July 22, 2011 Alexandra Bay NY

Today is special in blog world. Today’s post is by Jim Karpinski, the first guest poster of the trip!

I was amazed this morning that Don was up before I was at 5:30 AM. I joined him and we had coffee around 6:00. I got the pleasure of helping Don uncoil his leaky hose, and as Don was defrosting his fridge, we were also watering the dock, cockpit and cabin floor. But soon after that the freezer was running efficiently again, cooling our days refreshments.

Our next adventure was to dingy over to the town docks. Lew, Don and I enjoyed Yinglings and steamed clams at about 11:00AM while the ladies shopped. We then headed for the closest marine store, of course. Alas, all we bought was fuel for the dingys. After that was lunch, and then a dingy trip up river to the grocery store where I got a chance to use my Navonics navigation app on my Droid phone. Gretchen was so impressed that we found the grocery store she downloaded the app to her phone.

Back at the boat, getting tired of razing Don about the play in his steering wheel, which I liked to kid Don about, I fixed it. It turned out to be the retaining clip behind the wheel was not in its proper slot, and the wheel could not be tightened with the wheel nut. Now I am looking for something else to kid Don about on his boat.

During cocktails, learning my lesson from the evening before, I sat upwind of my drink so Jola would not have to clean my shorts and t-shirt again. Although unfortunately, while fixing Don’s wheel I got grease on another t-shirt and Jola had to clean it.

We are looking forward to spending another night with Kerry and Don on Excalibur and then spending 2 nights in Kingston, Ontario before rejoining Excalibur in Clayton, NY, at which time the adventure will continue.