February Fun

Well, the weather has been improving since the end of January. We've not had much rain at all and the strong winds have let up a bit in duration. One of the things on the to-do list has been to clean the bottom of the boat and change the zincs on the propeller shafts. I had picked a warm sunny day to do this job but the wind had been blowing from the north for a few days causing our area of the marina to get filled with floating sea grass, no big deal really I could work around it.

However, upon further review we saw the north winds had also brought in a few critters to visit. Seeing a few Portuguese man o'war floating around led me to find other projects that day.

The visits also have continued and we have enjoyed them all. Next up was my sister Kathy and our good friend Gretchen. Jill was able to get in some serious girl time with this visit. The nights were cool but the days were sunny and warm as we spent time showing them around the keys. One place we visited was a canal house we had seen on our dinghy pub crawl. This place was a large boat shed on the water side but built to look like a steam ship from the front. I'll try to get a pic of the water side if we get back that way.

We spent Super Bowl Sunday on a road trip to Key West and had a blast as usual. All to soon it was time for them to head back to the frozen north...hurry back,

Hello Ladies...

After a quick turn of the pillows our friends Ann and Grant checked in to the B & B. We wasted no time in also showing them around our winter home (for this year). First stop was for happy hour at the Sunset Grille. It really helps folks get into the "island time" mood.

It never gets old.

We also paid a visit to the Turtle Hospital which is only a short walk from the boat. They put on a very nice tour and explain how they rehab sick or injured sea turtles. If you find and help rescue an injured turtle you get to name him...that's our goal!! You can find out more about what they do by following the link above.

We also put our guests to work while they visit. Some projects are a bit too big for just Jill and I. Besides, you have to pay for that room and board somehow. One particular project that I had been wanting to do was to lay down the radar arch and measure our height with it down. When we set off on this Loop trip we really didn't know if we could make the boat short enough to clear the 19' bridge outside of Chicago. If you can't do that the Great Loop becomes the Great U-Turn...that didn't sound like fun. Good news is the radar arch isn't too heavy and can easily be laid down by 2 people. The boat is 17' 3" with the arch down and that is in salt water. We'll be even shorter in fresh water so there is no sweat getting through the loop.

Top Down Day

 
We also made the pilgrimage to Key West as well as checking out a few new stops like the Big Pine Key flea market. It don't get better than that!! One other note about Big Pine is that it is home to the Key Deer and we found several as we were trying to find the No Name Pub. Nice thing about Key Dear is they are trained to only cross the road near the deer crossing signs....This buck is about the size of a large dog.

Again too soon, our friends were heading back to the (this time) foggy north. If you see Grant ask him about the adventure getting home.

This week was spent getting some more boat projects completed that we've been putting off. I think they call it Keys Disease when you keep thinking you'll get to it tomorrow. We have another round of visitors coming next week and then our time is up here in Marathon. The "plan" for now is to head west to Key West for a few days in early March before making our way up the keys toward Miami in mid March. At that time we'll look at the forecast and see if the patterns are right to head to the Bahamas. If not we'll just move more slowly up the east coast of Florida being careful not to outrun the warm weather. As nice as it's been to be in one place for this long we've both said how ready we are to get moving again....I guess it's a boater thing. One salty old boater told us "when you're walking down the street and someone honks and waves at you, you've been here too long....that happened yesterday.

Until next time, remember.............