The eve of St. Kitts

The week before a vacation is always hectic. There are things to do around the house, projects to finish at work, and of course all the preparations for the trip. We have one more day at home before our sunrise flight to Miami Tuesday. We'll need the time.
Packing is not yet complete. I had hoped to have this done at least a week ago, but failed miserably.
Execution on this trip planning and preparations has been sloppy at best. I have a thousand excuses but they are all lame. Truth be told, I have not been able to apply the same focus for this trip that I have put towards previous trips. We'll see if the results suffer because of it.
I currently have three bags packed:

• A Pelican 1610 case with the radio, tuner, power supply, mixer, and lots of cables.
• A golf bag with the Mosley Mini-32-A, two painter poles cut to be a mast for the beam, a 33-foot mast, a 40-foot mast, a couple of 20-foot fishing poles, and a few 48-inch fiberglass rods that I'll use to hold up radials.
• A soft-sided long bag with tools, coax, headphones, the W2IHY box, and the Timewave analyzer.

The total weight of the above is about 150 pounds, still less than 100 pounds per person, but more than I would prefer. And, that doesn't include the things I pulled out tonight including coax, the backup radio (FT-817), and the small Buddipole system. The last item is most troubling. The Buddipole has always been my safety net. I can make an antenna for any band 80-6 with it and its tripod eliminates needs for external supports. If there is room (and weight) available in the fourth bag, I'll try to sneak it in. It would be too weird without it.
The ARRL had an announcement for me which in the ARLD043 DX news which read like this:

ST. KITTS AND NEVIS, V4. Scott, NE1RD will be QRV as V4/NE1RD
from St. Kitts, IOTA NA-104, from October 24 to 31. He plans
to run QRP power in the upcoming CQ WW SSB contest. QSL to home call.

Well, I'm not planning on running QRP, but the rest is good. I'm not sure where they got the idea I'd be running QRP. Perhaps they read my goals section on the DXpedition web site where I mentioned QRP, or maybe because I'd been QRP in the last couple of years they thought I'd repeat on St. Kitts. For the record: I'm planning on running Low Power (100 watts) unless the IC-7000 dies. If it does, I'm down to the FT-817 (assuming I find a way to bring it) and I'm back down to QRP.

Sandy is packing clothes and books while I type this. I still have that task ahead of me. My next entry will likely be from St. Kitts on Wednesday. I'll try to post pictures of the installed antennas.