Home Front

And so it goes.  The projects just keep a comin' whether on land or sea.  We have spent a week at home and Gary already has the wall up and ready to paint (I rather doubted he could finish it that fast, but he IS dedicated). He is building the wall in the garage to contain his ( as I call it.. kingdom of crap) and all of our personal household items. Don't know why we didn't do this 5 years ago.  It would have saved more arguments than I can count!  

 We went to Naples on Saturday, to bring home the shower sump which we are going to try and fix after finding out a new one was pricier than we thought, as is everything related to a boat, and to repair the master head (toilet) again a man job. 

We watched the Naples boat parade on Saturday night.  Quite the show.  One large yacht was decorated to the hilt and even had a live "Elvis" singing on the bow with flood lights and all.  Unfortunately I forgot my camera so no pictures.  It started to get chilly before the parade and we thought we should try to put up our curtains....I didn't know eisenglass could get so stiff, when I was polishing it in July it was like Saran Wrap but it all but screeched NOooooooo as we tried in vane to stretch it out.  We may have really screwed up.  Now we have to wait  for a really warm day and it sure doesn't look like that is going to happen anytime soon.

"The Garage Project"

We cast off the lines yesterday around 12:45 and headed for the Intracoastal Waterway back towards Naples.  We got to the Little Marco Anchorage about and hour later.  It reminds us of the St Clair flats, except for the palm trees.  You can only get here by boat.  Maybe we'll see a manatee today.

It was in the 50's when we left and headed into the North wind but as we made it up the waterway it warmed up considerably (but not enough for us to ride on a Jet Ski, no way) and we turned into the inlet between Keewadin and Little Marco Island.  It is beautiful quiet waterway and we found a nice wide area to anchor in. 

Today we may relaunch the dinghy, which we had to lift to get into the well on Wednesday, and do some exploring.  It is only a 2 minute ride to a beach where we can get over to the gulf beach and see what's up on this remote island. 

About as good as it gets 

The way we ended the day

They passed us just as we had taken off our Yellow Jackets...Crazy

The way we started the day....December 3rd

Factory Bay Dec. 1st...notice the direction of the palm trees!

Unexpected "Issues"

I am sad to report that we were real wusses....we stayed in the marina last night also.  It was just too comfortable and we knew it was going to be rough and cold again in the night.  We had a great chat with Phil and Margaret again, they headed out early this morning hoping to make it to Marathon by Sunday.  We wished we could have gone south with them instead of heading back into the North winds, but that's life.

We have seen very little of Marco Island...they don't even have a K Mart let alone a Wal Mart, Melinda had mentioned that it was 4 miles wide and 7 miles long.  Lot's of houses on canals.  We have been only to the Publix and the West Marine which is about a mile away.  We decided that was a good way to get exercise and for some reason West Marine is a magnet to a boater.  You get there and complain about the high prices .....every single time!  So then it's off to Ace Hardware...our next favorite stop.

Yesterday we ended up fixing a problem that wasn't even on the list yet, but would have been a major one the next day when our heads wouldn't flush!  We have had 3 pump outs already and 2 that didn't pump anything (luckily they were all complimentary) Gary finally figured out "there is something wrong with this picture", so he decided to dive in a do the MAN JOB.....it's funny how women can change thousands of dirty diapers but when it comes to "toilet issues" we're out of there!  It ended up being a clogged vent and a severely compromised hose opening years of gunk.  With Curtis's (the dock master) help we emptied that old tank, flushed her out and we are in business again!!!

So that's about all the excitement for the last 2 days.  The two families on the small sail boats are still out there, no running to shore for them, but then again I don't think they have working engines so they are learning life's lessons and developing strong backbones much earlier than most.

We are casting off today for a new anchorage on the way back to Naples.  Better protected from the North winds that are forcasted for the foreseeable future.

New Experiences

Well let's start by saying "today was a very interesting day".  We woke at 7am to calm seas, after getting up 3 times in the night expecting high winds and a shifting anchor.  We were very cocky with a "the weatherman doesn't know what he's talking about attitude when it began to.....I guess the best description really, is squall.  We were on the aft deck surveying the situation when Phil and Margaret in the catamaran lost their holding and went by us....this really made us pay attention and although we could not do anything to help them they did an admirable job of getting things under control. We were on alert for about a half hour when things settled down again. 

This was the story of the morning...touch and go.  The winds came and went and we had a decision to make, either haul anchor and move farther away from the docks behind us because we were pretty sure that if we let loose we wouldn't be able to stop a fiberglass to concrete collision, stay put and hope for the best or cave and get a well at the Marina.

The weather channel and VHF weather were predicting 20 to 30 mph winds tonight and this anchorage is very open to North Winds.....so our decision was to..................I am sure you are all thinking stay put but no we opted for the safety of the Marina and a decent nights sleep.  Of course the winds died the minute we tied up.

So we settled in and walked to town to get our interim inverter, which we found on sale at West Marine and it will at least power the frig.  Then we went to Phil and Margaret's boat, they also had to go into the marina because of refrigeration issues, and we had a great time learning tips from and commiserating with our fellow cruisers.

We are now watching TV for the first time in 2 weeks...highly overrated per me, but beats UNO by you know who!