It's been good to be here at Amel South. The work list has grown to over 30 items, mostly little warranty things. Yesterday, we went out sailing and identified the source of the creaking in the salon which has bothered me since the boat was new. It is comes from the salon coach roof window which seems to work a bit against the acrylic frame. We'll see how the guys will fix that one!

We also determined that the boat will need to come out of the water to fix the bow thruster. That will happen this coming Tuesday right after the four day holiday weekend coming up here in France. Cross your fingers that this will go well!

One other thing of note. I've decided to get a second bow anchor - we already have 30m of chain and 60 m of line on the port side there. The purpose is to facilitate deploying and retrieving a stern anchor which we had to do quite often this spring. Once the second anchor is down from the bow, we can easily take the line to the stern and we can easily bring it back to the bow to retrieve the anchor with the port side anchor winch. Retrieving the existing FX 55 fortress is quite hard on my back and it really doesn't have enough chain.

I'm off to Corinna's graduation now in California, back in a few days with Nicki, a/k/a The Admiral.