Year in Review

As the year winds down and we plan our trip to Sausalito for New Year's weekend (on Pineapple Girl, of course), I have been reflecting on 2010. What a year it has been...

Most of the first half of the year was consumed with getting Tiki J ready for the 2000+ mile Pacific Cup race.  Boat projects, racing, boat projects, provisioning...

Ocean race highlights included
+ my second trip around the Farallones--I was very lucky both times as the weather was nice and the smell was not too strong.  I think this was the day we wrapped a spinnaker sheet around the prop during some practice jibes after the finish.  D'oh!
+ The Duxship race where it was VERY rough out, super windy, big wells with short periods. Just miserable.  All the agony of the day was rewarded by surfing in through the gate.  As much as a boat that size / weight can surf, but still.  The conditions that day really showed us what the boat was capable of.

Pac Cup prep highlights included
+ the refrigeration system croaked a few weeks before the race and sent us into a tizzy over whether to replace it or change our food plans (we replaced it)
+ the new forward water tank burst when it was filled two days before the race.   Glad I wasn't there that day.

Provisioning highlights included
+ driving all over the bay area trying to find fresh, never refrigerated eggs as the supposedly last a lot longer

Pac Cup highlights included
+ seeing the stars from the middle of the Pacific.  Wow, doesn't get much better than that.

Pretty shortly after we got back we got Pineapple Girl 2.  Highlights with the new boat:
+ Our dear friend Mike Murphy came to our first cruise out (labor day weekend) and told us he wanted us to have his dinghy.  Mike died October 28.  I am so grateful to him for his generosity to us as he was battling for his life, but that is the kind of guy he was.  There aren't many like him.
+ Waiting out a storm at Angel Island in October--just hanging out in the saloon, listening to the niners game on the radio, waiting for the 30-40 knot winds and the rain to subside.  they did, and we had a great trip home
+ Thanksgiving at Angel Island
+ basically all the time we get to spend on the boat, whether at the marina or on a trip, whether hanging out or working on it.  There is so much to learn about it and it is so much fun doing it!

Other things:
+ well of course the car crash and Matt's new car fall into the "what a year it has been" category, though not necessarily a highlight.  though Matt's new car is pretty cool.  Adaptive cruise control is awesome!
+ A definite highlight is all the good friends and great people we have in our lives!  Thanks!

Weekend Wrap-Up

Our yacht club asked us to do a dinner Friday and give a presentation about the Pacific Cup.  The boat owners put together a slide show / video and Matt and I served tacos for dinner.  That only took three trips to Costco and one to a Mexican restaurant for beans and rice.  I did the shopping and Matt did the cooking and prep.  Several people pitched in to help with the room set up and clean up and all in all we had a great time AND we got this nice note from one of our members:

Hi Jennifer and Mat:

Besides being a lot of fun, the dinner you prepared was the best of the year. I love taco's. All the best, --

WOW!  So after THAT we had to take off and relax for the rest of the weekend.

Saturday morning we took the boat down to Westpoint Marina in Redwood City.  The marina is so new that it and the channel through the slough that lead to it are not charted.  It was somewhat nerve racking to get in there but we made it!  Matt was not totally lined up with the slip and came in a little too close on starboard but the docks are designed with rounded edges so we just got a little scratch.  The Owner of the marina was down there before we even had the dock lines tied and gave us a warm welcome, complemented us in the boat and then went to get us a 50 amp to 30 amp converter so we could plug in.  He also pointed out the wi fi and the slip side pump outs that were available to us.  We really like the place and look forward to the day when the proposed further development is in place.  Right now it is a mile walk to get to the yacht club and restaurant up the rode.  After we got the boat settled in we set off on that walk to go check out the "port fest" at the port of Redwood City.  It was super fun and we ended up finishing the afternoon at the Sequoia Yacht Club.  They cruise to Angel Island for the weekend on the day after Thanksgiving every year and we let them know we were coming up Thanksgiving day and would be there the whole weekend.  They also invited us to come to South Beach Yacht Club in San Francisco with them to go ice skating in December.  AND one of them offered to drive us back to Westpoint, though we ended up having a friend come up to have dinner with us at Bella's and she drove us home after.

Here is Matt on the boat at the slip in Westpoint.

