Time to get moving again

Kerm here,
 It looks like the weather has finally warmed up a bit further north so we're leaving on Sunday or Monday.   I'll miss this place. Well except for the bugs that have made a mess out of Chris's skin.  We have met the nicest people but some are transients like us so we are bound to see them again along the way. 

My guess is that we will probably clear SC by the end of the week and then the NC by the end of the following week.  The Chesapeake, Delaware River and outside NJ can be a bit rough this time of the year so we'll probably wait in Virgina Beach for a clean window and with any luck a group to leave with.  This will be the most challenging part of the trip so we're doing research in order to keep surprises at a minimum.  There is a rumor that Linda O' will be coming along in a couple of weeks so it will be nice to have an extra hand.

The electronics going bonkers saga on the boat appears to be solved.  Just throw money at it.  We ditched the Humminbird depth finder on the upper bridge and replaced it with my old Garmin 540 that we had on Harry and put in a new hull sensor for the Raymarine sounder down below.  The 540 also required a new hull sensor that the tech installed.  Apparently the Humminbird folks had a frequency on this unit that is a bit close to VHF frequency and there can be cross talk in certain situations.  (Ya, right,,, my situation). My research on the internet confirmed this frequency deal. And, for the Raymarine, the sensor was for whatever reason going bad which caused frequency hic-ups. 
I don't know, it's all PFM to me...

Fuel prices are a bit of a concern right know.  Diesel is now over 4 bucks.  Our marina is at 4.38 now so we're happy that we fueled a couple of weeks ago for two bits less.  (For our English friends two bits = a quarter of a dollar). Keep in mind there are no road taxes on this fuel so I'll bet the over the road truckers are looking a 5 bucks at least.  Thank goodness we didn't buy the boat with two engines and double the weight.  We burn about 2.5 gallons an hour at about 7 MPH so we're looking at somewhere around 280 miles per 100 gallons.  I'm going to start logging fuel burn at different speeds to see what I can do to improve the numbers but in our world 2.5 is a envious number.  We went to a party the other day on a 54 footer with twin 1000 HP engines and he burns 70 gallons per hour but, but then again he has 3.5 bathrooms.  That has to be worth something I guess.