Satellite Beach at the Lee's Jan 12 - 26

Thanks for the photos, Kathy!

Jim, Kathy and Rachel are wonderful.

Jim, Rachel and Kathy Lee

We had a wonderful time and S/V Jupiter's Smile had a safe place while we did things besides cruising for fifteen days.  

Well ...... I take that back.  Cruising is not all about boating.  It is the living of a full life while living and traveling on a boat.  That includes being with friends and family, sightseeing and also doing the everyday chores that everyone does whether on a boat or on land.  We are not "boaters" because we live on our boat.  We are not "live aboards" because that does not evoke the travel aspect of cruising.  We are cruisers.  We do not know what is around the next bend, but we know that we can get there on our boat.  We can go nonstop or we can stop and smell the roses.  At the Lee's there are roses.


What we did .... we enjoyed each other.  Jim, Kathy and Rachel were all working, but we dined together often, either at their house, our boat or out on the town.  

We biked, hiked, combed the beach, and I flew in Jim's aircraft.  Here is a video Jim made while flying and then soaring his Phoenix motor glider.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOjB1kOdt8I

See more at his website

http://www.phoenixairusa.com/

Kathy is substitute teaching in the Satellite Beach schools and volunteering at the public library and several environmental causes along with Rachel.  Rachel is a junior at the high school, taking three advanced placement classes, playing the clarinet beautifully in the marching band and in the all county band.  She is taking a class in Spanish on-line.  She leads a full social life, gets great grades and will probably catch up on her sleep in a decade or so.

Across the street from the Lee's live the Glinski's, Tom and Cindy.  In their back yard is the Hinckley Bermuda 40, S/V Feather.  This beautiful vessel is fifty years old this year and has had a long and illustrious life that will continue for several more years and many more nautical miles under their care.  I called my sister, Betsy at the Hinckley shop in SW Harbor, ME and she knew about Feather and all its prior names.  Over cocktails, Cindy asked if we knew the big catamaran S/V Viva?  "Do you mean Viva Bob?"  "Yes!"  "We love Viva Bob!  We met him in Marathon, FL in 2008, again in Rio Dulce, Guatemala (stayed on his boat while Jupiter's Smile was in Abel's Boat Yard) and sailed with him to La Ceiba and Roatan, Honduras, in 2009.  We love Viva Bob!"  Small world!  As our friend Roger says, "There are only twelve of us out there doing what we are doing, it seems."  Certainly, that is an exaggeration, but the instances of repeated meetings with friends and friends of friends easily supports the six degrees of separation hypothesis.


While we were at the Lee's we got our "Little Buddy" heater!  

3900 BTU propane fired, indoor rated, shuts off instantly upon tipping.   Takes the edge off the morning chill and keeps us comfy in the cold evenings.  Highly recommended!

Barb and I rented a car and drove to Tampa to be with Christina and Larry for her birthday on the 22nd. 

Barb, Larry and Christina, Steve and Dan, Cathy and Gordon, Jay

We had a very nice visit, playing hard and found time to purchase the little red table in the Little Buddy photo above ($8 at Ikea)!  


Buying Little Buddy has made the weather in Florida turn warmer as well.  We are looking forward to wearing shorts, tee shirts and sandals all the time now.   

Time to move on.  So long for now.  Thank you, Jim, Kathy and Rachel.  We love you!

Florida - still cold weather, but heartwarming experiences

We stayed in Fernandina Beach on a mooring for five days.  I needed to fix a leak at the hot water tank and we enjoyed the quaint surroundings.  In talking with a young teen-aged girl we learned that she was a dog lover.  We mentioned that we had borzoi and she said that she knew a woman who has them as well and rescues them from bad situations in Florida.

"What is her name?"

"Ann Marie Wiseman."

Well, we know Ann Marie from when she lived in Colorado.  We called her and she returned the call.  We got together at the marina and we got to put our hands on a borzoi again for the first time in several months.  Ann Marie is doing well and several of her friends and family have moved to the area so this is definitely home for her now.  It was good to see her and another affirmation of the fact that the older one gets the smaller the world becomes.

Now that we were in Florida, we had two major projects on our plates.  Getting our leaking dinghy replaced and getting our life raft re-certified.  I had spoken with the Winslow life raft representative at the Annapolis Sailboat Show in October and knew that we could find them in Florida and be able to check that task off our list.  The Mercury dinghy issue could have been addressed in Washington, DC just down the dock from the marina, had we known, but we had been so occupied with family issues that boat issues were hardly addressed at all (once the brightwork varnish had been completed.)  The location of a Mercury inflatable boat dealer nearest us now was in Jacksonville.  We called MarineMax and a gentleman got back to us suggesting we pull into Jacksonville Beach at the Beach Marine Marina and he would come to the boat and check out the leaks and have a recommendation for us.  We and he did this and it was determined that we would be able to replace all the Hypalon rubber parts under warranty (10 year warranty!) except for the inflatable floor, which is PVC and has a one year warranty.  We have opted for replacing the the floor and paying for that and getting a new boat under the warranty.  It is expected to take four to six weeks to get the new parts.  MarineMax has a store in Pompano Beach farther down the coast so we have transferred our transaction to that store.  Now we wait, but we do not need to stop moving south in search of warmer weather.  S/V Nightingale has moved on to do some business and we will meet again in St. Augustine.

St. Augustine has installed two mooring fields since we were there last time.  One is south of the Bridge of Lions and the other is north of it, near the historic fort.  Since we hoped to leave St. Augustine and put to sea via the inlet instead of motoring the ICW when we headed farther south, we elected to take a bridge opening out of the picture and stayed on a mooring near the fort.  We enjoy St. Augustine and felt good about being there.  Photos of the city are in an earlier blog and I will just point there instead of showing them here.  The Christmas decorations were still up and the city was as beautiful as ever.

St Augustine-December, 2007

In a few days we were joined by S/V Nightingale.

We had been dressing for the cold weather both inside and outside the boat.  Stephen had demonstrated their heater, "Mr. Heater Little Buddy", for us back in Fernandina Beach and we had been in search of this device ever since, but to no avail.  After searching and bicycling all over St. Augustine, I finally ordered one from the Ace Hardware site online and had it shipped to Satellite Beach, our next stop.

The weather was still cold and we had two days to travel before arriving in Satellite Beach.  The winds were not good for sailing south in the ocean so we opened the Bridge of Lions and got ready to motor the ICW.  The journey went as planned and we piloted our way through the canals behind Merritt Island to Jim and Kathy Lee's dock in their back yard.  Kathy had a wonderful dinner for us and we got caught up on our lives since our sailing adventures together as they had sailed aboard S/V Stardust.  Reunions are great!