We were in bed by 9 and had grand plans of leaving early Sunday morning.  We actually did not leave until almost 11, which we can pretend was due to the tides as that gave us a nice ride home on the ebb tide.  I drove a lot of the way and then turned it over to Matt to get us into the slip as I got out the lines and fenders.  It was his best docking yet, just absolutely spot on.  He made a comment that of course he did great with nobody around and I pointed out that someone on the next dock had actually been watching.  I have seen this same guy watching us several times and Matt said he has heard that this guy just got his boat and is afraid to drive it.  Our motto is it is only fiberglass but this guy's boat looks a few decades newer so I guess he has more reason to be paranoid about getting in and out of the slip???

We have a few different boat projects going, including installing GFCI outlets (1 down, 1 or 2 to go depending how they are wired) making covers for the outside of the windshield windows, finishing the throw pillows... we have a two page to do list...

This Saturday is our anniversary and we are going to be race committee then host a potluck.  Hopefully Sunday will be "our" day and we can relax and work on some of our projects!

Pac Cup Start Photos

just saw these online...

http://albums.phanfare.com/isolated/g1wXS0Ff/1/4739777#imageID=104127920

this one is us and there are lots more of our start.  I think the photographer is friends with the Cirrus crew as he has lots of photos of them!  They are really nice folks.

Tiki J Return

Thanks Neophyte for asking about the return.  Tiki J is about halfway back and can be tracked here.  you then have to select the boats to track.  There aren't that many boats so it is kind of neat to select them all and see the lines going all over the place.  Looks like Pegasus had to turn around and go back to Hawaii.  Interestingly the delivery skipper is doing a lot better sticking with Coyote than we managed to do on the race!

Forecast

About to get ready to head to the marina!  Forecast looks light, then not so much.

Murphy's Law

Matt and I went to the store for all the perishables.  For whatever reason we decided to use the self checkout.  We scanned, bagged, scanned, bagged.  The scale kept getting annoyed and telling us we hadn't bagged something or there was an "unexpected item in the bagging area."  We had so many bags (we brought four HUGE tote bags plus needed to use the grocery stores bags) that we have to move bags off the scale, which of course caused the recorded voice to scold us.  The customer service girl standing there kept having to override the machine.  So we were finally down to one last item.  Our total was $298.10 and we weren't sure if the last thing would put us over $300.  Matt scanned it, the machine made the normal beep sound but the price didn't come up.  We asked the customer service girl to come over and see what was up and she said the machine was frozen up and we'd have to start over.  Matt and I looked at each other and our faces fell.  Matt said, nicely, "we have to start over, oh boy" and she looked at me, looked at Matt, looked at our bags and bags of food and said since she knew what total we were up to she'd just ring it up as miscellaneous and scan the last item.  THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

Ha ha, you probably thought that was the "Murphy's Law" story.  Not quite.  So when we got home I texted the boat owners and told them the story.  Kim responded with something along the lines of, "I've got a better story.  The forward water tank failed."  So the boat is supposed to have two 50 gal H2O tanks but the original owner replaced one with a huge battery bank.  He had the forward 24 gal holding tank repurposed (in the factory!) as a water tank and the forward head was plumbed to go overboard at all times.  A few months ago we had the head plumbed to the 24 gal tank to use it as a holding tank as J boats intended and had a custom 35 gal water tank built just aft of it.  This is the tank that "failed" today.  Kim was not clear on the details of what went wrong.  I got the impression it was catastrophic and not fixable.  Last time I talked to Kim she was on her way to get some big water jugs so we would still be able to take enough water.  We are REALLY glad this happened today and not after we left.  That could have been a race ender right there.  Tiki Blue has something similar happen on the race last year but I they were able to make it to Kaneohe Bay without having to use their emergency water.

I keep promising pictures; tomorrow is the day.  I will take a bunch after we get the perishables stowed.

Bon Voyage Party

Here is our club manager Carly with Tiki J crewmember Vince in the background. Vince's son Shem and one of Shem's friends provided entertainment.  I took a lot more pictures later when everone was there but they are all pretty dark so I won't post any today.

More Prep

I finally have SOME pictures, more to come.  Our Bon Voyage Party at our yacht club is tomorrow night so I will try to get some pictures of that, plus more of the boat.

The all important item being brought down!  You would not believe how much debate there was around how much TP we needed.  Come to find out Mr. "I only need four squares per poop" (love you man, :) YKWYA) relies on baby wipes for the rest of the job.  We have LOTS of baby wipes aboard!

