If this were easy everyone would be doing, right? The Ham Radio study guide mentioned in our last post below arrived today. From web order to our door in approximately 36 hours. Not bad! We have already started taking turns reading the manual, which includes every possible test question on the exam. Sounds like we could have another fun quiz session with shots as penalties for incorrect answers! Rebecca is beside me now, searching boat listings on her laptop. We…

Yesterday we met with Ron Walsh, a local amateur radio buff who welcomed us into his home to show us the basics of being a Ham. He had quite the setup with a variety of radio rigs and was able to give us a demonstration, starting up a conversation with another Ham from Mississippi. He was less than pleased when we told him the guys from the local Ham club didn't get back to us about the course they were…

We certainly don't want to be saying that, especially just before we run hard aground onto a barely submerged reef! And thus, I think we had better invest some time into developing some marine navigation skills, beyond that which we acquired from our Fast Track to Cruising course.  One of the books in our nautical library is The Weekend Navigator. We purchased it some time ago along with a number of others but it has been sitting on the shelf…

Our family is trying to get rid of us, or at least Rebecca's family is. We travelled to see them on the weekend and they had arranged a dinner party with two other couples who both had fairly extensive experience cruising in the Caribbean. Although much of the info they were able to share we had already read, it was still very nice to hear it from someone who had "been there - done that." Each couple was also kind…

Our friend, who recently described us as "f@#king crazy", just returned from a nice vacation in Australia. He admitted to me that now, after having spent two weeks in one of the sailing capitals of the world, traveling from yacht club to yacht club, he can now see where we are coming from and that he is in fact "jealous." He told me that he is also now working on his own "5 year plan!" Woo hoo... go for it!…

We've added a new page to our Blog which will ultimately house a compendium of info on where we have sought to acquire nautical knowledge. Books, DVDs and website links will all be listed there and in many cases, places where you could acquire the same items. It will be a work in progress for sometime as we are still adding to our own library on a daily basis. Hopefully it will save some aspiring cruisers a bit of time…