St. Pat's Day

Still in Stuart Florida waiting for a weather window to head south to Keys.
We rented a car last week and drove to Savannah to see Tim, Morgan and dog Zelda.  It happen to be St. Patrick's day so we went downtown to see the 2nd largest St. Patrick's Day parade in the USA second only to NYC.  Tim's Army unit ( Go Calvary!) were marching in the parade.   We only stayed for part of the parade then we headed to where Morgan works then went and had Cuban food.  No corned beef and cabbage for this girl,  blah.  Joe and Tim repaired our truck and Morgans car while we were visiting  I cooked and baked and took care of Zelda, she is a 5 month old German Sheppard, and a brat.  Just like having an overactive 2 year old that does not know the word no. But she is a cutie when she wants to be.  Sunday here at the Marina they had an end of season party. All of the people who spend the winter here are heading back north complete with burgers, dogs and $1 beer.  Today I sanded teak on the deck and put some varnish on it.  Only 4 more coats to go.it is not hard just takes time and a lot of taping.  Going over to our neighbors boat tonight they pulled in a couple of days ago and the have an Islander 36 like ours.  We do not see many of our model boats here.  It is cool to see what they have done to their boats and get new ideas for ours. So this is a short blog today.  TTFN

God Bless America Lollipop

New companionway doors

Rebecca, Carlie, Chuck, Joe

The weather here is still being most cooperative in the 80's almost everyday which makes living aboard so much easier.  The boat projects have continued.  After the 11 inches of rain we received here two weeks ago, and all the leaks we had, we decided to re seat all of the side stays, all the experts say this needs done every 3 to 5 years, when it rained the other day again we did not see any leaks so maybe that solved the problem, we can only hope. We finished up the new companionway doors that we built in Ladys Island. It is so nice not to have to pull the hatch boards out everyday. Complete with smoked acrylic windows and screens we can see right into the cockpit from below.  Now we just swing the doors open.  We put pull apart hinges on them so we could remove them whenever we want.  They look great.  Joe finished hooking up the hot water heater to the engine so now when we run the engine each day to charge the battery banks we have hot water.  He also changed the oil and cleaned the fuel filter system, I made myself scarce when he is doing that.  Last Wednesday we took the boat over to the fuel dock, Joe put on his dive gear and went under the boat to replace the zincs and scrape the bottom.  He said it wasn't too bad, that was good news, we will have to bottom paint this summer though and that means we have to pull the boat out of the water. We also took on water and washed the boat down.   Our water tanks hold 50 gallons of water and if we conserve we can last 2 weeks.  Which is not too bad.  We also have 2 - 5 gallon water containers which we fill also when needed.
Last week I got my hull cleaning products, buckets and scrubbers out put everything in the dinghy and cleaned the entire hull of the boat.  Took me a couple of hours the wind was blowing 15 to 18 so it was kind of wavy during the process but I finished what I could.  I could not get the black streaks off the sides so when we go to provision next time I will have to get something to clean those off.  Then Draco will get a much needed wax job.  After that is done it is on to sanding and staining the teak on the outside of the boat, 2 hand rails and an eyebrows and the teak around the companionway so it won't be too bad.  The maintenance project list is getting shorter at the top but we keep adding more to the bottom. it is nice to cross some off the list but the list never ends.
We had visitors last week as well from St. Louis. Our niece, Rebecca, nephew, Chuck and our great nephew Charlie came to see us, they were enjoying the Cardinals training camp in Jupiter Florida.  Only about 30 minutes away, they drove up and spent the night on the boat with us.  Charlie is 3 and he talked and talked, I think he will be a Cardinals fan for life.  He would be telling you something and then blurt out GO CARDS!!!! then he would continue on with what he was saying.  We were walking in downtown Stuart with them on Friday night and Charlie starts singing God Bless America. A few people looked at him and some even joined in the singing. We all got a good laugh out of that one.  Next morning when we were raising the flag on the boat we let Charlie pull it up and we all joined in singing God Bless America.
For some unknown reason Charlie was calling us all lollipop when he was playing peek through the hatches at us on the boat.  His little blonde head would stick through the forward hatch and say hey you lollipop,he was so cute. We had some tootsie pops on the boat so before he left I stuck one in his pocket and called him a lollipop. I hope he can have candy???  They left early on Saturday so they could get to the Cardinals batting practice and game against the Twins then they were heading for Tampa.  The time together was too short and we did not get to take them sailing but we hope they come back soon. Thanks for coming to see us.  That's all I have for today.  TTFN

Run away Dinghy!

Hey All
Well we survived and cleaned up the almost 11 inches of rain we received in Stuart on Saturday. Not all of it ended up inside the boat but we had some significant leaks. Wow what a deluge.  Next morning the laundry area here was waiting room only but we are now clean and dry inside the boat.  Our dinghy during the storm accumulated all that rain,  It was running out the back it was so full we ended up bailing it out with a bucket and we decided not to waste all the fresh water so we got the boat soap out it was still the raining but not as hard, we scrubbed, washed and rinsed the dinghy down then we started on the side of the boat we scrubbed off some black marks and rinsed it down with the fresh rain water from the dinghy.  When you are cruising you have to be creative at all times.
Oh the run away dinghy story (we really do need a name) we came back from shopping and I tied off the dinghy as usual, can't blame this one on Joe, to the side of the boat, we were going back in to shore in an hour.  I came on deck and no dinghy I called down to Joe and said where's the dinghy.  He came on deck and our dinghy was gone it ran away from home.  We looked around the mooring field and see it floating about 100 yards of our stern.  Oh and it had our brand new scuba tank in it that Joe bought me for Christmas.  I look over to our friend and boat neighbors, Rick and Sandy, and see they are getting into his dinghy and I waved him down he motors over and when I asked he if he could go get our dinghy we all have a good laugh.  They were kind enough to rescue our no name transport and bring it back home.  The 3 of them had great fun making jokes all night about our run away dinghy.
We left Stuart yesterday and headed about 15 miles south to Peck Lake, It is just off the ICW we anchored here not before we ran aground hard in 6 feet of water, our draft is 6.3.  ARRRGGHHH!
Other boats anchored here saw what happened and came over in there dinghies to offer assistance.  We tried to back off we tried to go forward finally other cruisers in their dinghies got our bow line and got us turned around and after about a 45 minute ordeal we were freed up and found and anchorage in deeper water.   Me and another guy were pushing the boat from our dinghies from behind.  It was our friend Rick who finally got us pulled free.  We sure did put on a good show for all the people anchored here.
It is a short ride to the shore, which is a nature preserve, jump onto shore walk about 50 yards and we are on the beach on the Atlantic ocean.  Going to beach today with a picnic lunch and a blanket.  DOLPHIN
focus Mary focus.  TTFN