We’re not very good at updating, yet.

Well a lot has happened since the enthusiasm of our kids helped to start this site. Now it’s time to try and add to it ourselves. Mitzi has been chastising me for not keeping it up. So here it goes…

Living on a mooring ball is interesting. The rules of the harbor say you can only leave your boat unattended with someone else keeping an eye on it for 7 days, 10 in a pinch. Well John had flown home the same day the girls arrived which was wonderful. Later the plan was for me to fly Southwest Airlines home to celebrate the holidays with everyone. Early Christmas Day before the sun was up my flight was cancelled. Oh no! The time allowed away from the boat was counting down! Found a United flight but would miss everyone for the Christmas celebration. It still turned out to be a great trip.

By the way, I still like Southwest, they increased the number of flights, at least what I could see, to get from Houston to Sarasota before Hurricane Ian so boat owners could prep their boats. A big Thank You for that.

Boot Key Harbor in Marathon, FL is a great place to stop. Some people get there and stay much longer than planned. It’s the sticky bottom affect. They have a great cruisers net where they welcome new arrivals, questions can be asked, help can be requested and usually found, and the local community going ons are announced. Also the place has so many things going to do… corn hole, pickle ball, bocce ball, community garden, local plays, fishing seminars, cooking classes, bikes to borrow, a great workshop area, jam session night, weekly happy hour and more. No wonder it was hard to leave. But we finally did at the start of March.

Sandy and the boys came to visit us in January which was a real treat. So back to Key West to see the 6 toed cats at the Hemingway house. again. The boys were really fun to have around. It makes going to the beach and anything else you do seem that much more exciting. They even got to see a real Cuban Chug boat that was used for some refugees trying to get to the US.

To emphasize that cruising is NOT an endless vacation and an escape from everyday drudgery. We had head issues that plagued us for about a month. For you landlubbers, that’s the toilet. Yuck! John say that’s a green (money) job, but I said, “I can fix that”. Hmm it was gross, stinky, and I only improved the situation slightly. Finally after the head completely stopped working the day before we were planning on leaving it we decided to call in the professionals. Did you know there aren’t many people willing to replace head hoses even if you dangle lots on money in front of them? Therefore it was a poo bucket for the trip, even more yuck. We finally got the hoses replaced in St Augustine. It was amazing our head worked as long as it did.

One a more polite note, the Sunday before we left Marathon some manatee, a sting ray, and jellyfish came for a visit. These are some of the things that make traveling on a sailboat worth it.