07/19/2011, Marathon to Fort Lauderdale
New Pics on Picassa.
Today was supposed to be a beach day but the weather was thunderstorms & rain so I decided to tackle the Honda Generator pull cord. After a bus ride to Ace Hardware I am happy to report after much swearing, it is fixed. Actually it was easy, but putting it all back together was painful. We had a wonderful pasta dinner with wine on the boat. Tomorrow we start to get going again.
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07/19/2011, Fort Lauderdale Municipal Marina
West Marine FACTS
No matter where your port of call or marina is, it will be guaranteed that West Marine will be the furthest commercial retail outlet from where you are. I truly believe in every municipality there is code that a West Marine has to be as far away from cruisers as possible. They have to be in cahoots with the public transit and Yellow Cabs. Yesterday Al and I took the public bus from Los Olas Marina to West Marine to get our new battery. The bus was $1.50 each. We took our back pack to bring the battery back. I picked up a new whale blue skort, some Velcro for the handling lines, I wanted marriage savers (head phones) but they weren't in the budget just now. When we checked out the, battery weighed about 80 pounds and was just shy of fitting in our pack. So we called a yellow cab to bring us back to the boat. As luck would have it we got stuck on a bascule bridge allowing two sail boats through, tic, tic, tic goes the cab's metered clock. The return trip cost us $18 including a tip. Thanks West Marine for sucking the life out of the cruising Kitty.
When I run the cruising world, I will make it law that every marina has at least a satellite West Marine or at least a courtesy shuttle to and fro.
We then went to the beach for a beautiful swim. We figured we would arrive at our summer destination on Sunday, so we have decided to stay another day here in beautiful Fort Lauderdale, so we arrive on a Monday & take advantage of more A/C & more beach.
Peace out.
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07/17/2011, Fort Lauderdale Municipal Marina
This is going to get away from me I know. I have been planning to do a post for a while about our visitor counter. It started with Ruth but Al restarted it last December with Close Knit. Our friends on Nelleke gave us the idea. If you identify yourself or selves as the 10,000 th hit on our blog you will win a prize. I know Nelleke gave away a weekend on Nelleke. That was brave, fortunately for them the winner was a former co-worker of Barb's; EASY. We would offer up a similar prize as long as the identified person(s) isn't a WEIRDO, following us. Some of our family members could potentially fall into this category and we would totally welcome you on board with loving arms. ( We're a bit weird ourselves). However in keeping with safety standards, I'd like to offer up a knitted item for the winner. Not a sweater but a lovely crafted knit in the Mitten, Hat , or Scarf family if you identify your self as the 10,000th hit on CLOSE KNIT, I suppose if you identify yourself as a total Non- weirdo and wanted to get yourself to Close Knit we could be charmed into an excursion on board. Todays posted picture is of the back deck we affectionately call ourselves "Trawler Trash"
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Andrew
07/17/2011, Fort Lauderdale Municipal Marina
We arrived at Los Olas Municiple Marina by 3 pm today. We are hooked into AC and ready for a roast beef supper. It was a long day leaving just before 7 am but for all intents and purposes it was a fine day of travel. It was a bit crazy coming through Miami navigating the weekend crowd. Close Knit handled better than ever while Al negotiated us into our slip ( Pete you would be proud). Tomorrow we will visit West Marine for a new starting battery because the pull cord pulled out of out Honda 2000. So now that has to be repaired. They don't make it easy to get into so it will be a service call. The post is of the Dolphin following us yesterday. It stayed with us for quite a while but as usual as soon as I got my camera it would not surface.
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07/14/2011, Key West, Florida
Life's a DRAG QUEEN
I talked Al into keeping the rental car one more day so we could go to Key West, have a belated Birthday supper for me and go to the Drag Queen show that I have been curious about. We didn't leave enough time for a fine dining experience so we settled on Outback for supper. We headed to 801 Duval St. and secured our seats for the show. I was full of questions about this career choice and approached "Leanne" and got the scoop. I had questioned if this was a trial run for being transvestite and/or transgendering. Turns out they are all gay and are essentially in it for the money. They all have day jobs.
It was an entertaining show and I'm still sorting out my feelings on it. A part of it was hideous in that they accepted tips by allowing the audience to put money down their tops and in their panties. Being left of traditional I offered up my tip between my two knees, and Desiree happily got on all fours and removed it with her/his teeth. So I have officially crossed one more thing off my bucket list, down and dirty with a drag queen. Now I just need someone to teach me Spanish. Ciao.
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07/14/2011, Boot Key Harbour, Marathon
Ruthless
While home in Kingston I worked hard at purging my basement of remnants of my past life. I tried to keep emotion and sentiment out of the equation as I parted with clothing, things and photographs. I became ruthless as I dumped my life into garbage bags, some going to the dump, some going to charity. In the end I felt like a weight had been lifted. I allowed myself to bring back a few fragile pottery items that I enjoy . Al is concerned they will get broken, I reason that if they get broken while I'm enjoying them, that's part of the plan. I also brought back a few memories. I couldn't part with a small wedding photo album, and several select photos of my family when they were young. Sentiment won over and I just couldn't part with a copy of my wedding invitation from 1978. It is rather whimsical and untraditional, but reflects the flavor of who I was at the time, I'd say its indicative of the flavor I still am today, whimsical and a bit left of traditional. Alistair was a good sport as I took him down the road of my life gone by. He was gracious about looking at my wedding photos and my young family.
In keeping with being ruthless I have been downsizing on Close Knit. I parted with 3 bags of clothing which I have offered for free in the laundry room. Barnacle Bill is here for one last bottom cleaning.
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