Day 1

Will and I started off October 29 by arriving at SeaTac airport 2 hours ahead of flight time to allow for check-in and screening for our 12:25pm departure to Philadelphia. At 11:30 am we were informed that the flight was delayed indefinitely due to weather in Minneapolis and that we were likely to not make the connection to Philly. After the agent searched for half an hour he finally came up with a flight to Phoenix leaving at 4:30pm. Our connecting flight to Philly from Phoenix was a red-eye leaving at 7:30pm, arriving Philly at 6am the next day. Not a problem. Now all we needed to do was cancel the hotel reservation in Philly. After several phone calls the Travelocity agent informed us that our reservation was non-refundable. Not wanting to lose $113.43, a plan was devised to allow Shirl to check into the room since he was arriving around midnight, and he would inform the clerk that we would arrive “later on”. This satisfied Travelocity and the Sheraton Hotel and saved us the $$$.

Since neither Will nor I had slept much, we checked in the hotel at 7am. But hey, the room is ours till checkout time, so we managed to get a few minutes rest while Shirl arranged for a rental car. Shirl picked us up at the hotel and we went grocery shopping, after which he dropped us off at the boat while he tidied up some business in Philly. After Will and I cleaned out Shirl’s “expired” food stuff, we stowed all the groceries and proceeded to check out the boat. The generator was inoperative, but we got it running (low battery and rusty choke) but we got it purring. Shirl got back to the boat about 2:30 and after we gassed up the boat we decided that it was too late to try to head out today. Besides, Will and I were beat and we both had headaches. We agreed to cast off in the morning at 7am, off to bed for us.