From now on there will be a total black out on my departure plans. I’ll sneak out there in the middle of the night sometime in November or possibly December. Today looked like a great day to go south but tonight it will be again gale force winds. I can hardly shorthop the Spanish coast because there are some nasty capes to round before and after Barcelona. And there are not many marinas along the Spanish coast, just good anchorages.  So I am just going to have to wait till there are three good days in a row to get to Ibiza. Just to prove again how small the world is: A young man, Julien Pernod, in his late twenties, stopped by with a few of his friends he had been sailing with. He had bought his 38 foot boat in Florida for $2,050…. And he did some maintenance on it in Green Cove Springs on the St. John River; the same funky place where I spent quite a few month in the spring of 2008 and again in 2009. He has also worked in marina’s/sailing schools in Port Townsend, Wa. And he cruised up to Alaska and in the San Juan Islands. His girl friend lives in Minneapolis. You’ll see that the sign in GCS marina on the oporch tells you how hard it is to get away from there.

I tried very hard to find a way to make the AIS connect to the OpenCPN navigation software I have, but the Plug In that the program supposedly has for AIS did not want to get off the internet in Frontignan. And the resoldered control wire for my SailMail system still does not work. So, I can keep myself off the street for a while. I plan to go to 11 a.m. mass in Frontignan to the gorgeous old church you saw on yesterday’s blog. At least there are no mosquitos here and the “Baracuda” next to my boat has free Wi-Fi.