By the time you read this Jana and I should be back from our cruise to Alaska. We didn't know that our ship had Lucas Electronics in the engine propulsion system. We were a couple hours out of Ketchikan when we felt a thud and a slight change in speed. My initial thought was we hit something but everything seemed normal after that. Later as Jana and I were heading to dinner I noticed that we had slowed considerably and were heading south and east. At dinner we heard the following announcement: "This is the Captain speaking from the navigational bridge. I want you to know that we have experienced an electrical problem with one of our two propulsion units and in an abundance of caution we are returning to Ketchikan to correct the problem. Unfortunately we will not be going on to Juneau tonight. We will make further announcements when we reach port tonight.” The Captain had a very strong accent and didn’t like to give bad news so we did not hear from him very often and the cruise director would speak behind him and translate his broken English. There was a comic on board doing evening shows and he was relentless in his jokes and humor. He really had lots of material to work with. In the grand scheme of things the Captain did the right thing and we ended up spending four days in Ketchikan and the ship is headed to dry dock to be fixed. Celebrity flew us to Anchorage and we are now on the land portion of the cruise.

So the tie in to Lucas, have you ever had an MG trip problem because of an electrical problem? Have you ever had an electrical problem fixed only to have it happen again? How about it happening three times in a row. Well that is what happened to Jana and me, it was an electrical problem to the propulsion system on the third straight cruise in a row. Both previous cruises they "fixed" the problem, this time they cancelled the following several months’ worth of voyages for their ship the Millennium. On our portion of the land visit to Alaska we have run into people who were scheduled for the Millennium cruise back to Vancouver Canada. I have to say that Celebrity is and has done a good job to make the best of an unfortunate situation.

Enough of that. It has been a great month for MG Club activities. I have to say that September will also be a good month. We will have a tech session at our September meeting and I think that you will find it to be a good learning and sharing session. Steve Skegg will be the host for the club session. Some of you may not know Steve, so this will be a good opportunity to get more acquainted with him.

For our October meeting we will be celebrating our clubs 37th birthday with cake and champagne as well as providing scary MG stories that tie in with Halloween. For November we will be watching the cult video "Rendezvous.” Enough said about that. Some of us have never seen it, but I am told that it is a good one.

-- George Phariss

Remember—Safety Fast!