We got a second spinnaker pole.  We are still working out how we are going to rig it but we are close!  We plan to do dual pole jibes.  Hopefully figuring out how to use the set-up won't be too difficult! 

We had to buy new cowls for the dorades after losing one on the Spinnaker Cup return. Aren't they pretty?

We also had to rerun the roller furling line so we could use the eyes and block it used to run through for our second foreguy for that second spinnaker pole.  We managed to find three of these at one local West Marine and we have two more on order, due in today. 

We had to finish installing the latching handles for the reefer lid.  They turned out pretty well.  The latching part JUST clears when we open and close the lid.

Last pictures for today show how we have some of our food stored.  The cupboard on the left has dinner and lunch food and the cupboard on the right (behind the oven mitt in the first photo) has breakfast food.  This space held the microwave, which we decided not to bring.  We gained a bit more space by sawing out the false bottom.  We then had to come up with something to go across the front to hold everything in.  I came across this eagle creek bag at the Container Store.  Not only does it hold things in the cupboard but we can also stick stuff in it.  So far it is the home to the lighters for the stove and the all important kitchen timer.

I am at the point now that I need to relax and not freak out that I need to go buy more food or clothes or ...whatever.  I need to trust in all the planning we have done and believe that WE WILL BE FINE.  We are going to have plenty of food., water, baby wipes, TP, sunscreen, ETC! 

Provisioning / reefer lid

We got most of the non-perishables down to the boat over the weekend.

and tonight we prepped two of our early dinners.  We made beef stroganoff and chicken enchiladas to "heat and eat" on the trip.  We are also taking a Stouffer's Lasagna and a stew from a crew member's wife for "heat and eat" dinners, then the rest of the trip we will prepare and cook the dinners while underway.

Also tonight we did most of the work for replacing the lifting handles on the reefer lid with latching handles.  These are "just in case" of a knock down or inversion, so the lid does not go flying. 

What is this ratings stuff?

 From Wikipedia:

The handicap number assigned to a class of yachts is based on the yacht's speed relative to a theoretical yacht with a rating of 0. A yacht's handicap, or rating, is the number of seconds per mile traveled that the theoretical yacht should be in front of or behind that yacht. Most boats have a positive PHRF rating, but some very fast boats have a negative PHRF rating. If Boat A has a PHRF rating of 15 and Boat B has a rating of 30 and they compete on a 1 mile course, Boat A should finish approximately 15 seconds in front of Boat B. Results are adjusted for handicap by the race committee after all competitors have finished.

The Pac Cup is a 2070 nautical mile course.  When our rating went from 88 to 63, we lost 25 seconds per mile.  So for the race that is 51750 seconds.  862.50 minutes.  14.375 hours.  More than half a day!  We did not think we could sail to that rating.  In other words, we did not think the boat was fast enough that we could afford to give that much time to our competitors and still be competitive.  With that rating we could expect to correct out (the finish order after the ratings corrections are applied) to last place.  We are not expecting to win the race but it is depressing to start a race knowing that you have no shot at doing well!  By having the boat weighed we got almost half of that time back--6.9 hours over the 2070 nm course.   That seems more realistic for the boat's performance and puts us on the "slower" end of the group we are starting with.  Considering how we have done against these boats in other races over the past year and a half, that is where we should be.  So we hope to be more competitive within our division and the fleet with our "correct" rating of 75.

There are two other boats in our division with the same rating.  Like Ay Caliente in the Ocean Races, we will know in real time how we are doing against these two boats.

12 days to go!

Weights and Measures, things left to do...

Tiki J is being motored over to Berkeley right now to be weighed. Getting the boat weighed involved taking most everything off of it, including the sails. We spent five hours unloading it yesterday and moving everything to the owners' garage.  The owners left the marina around 9:30 this morning and will meet the "official measurer" at 2 pm to have the boat hauled out of the water and weighed.  At least now we will KNOW what the boat really weighs and we can stop the endless speculation on how much the radar arch and all the other "extras" added by the original owner put us over the book weight of 19,500.  It was amazing to see how much higher she was floating after we took everything off!  We have had guesstimates ranging all the way up to 25,000.  We should have done a pool on what the weight will really be.

