Wednesday, April 5

We flew to Florida on one way (!) tickets this time. We are here to finish preparations for the trip and get ourselves trained to pilot and manage our boat. There are still boat issues to be addressed as well.

But we are making progress! We got out on the bay yesterday. It was windy and there were waves so I took a Bromine and soon fell asleep!  I woke up when we were heading into the marina and Dirk practiced maneuvering and docking the boat a bunch of times. Backing in! He did it too – by himself (with Captain Russ there the whole time just in case).

Last night we had dinner with our friend Donna – who just happened to be here for about a week. We took a selfie at sunset at Mile88.

Today Dirk put our new  boat name on the boat and I was lining drawers, trying to declutter and find places for everything. It hot so we turned on the AC finally. I’ve been avoiding it until now.  Later Donna took us out into the bay on a zippy skiff and we traveled on some of the waterway we will be using to head north to Miami soon. She also showed us Toilet Seat Alley – a very classy section of the bay off Islamorada.  It’s shallow channel lined with toilets seat containing all kinds of messages. It of course contains one celebrating her and Carl’s wedding a few years ago, placed there by their friend Tom.

We had dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant within walking distance of the marina, and came back to find a puddle of water on the floor below the air conditioner vent in the salon. So we have a new mystery – Why is this happening (besides the fact that we bought a boat I mean!)?  We removed the AC vent and part of the wall and looked at the air conditioning unit and pan and can’t see a leak.  We have a borrowed fan to help dry out the floor.