Octember Weather

 

Summer is good and over here in the Pacific Northwest. Local berries are no longer in the grocery stores. It's cold with spells of rain. Typical for when October blends into November: Octember. Now that our mail-in ballots are here we can plan to return to the boat in Malaysia. That is after we resolve the debate on who to vote for. Many of our international cruising friends look at us and want to know how could the US elect a president like the one we have. That is the international cruising crowd with the possible exception of male Australians, who seem to often have a penchant for the orange-haired leader.
The best explanation I've seen for the Trump phenomenon is that 80% of the country knows he is an asshole. 40%, or half, love him because of it and the other half hate him for it. In 2016 I predicted Trump would win. In 2020 I predict he is going to get his ass handed to him. We'll see.
The other day we were shopping in the local Costco. We both slipped into daydreams about how easy it would be to provision the boat if we could do it here. The shelves are stocked high here. About the only thing in short supply is ammunition at the gun shops. Want to get ammo for your newly acquired Glock? Limit 5 boxes per customer. Even Costco is now carrying the old military style ammo boxes. If you have been collecting guns over the years here, then now’s a nice time to list them online so you can get 4 or 5x return on your investment. It’s reported that 40% of gun purchases are first time buyers this year. Pretty crazy situation. 

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It has been a journey trying to figure out how we can be reunited with Georgia.  The Malaysian borders are closed to tourists and the US is on the high risk list of countries. Malaysia is seeing a new wave of Covid cases like much of the rest of the world. Compared to Washington state they are at about 1/5  to 1/10 the infection rate per capita (depending on when and what you compare). And Washington is one of the better states in the US for Covid-19 control.
The first plan to reunite with Georgia was to have her delivered to Singapore and then do a "crew transfer" where we would fly into Singapore and the delivery crew would fly back to Malaysia. Singapore is one of the worlds largest shipping ports. They have a very detailed procedure for crew transfers on and off these ships. We had hoped to sneak into this procedure. In the end it seemed like it might be possible, but expensive. We would be paying a delivery crew for close to a month as they had to deal with multiple country quarantines.
Then we got wind of a couple of UK cruisers who got permission to reunite with their boat.  We headed up to the Malaysian immigration site and applied online for special permission to reunite with Georgia. We explained that she is our only home, that we will be spending significant money readying her to cross the Indian Ocean with the local establishments, etc. They quickly responded with a single entry permission beginning Dec. 1. We are allowed to fly to Kuala Lumpur. We will be met at the airport and transferred to a local hotel for a 14 day quarantine stay. Then a Covid test and we are free to continue on to Langkawi.  At least that's the current plan.

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To keep myself busy and stave off additional mental decline, I needed a project. I found this 1955 Shopsmith woodworking tool in a barn near here. The owner wanted it to go to a good home and offered it for $100. What a steal. They still make these machines and the new parts fit the old system.

Pulled the thing entirely apart, found the original paint color and got her looking pretty, This thing is a drill press, table saw, lathe, jointer, planer and boring machine, all in one.

Till we make it to quarantine.

Paul