabr/index.htm) on the spectacular bluff on the north side of the entrance to San Diego Bay. The day was somewhat misty but we could see the Coronado Islands and the hills south of the border. John said that they on a clear night they can see the lights of Tijuana from their house.

We saw an interesting exhibit on the Sea of Cortez and finished up at the historic Pt Loma light house. Arnold spotted an ordinary light bulb inside the lens and I asked a ranger about it. The Pt Loma light is illuminated by a 45-watt household light bulb, surely making it the most economical lighthouse in the world. The ranger said that the light, focused by the prisms, is strong enough to be seen from a distance but must not be strong enough to confuse navigators.

The first photo is of John, Arnold, and Priscilla in front of the Pt Loma light house. Further down is myself with Priscilla and John.

The last photo was taken by Arnold from the J&P's veranda, with San Diego city in the background.

(Note: I got an email from Lachlan last night confirming that the images of the signed tax documents had arrived and were satisfactory.)