Ok. Next day now and we are down to the serious business of working at getting the boat ready to haul and ourselves ready to travel over land. Add to that the fact that there is a party at the marina tonight and all is right with the world. The only thing we are finding is that it is even hotter here than it was in the Bahamas if you can believe it!

Last night we had big plans for a BBQ stir fry but by the time dinner hour rolled about we we totally drenched in perspiration and didn't feel like anything but a salad. Instead we went and found some laundry machines and did a couple of loads. What fun! For a moment it didn't look good as the one washer in the vicinity of the office which is where we first tried was NS. But then we heard that there was a white trailer out back where there were more available and we toddled up there to find them and managed to get on with them. We then took the wet clothes down to the idle dryers and put them to work.

We also had a visitor at the Marina last night, about five feet long and very expectant of a handout. All I could think of was what a nice set of boots it would make. Barb took some photos which we have put up on the blog on yesterday's post. Crocagators are interesting wee beasties and you have to keep remembering that they are wild and we shouldn't encourage them to hang around looking for handouts. After a while they come to view the six foot bipedal creatures as a source of food and that anything we bring with us is fair game - pets, small children......add to that the fact that they can be wicked fast and can jump up to six feet out of the water and you have a recipe for potential tragedy.

We also discovered that once we put the boat up in the storage yard we can't stay on it so we may have one night here in Indiantown where we will stay in a hotel or motel. Not planned but what can you do. This fall we will have another option. Perhaps we will have a VW camper van or something to stay in. Or we will ask them to move Nelleke to the work area before we arrive and then we will be able to camp out on her and use the van to travel down here. As for now we have booked a room in a hotel in Vero Beach for that night and we will head on into an interview with the customs people at Fort Meyers to apply for local boater status.

This morning I walked into town to buy a few growlies for the next couple of days. When I got back we changed the oil on the engine and took down the sails. It was at that point that I discovered that the Link 2000 had the charge function turned off. In other words we were plugged into shore power but none of it was going to the batteries, lights were on but no one was home, or any other platitude you'd care to name. I can't point the finger at anyone in particular to blame but I think that his first initial is M.

We have put a notice up that the Yamaha is for sale. We want our purchase price for it so I ain't holding my breath but you never know, it might be exactly what someone wants.

Dropping the sails was relatively easy in the mild winds here. On one hand you would like mild winds to do things like thins but on the other hand it would be nice to have a cooling breeze blow the bugs away. As we were bringing them down we noticed that there was a fair amount of work to be done on several of them so that'll be a boat project for the summer for us. The sails will be our bunks in the rental van on the way home. We have also been looking at the storage spaces on Nelleke. There's a lot of it but it just isn't all easily accessible. That is one of my current mind projects which will become an actual project once we come back in the fall.

I have also measured out the arrangement for the bow roller for the secondary anchor. It will require some work on my part to cut it to size plus I will need to hire a welder to actually fasten it to the boat in the fall but in the end we will have a more functional system in which I will have more confidence in the extremity of some deployments.

Barb has also begun packing up things. For those of you who have been aboard you know that we carry quite a library but this year we will be applying the rule that we have to all of the other stuff that we used to carry - if we hadn't used it on the cruise, in this case read it, it will be left at home. So, that means quite a few of them. It will free up a bunch of space that will allow us storage of things that we really should have, for instance, some food stuffs that you simply can't get in the islands but which we quit enjoy having. We would be able to carry a supply of them.

Tonight there is a sort of pot luck Diner at the marina. There is one guy here who seems to be keen on organizing stuff and this is one of them so we will have to find out if he is planning anything for St Patrick's Day. I figure to do as much as we can durning the day, we already have quite a list, and then relax and party in the evening either on our own or with others.

Tomorrow we will get the outboards ready for the summer and get the dingy up on deck. Once that is done we will begin to seriously triage the contents of the boat and pack some things up, give some away, just figure out where others are, and decide what to leave here for the summer.