First weeks Oct. 27th to Nov. 21st

We have been working so hard on the boat that we have not done a good job of keeping up the blog. Now that we have settled down here in Stuart, Florida, we thought we should do a little summary of what we have been up to. We stayed at the Fountain Resort in Ft. Pierce for a week until we could get enough things done on the boat so we could move into the boat. When we arrived at the boat we inspected the bright work we had done last winter. The good news is that all the varnish work Nan did last winter survived the summer in excellent condition. That is mostly because we covered it with Sunbrella material. The bad news is that any teak which we had put Teak Guard on that was exposed to the sun all summer looked spotty. Anything that was covered looked great but if it got direct sun it did not hold up.
When we moved in the boat we also had the boat moved to the working area of the boat yard at Riverside Marina so we could begin work on the bottom paint. The job turned out to be a bigger project than we intended. First we just sanded down the bottom paint but after further inspection we decided to take off all the layers of bottom paint and put on a couple of coats of Inter Protect primer and after that two coats of bottom paint. This took us over a week, doing a very dirty job.
All our time was not spent working though. We had some great neighbors while working in the boat yard. Bud and Bill, two other cruisers were working on their boats also. Bill, a single hander had been demasted during a trip up north, was working on a used replacement mast. Bud removed both of his masts and was updating and painting them. We had plenty of time to talk about each others’ projects. We got help with ours from Charlie who asked us if we could use his help. As it turns out we would have had a very hard time completing our work without him.
One day we spent driving up to Daytona to meet with our son Luke and his girl friend Holly. It was a nice visit.
Here at this yard we find that most of the other cruisers are from Canada. On Friday nights those who are still working on their boats get together at a near by restaurant for dinner. We were invited to come along on two occasions. There were 25 or more of us who got together and we were the only ones from the US. Some new faces and many we had met before.
It felt good to be back in the water again and after doing some compass adjustment for our new auto pilot we motored down to a spot just off the ICW that is very peaceful in settled weather for a restful night. In the morning we waited for the tides to change so we could make our way to Stuart with plenty of water under our 5’9” keel. We will be here in Stuart through the Holidays and moving south soon after the first of the year.