After a wonderful Christmas in Florida and a street party on New Year's Eve we got down to the business of preparing for our next boating adventure. It was a busy week trying to get our business sorted, appointments met, packing clothes, food supplies, and boat stuff for our 4 months on the high seas (in Florida it's shallow seas!!!).
Friday night we changed cars with our friends so we could pack it and be ready by 8AM Saturday morning. When Sandy and Al showed up to drive us their van was filled to the roof with bags packed under and between the seats. We somewhat underestimated what we had to bring!! The trip went smoothly and we arrived in Stuart, Florida in 2.5 hours. It took about an hour to move everything from the car to the boat with the dock carts and a marina golf wagon. Jane plugged in the electric cable, turned on the freezer and fridge, then started to unpack a cooler full of frozen food supplies. Sandy graciously handed bag upon bag of things to Jane below and Al helped Peter unload the car. After an hour our friends went to the restaurant at the marina to meet friends and Peter did a final trip to the grocery store. We joined them for a cold drink then said good bye at 3PM.
It is good to be back on board again. In the 2 months since we left our boat here in Stuart an osprey took residency on top of the mast to make noise and feed on fish. We found many little fish skeletons on deck and the canvas is now blue littered with white polka dots all over!!! Tomorrow is a day to scrub, scrub, scrub and get everything clean again.
Unfortunately there must have very windy weather because our port (left) line attached to the bow (front) of the boat either broke or chafed and our boat rubbed against a concrete piling on the starboard side. There is a shoebox section of the beautiful white hull that will now need to be resurfaced with gel coat and then waxed.
Peter got a Sirius radio for Christmas and is thrilled to have it set up and working on the boat. We can now get a great selection of music, cable news, and weather. It's a good thing, too, since our resident osprey must have used our flat TV antenna on top of the mast as it's plate because we have no signal. So, having only 2 things to fix isn't too bad. There is a cold front coming through tonight or tomorrow so we will have a few cold days and nights.......again!!!
So......8PM and everything is unpacked and put away. Oh, we discovered a cable TV hook up on the dock box, so now we can watch the football playoff game tonight.
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