There are people coming out the boat every day this week to work on various thing, including installing a new refrigeration system. Saturday we hope to organize everything in the garage and decide what goes to Hawaii and where it will be stowed, then stow it all by Sunday. We also have most of the non-perishable food in our spare room which all needs to be organized and stowed. Then on the 4th we have to buy and stow all the perishables...

Here is the schedule:

6/23 - Wed - Autopilot repair

6/24 - Thur - Autopilot Repair

6/24 - Thur - Alternator Regulator reprogram for AGM, install temp sensor

6/25 - Fri - Reefer install

6/26 - Sat - Reefer install

6/26 and 6/27- Sat and Sun - Organize gear and load boat

7/3 - Sat - Skippers Meeting and Pac Cup Bon Voyage Party

7/4 - Sun - Purchase and stow perishables

7/5 - Mon - Any last minute items, stow personal gear

7/6 - Tues - DEPARTURE!

Another Ratings Change??

We were notified by YRA yesterday that there was an error on our PHRF certificate that they had just noticed and corrected, resulting in a lower downwind rating.  This is the third downwind rating we have had this year.  Our regular rating is 81.  Our original downwind rating was 39.  Then we requested a change as we would carry only symmetrical spinnakers.  We expected 3 seconds for that but our new downwind rating came in at 88.  Believe me I called to make sure that wasn't a mistake and I was assured it was correct.  Yesterday we received notice that one of our spinnaker measurements had been reported in meters and they had converted it to feet and recalculated our downwind rating as 63.   It will probably change again as I sent the new certificate to our sail maker to check the converted measurement and it was listed as a foot larger than it actually is.  We shall see where we land but it looks like we will still start Tuesday at 12:15 as there are a couple of boats with lower ratings than 63.

Edit: the sail measurement correction did not change the new rating of 63 so now we are discussing potentially having the boat weighed and trying to get another new rating before the race.  We have had several people tell us our boat weighs more than what J boat says as we have a huge s/s radar arch.  Two people from the PHRF committee said that the weight makes a "significant difference" in the downwind rating.  I just talked to the official measurer and he guestimated it could be 5000 heavier (that is 25%) than the "official weight" and he has never even SEEN the boat or its arch.  Why couldn't this have happened BEFORE the last minute???  LOL.  Gotta love this yachting stuff.

Running Out of Time

Just in the past few days I have gone from feeling that I have all the time in the world to finish getting ready for the Pac Cup to feeling like there is not enough time!  For instance, I was grocery shopping for home last night and thought I'd pick up a few things that I know we need for the trip.  This morning I was marking them off the Pac Cup shopping list and realized I have barely made a dent in the list.  WHEN am I going to buy all this stuff?  WHEN am I going to figure out where to stow it all?  WHEN am I going to make and freeze the dinners for the first three nights?  WHEN am I going to pick up and stow all the perishables?

I am not panicking (quite yet) but the reality of how little time we REALLY have left is starting to sink in!  Less than three weeks!

Baling Wire and Chewing Gum

I received a comment in an email from one of my readers:

This boat sounds worse than my Dad's old '41 Ford that he held together with chewing gum and bailing wire. But you people are paying big bucks for these repairs and are going across the Pacific Ocean in this thing. My sister and I only drove the old Ford around town! I guess you're feeling confident about the condition the boat will be in at departure?

My readers that have a boat will probably recognize that this comment came from someone who doesn't.  :)  Honestly, if this was a power boat I probably WOULD be nervous but since it is a sailboat and we have had ZERO problems with anything to do with the sailing aspect of the boat (well, other than user error) I know we can get to Hawaii.  Not having a refrigerator is a bit of a bummer but certainly not insurmountable.  We already have a plan for that and since we still have a working holding plate in the reefer box it actually stays quite cold if you put something in there (i.e. dry ice) to freeze the holding plate's eutectic solution.  I anticipate having no problem keeping the box cold into the second half of the race.  Then we start eating spaghetti with canned meat sauce, snickers bars and stuff like that.  If you have seen "Morning Light" (the Disney movie of the young people who did a Trans Pac race a few years back), we will be eating MUCH better than they did!

