Thanks for your help. Believe me.. I've googled this and read and googled and read.. : )

Until I can actually 'do it' it's hard to get my brain around the fact that you patch the passive node first.. or go to the passive node to add an instance. the cluster rsources are are not active on the passive node which means services are not started and the system databases not accessible.. I'm so used to having drilled into my head to backup system databases before you patch!! I guess that is not the case with 2008 in a cluster?