Five people we know at Starbucks this morning.

At the boat show, we ran into at least six people we know. Maybe more; it's easy to lose count. Some Whitby folks. Many vendors we've worked with. Many cruisers.

One benefit of being a cruiser: a tightly-knit community. Sprawling all over, but still tightly-knit.

It was cold and spitting rain, but we looked at the various booths and products.

• Garhauer blocks to clean up our mainsheet handling. This will be our third distinct approach; this time it's based on what we saw on Alegria. We're struggling with the squared-off aft end of the bimini and the fact that the mainsheet will chafe on the bimini when sailing off the wind. We're also struggling with the lack of a traveler on a Whitby.

• B&G instruments. Very interesting. Probably hellishly expensive. Their sales pitch is focused on sailing. Most other instruments are focused on power boats with sailing as an extra feature.

• Spot Satellite Phone. An alternative to SSB for certain kinds of communication. Specifically, we can get Chris Parker's weather and we can phone shore-based family.

• Schaefer in-boom furling. Very interesting. Expensive… but… so helpful to be able to raise, lower and reef the main without the complexity we have now. Schaefer, in particular, has the gears at the boom end, allowing reefing at almost any point of sail.

We glanced at life rafts and other things we might want to add to Red Ranger.

After dinner at the Ram's Head Brew Pub, we dinghied back to Red Ranger shortly before it began raining (again.) We're hoping for some dry weather on Monday or Tuesday before mildew sets in.