The managing partner made a significant discovery through this latest boat yard experience.  He was continually being told that he was better off repairing what we had instead of replacing the troublesome items because the equipment we have on board is "the best."  For example, we have "the best" refrigeration system, "the best" electric heads and "the best" autopilot.  The reefer is now kaput, the electric heads are currently working after MANY visits from "the head guy" and many parts being replaced and the autopilot has NEVER actually worked despite numerous expensive parts being replaced. So the discovery Scott has made is that when the shop tells you the thing you have is "the best" and you should repair instead of replace you MIGHT want to consider ripping the damn thing out immediately!!  What it is actually "the best" at is lining the repair man's pockets and not actually WORKING!!!  Or maybe we just have bad luck!  All the items that ARE new (where Scott went ahead and ripped out the old and put in new) work just fine.  But it IS a boat so it is only a matter of time!  Hopefully a LONG time though.  We are running short on baling wire and bubble gum!

This weekend we slummed it on a friend's power boat on our yacht club's cruise out.  Here we are setting up the lounge chairs on the top deck.  It was such a hassle to go up and down the steep ladder to get more beer but we managed somehow.  Before long we had four plastic chairs up there along with the steamer chairs as we had so many visitors.  One person jumped in to swim back to his boat.  :)  Tons of fun.

In the Yard Again...

So the boat is back at the yard.  I believe this time it is for the fuel / tanks after our incident with the motor dying on Saturday, and having the autopilot looked at as we have not been able to get it to work.  We figure the return crew are probably going to want that!  It SHOULD work now as we had a new ram arm installed and one of the crew got the rudder position sensor to fit on the new arm, we attempted to calibrate it twice at least, but still no luck with it.  Argh. So far I do not believe we have a decision on the refrigerator.

I see I forgot to mention Ay Caliente in my posts on Memorial Weekend / Spinnaker Cup.  I don't think I had ever actually met any of the crew from that boat and I finally did over the weekend.  I have said before that they are my favorite competitor in OYRA since they rate the same so we have instant feedback on how we are doing compared to them (plus they usually do well so if we are doing well on them we are doing REALLY well.  that is rare).  Also I have to like them since they have a big chili pepper as their logo and they have it on their spinnaker.  Gotta love people with a big logo on their spinnaker.  Makes the whole thing more fun.  So anyway I talked to I guess the owner in Santa Cruz and commented on their spinnaker blowing up at the end of the Farallones race.  His reply was along the lines of "wasn't that AWESOME!!!!"  Okay I REALLY like this guy now, so laid back and just out there having a good time!  Love it!

Wow so I googled them to get a picture and see they have their own webpage.  Their motto is "this boat was built for fun."  NICE.

Sail Mail for Blogging / Pac Cup Prep

We sent ourselves some test Sail Mail emails last night when we are on the boat.  Sail Mail attaches a LOT of information to the bottom of the email, including the email address the email came from.  Sail Mail recommends closely gaurding your Sail Mail email address so I certainly don't want to post it on the internet!  I will have to recruit someone shoreside to post to my blog for me.  Maybe my dad, since he is a blogger as well? I believe the skipper is planning to blog on sailblogs.  If so I will post a link to that so my avid fans can follow our progress across the Pacific.

We have the Spinnaker Cup tomorrow and are still short a spinnaker sheet.  I have arranged for the rigger to leave it at a marina a bit North of here and for one of the crew to retrieve it this afternoon.  I hope it all works out.  This time last year I was picking up guys and a foreguy from this same rigger the day before the race.  I was imagining the foreguy would have blocks with it but it didn't.  Luckily I had enough time to pick up blocks at West Marine.  Nothing like the last minute!  The good news for our Pac Cup prep though is that we knocked a bunch of things off the list last night and even more is being done today.  We are looking fantabulous for the race. 

40 days to the Pac Cup

Hard to believe we only have 40 days until the Pac Cup.  When Scott bought the boat in October of 2008 in seemed like we had all the time in the world to get ready... and now it is less than six weeks away!  We are doing really well on our list so I am feeling really good about our prep.  I ordered the halfway party food yesterday, to be delivered around July 1st. 

My new latches for the reefer lid should be delivered today.  I probably won't be able to install them until the first weekend of June as we have the Spinnaker Cup this weekend...  Maybe I will finally take those pictures I keep talking about!

Make it Stop!

The skipper has added 30+ more things to the to do list!  With barely a month and a half we have almost doubled the list.  Luckily a lot are little things and some seem like reminders for him but still it depressing. :p  I am going to go be sad now.

