Thanks, Chuck. When you rugged ones were on the Texas 200, several of us followed the three of you on Spot, and it worked well. I'm sure many would appreciate being able to follow you (and others) on the Columbia. I will pass this along to my family.
A couple of related item. As some of the others know, I have a bit of a weakness for techie stuff. Wave Watcher has a HF ham radio, with a Winlink 2000 Internet tie. I will be leaving position reports that anyone can look at:
http://www.winlink.org/userPositionsTo use this go to the bottom of the map that appears, and at the box for "Enter Callsign" put W7PUA. The track will be on the Google map, and you can click on the pins to get a few words, and more info. (You can also follow the many travelers shown.)
Also, I plan to send some small pictures by email. These will include other boats and people. The number depends on radio conditions, and the time of day that I have a chance. If anyone (at home) wants to be on the email distribution for these, please send an email to boblark "at sign" proaxis.com and let me know. Do this before the trip, or I will not get it. For those with strong spam filters, the emails from the boat will come from W7PUA "at sign" winlink.org. Important: If anyone email-replies back to my boat, please remove all the received text and pictures. Start a fresh email if necessary. The bandwidth is limited and this is a big help.
Bob
Birdwatcher-2 "Wave Watcher"