Eric Gallant is the marina manager at Souris. Despite being always busy, he bends over
backwards to help his clients out. On
this occasion we needed to return the rental car to Charlottetown, about 50
miles away, and somehow get back to the boat.
Eric rearranged a trip to Charlottetown so that he could meet Ron there
and bring him back to Souris. (Thanks
Eric).
Our first “improvement” job was installing a WIFI
“extender”. This consists of a Ubiquity
Bullet, an Engenius Antenna and a Power over Ethernet injector. The Bullet and Antenna are hoisted up the
mast and greatly extend the visibility of any WIFIs in the area. We also brought from home an old WIFI router
to the boat and plugged the Bullet into that, so we can now connect multiple
laptops and phones to a WIFI hotspot that may be ½ mile away. In fact the range is advertised as being even
more, but we haven’t yet had the opportunity to test.
The next week and a half brought mixed weather; rain, cold
and occasional sunny. We did manage to
get quite a few jobs done though;
rewiring the stern light, rewiring the windgen, running an additional
solar panel cable, reinstalling the pulpit (which had been welded), and
trampoline (which had had grommets replaced).
And of course, there were the usual jobs of cleaning the interior and
re-stowing the contents of the boat, polishing the exterior, commissioning the
engines, greasing rubber cables etc.
The WIFI extender behaved very well during this period, even
through some very windy and rainy nights, and there were several rain days when
we were stuck inside the boat, very grateful to at least have wifi access.
Finally we are ready for launch …
