Roosey Roads, PR
18.14.009N
65.37.581W
The unthinkable has finally happened. I am devastated.

We started the day anticipating that Dale would get the windless back together and possibly start working on putting the little shock absorbers on the genset that came in the mail so that we could catch up with our boat buddies heading to Culebra.

Then, suddenly, my computer crapped out. Yes I mean crapped, not crashed! This morning it worked fine in the bowling alley when I decided to catch up on our bills. Two hours later, we could hardly get a picture. In fact, it was only because I was sitting at an angle that I could see that there were images on the screen, they just weren’t illuminated.

I tried turning the lights out to see if that helped. That made it worse. Then I grabbed a flashlight; we could see enough for Dale to print out the database I had set up with all of our financial information in it. That stopped the cussing and threat of tears.

Then I started thinking of all of the other information we have stored on it. All of our electronic charts. All of the addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses for our family and friends. The pictures of the grandbabies. The blog posts. My recipes. The calendar with everyone’s birthdates and the maintenance log for the boat. Finally, it really hit. All of the software for connecting the sat phone with the weather information is loaded on that computer. My God, we can’t go anywhere!

Yes, we had purchased a back up computer, the one I’m presently using, but we hadn’t taken the time to transfer any of the information to it. Of course, I realize that until this trip, we’ve never used any of the weather information software. But we’ve become accustomed to having it available to us and we like knowing what may be coming towards us over the horizon. So now what?

Dale thinks that we brought all of the disks to load the weather connection software into this computer. I have backup disks of the electronic charts but unsure of whether I brought the software package that makes them all work together. The computer itself if out of warranty (of course) so we’ll make our excuses to the rest of the flotilla and stay an extra day to take it in to a repair facility. Hopefully, it will be a loose connection of some type. Otherwise, I’ll see if they can download my hard drive onto a thumb drive and I can transfer it that way.

You know, if isn’t not one thing, it’s another!! My budget is too totally shot for words.