Charleston, South Carolina
     Man, you don't realize how much of the boat is interrelated!  Small thing, take off the transmission - no big deal. However the ground for most of the boat is to water, through the shaft. Big deal if all your electrical systems aren't grounded. I make it habit to check house battery levels daily and I began noticing the levels weren't as high as they normally are with input from the wind generator and two solar panels. Voilà. There were some wires we had to disconnect to get the transmission off. 
    Important, since it will be about a week before the rebuilt transmission comes from Colorado. Yes, I said Colorado. It was rebuilt in Grand Junction last month and is the only one we could find in the USA for sale right now!  We could order a new one from Japan and wait who knows how long for it to be shipped to us here. But with the word of the eBay seller to take it back if it doesn't work, we decided to try it.  Good news is that in our searching for the tranny, we learned of a rebuilt Yanmar engine like we have - should we ever need one of THOSE!!
     I guess we needed some time to work on a few small projects that we have been putting off. Got many of these done in spite of the heat!  But nothing quite as big as the transmission work. 
     Transmission arrived at 11:30am on Aug. 1 and we had it installed by 4 or 5 that afternoon. It sure went in a lot easier than it came out - thank goodness!! We had the motor for the windlass (electric motor to raise anchors) rebuilt while we were here so that is next on the list to get finished.   I told Darrell that we are getting a new boat one part at a time. 
     A few days later, we said good bye to Charleston and traveled on the "outside" (as opposed to the Intra Coastal Waterway ICW) to Georgetown, SC. A very cruiser friendly town but not fun to enter at night!
     We have decided to travel the next several days to get to Oriental, NC where we will meet up with Al and Martha again (Daytona last).  They want to show us their home water/country. On one stretch of water we had a good laugh. Much of the time we are scanning the horizon for the next channel markers. In Snow Cut, near Carolina Beach, NC, I thought I spotted a green can buoy near the shore (out of place). I asked Darrell to double check me on the location and he saw it but said it was moving. When we got closer - thankfully I didn't go toward it - it turned out to be a man wading next to shore fishing . . . . in a green shirt!  By the time we reached him, he was on the shore!  Don't trust every day marker. lol
     We reached Oriental on Friday afternoon and got lucky to get to tie up at the town dock. www.towndock. net see us on the harbor cam!  Made it here to learn that Al and Martha can't sail with us because they have some necessary rudder/shaft repairs to make. Anyway we got some repairs done (boat things only break if you USE them) and explored the town with the free bicycles we can get here. This is a very, very cruiser friendly place!
     In the next few days, we hope to visit the Outer Banks (on my bucket list for a long time) and go to Beaufort, NC plus Morehead City before considering our options weatherwise for heading south.  
     Many places are ones that we want to return to - like Carolina Beach plus many others. Darrell went exploring yesterday morning and returned with 3 pounds of fresh shrimp - I mean off the boat FRESH!  Can't beat it!  
     Baby Lyric is due in just about six to seven weeks. We have got to decide if we want to take this boat farther south with the peak of hurricane season coming soon.