Weekend Update

I didn't get the camera out of the car so no photos still.  We did get a lot done this weekend though we still have a lot to do to be ready for Saturday's inspection.  We weren't sure if we should have everything stowed as it will be for the race or have everything out or some combination of the two so I asked the inspectors and found we will need to have a lot more out then we realized, including having the rudder and emergency sails deployed.  I guess we know what we will be doing Friday night and early Saturday!

One of the little things that has been driving us nuts was the main dome light in the salon and the light in the forward head worked only intermittently.  If one worked, the other would and vice versa.  Matt and a buddy who is in an electrical engineer traced the problem to the head and after removing a few trim pieces managed to find a short section of wire "patched" into the wiring run with electrical tape!  Once the offending segment was removed and the wire joined with a proper connector, both lights worked and Matt installed an LED light in the main cabin.  He also put a new, brighter, light over the nav station.  Unfortunately at the end of the day our light in our AFT head was no longer working.  We'll have to figure that one out another day.

We also investigated a couple of leaks but could not replicate either of them so we are hoping the slight forward cabin hatch leak on the last race was due to it not being fastened all the way and that the water coming up under the nav station was due to a problem with a loose connection on the engine exhaust which has since been fixed. 

We had to take off our swim ladder for the emergency rudder installation and we had to do something about the resultant gap in the pulpit.  We had some line very artfully and decoratively tied there but that was not acceptable per the rules.  We had all the while plastic covered lifelines replaces last year with uncoated stainless and we had taken in the old lifelines to have them replicated and have the hardware reused on the new lifelines.  In the course of removing the lifelines we had dropped a couple of sections in the water which were later recovered by the diver.  At the time this was quite annoying as we ended up having problems with the new pieces not being made the correct length and we also could not reuse those fittings, however we ended up making use of one of those pieces to close our stern pulpit gap (though we have to strip off the coating still).  Hopefully the inspector will find this acceptable as the gate is not QUITE long enough and the gap is filled by line.  The rule says no more than a 4" gap may be spanned by line and we are just pushing that.  If he does not approve we can take in the piece and have a longer gate made.

We did several other little things and spent 10-4 Saturday working on the boat, then Saturday night I spent a few more hours cleaning up how the bungees attach our spinnaker blocks to the lifelines. We had been relying on knots and bungee material doesn't really hold a knot well, so know most of them have metal clamps, covered with heat shrink.  I have a few more to do.

Sunday we had a two + hour team meeting and went through the whole inspection checklist and our to do list to make sure we had everything covered.  We were going to discuss the last race and our crash but we never got to either, though we did have the chance to compliment our foredeck on their great (and fast) headsail change!

From my question to the inspectors I found I have to have ALL the extra water and not just the emergency water aboard and stowed for the inspection.  We need to carry 105 gallons (7 crew times 15 gallons per) including 7 gallons of emergency water.  The tank that came with the boat holds 50 gallons and I cannot remember if the one we had made holds 35 or 40 so I am figuring in 35.  That leaves me needing 20 more gallons.  My 7 of emergency water is 2 of the 2.5 gallon containers plus 3 1 gal jugs.  I think for the rest I will do 2.5 gallon containers (I think I will go ahead and get 6 and have a little extra) though I am not sure where exactly I am going to stow them.  I have a few ideas but hopefully nobody else is eyeballing the same locations for something else!  I think I will go to the store at lunch and buy them, then run over to the boat and see where I can put them.

Pac Cup Prep 5/14/2010

I was just finalizing my To Do list for tomorrow, the big "Let's finish everything before the inspection" work day and really, there is not much on it that is "for the inspection" per se.  I want to make sure everyone's gear is onboard but I know everyone HAS the gear, so that is not really an issue.  I need to get one more container of emergency water and label all the emergency water as such.  Matt needs to finalize the grab bag.  The rest of the stuff we want to get done this weekend is not related to the inspection.  (verifying we have all the spare batteries we need, installing the "shoe" bags, creating more storage area where the microwave was, installing some new lights, etc.)  I should take some pictures this weekend of what all we have done to the boat to be ready for ocean racing in general and the Pac Cup in particular. 

Matt and I are meeting with our boat partners and the delivery skipper Monday night at our house so I am going to finally make the Frito tacos with the canned ground beef.  We'll see how that is.  I think I already posted that the chicken was fine.  There were big globs of fat at the top of the can but that was easy to skim off.