OK, I can take a breath and get caught up.

I forgot an incident that happened on Lake Pepin on Saturday, the second day of the trip. I was taking a quiet minute to relax in the Galley, when I felt the boat making a 180 degree turn in the middle of the Lake. It was not a good sign and rushed out the door after stepping the dog food dish. As I clambered up the two sets of spiral staircases ( I told you it is a fancy boat!) , I noticed we seemed to be surrounded by a lot of sailboats. I got into the pilothouse and asked what was going on. I don't remember who was piloting, but they said they had been steering off the red buoys and realized they were going too close to the Wisconsin shore and had to steer hard back to Minnesota. "Buoys", I exclaimed, "there are no buoys in the middle of Lake Pepin"! "Well look at those, we took them to be normal river buoys", they said. They were close but they were the marking buoys for a sail boat regatta and we were right in the middle of them. I tried not to make eye contact with any of the sailors as slunk back to the galley for a stiff one. Only 1750 miles to go!