December 15th Vero Beach, FL

We did some quick morning boat chores, then headed to shore for showers. We are quite certain we are leaving tomorrow, so we paid the bill and turned in the bathroom key. Then we waited for Jay and Diana to pick us up for the trip to Fort Lauderdale for our appointment with the Customs and Border Protection office. We had a nice trip down and found a little Mexican restaurant for lunch. Then it was on to our appointment.

We would just like to say that the CBP officers are not always pleasant and friendly. Some take their power much too seriously and you had better be FOLLOWING ALL THE RULES. So, we were a little afraid of who we might be meeting with today. As it turned out, Officer Gamma was friendly, helpful, polite and courteous. Wow, what a pleasant surprise.

Then it was on the water maker store to pick up Jay's membrane for a water maker. As it turned out, there was some work to be done on it that took some time. Consequently, the girls hiked down the road to a strip mall for a little shopping. They had three good boat-ish stores and a few purchases were made.

At about 5:00, it was decided to leave the membrane to be finished tomorrow and shipped to Jay and Diana's condo. We got back to the boat around 7 and cooked some fish for dinner. We watched a movie and headed to bed. The plan is to leave at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow.




December 14th.. Vero Beach, FL

Kathy had more laundry to do this morning but we didn't get a real quick start. The oven was foremost on my mind and after testing found it to be .... Dead.

I went on-line to see if parts were still available and found that at least some of the parts were still on the market. In the process, I discovered a repair shop in Seattle that had a 5 page essay on trouble shooting oven problems for our oven... with perfect photos.

So while Kathy was over finishing laundry, I ran through the tests as outlined and it came down to either a faulty thermostat or crud in some very small orifices. I disassembled everything as per directions, blew out the gas jets in question and put things together.

And... it worked. In fact it worked better that it ever has.

After finishing the laundry we had some lunch and picked up a little before Nancy drove across town to pick us up for our afternoon entertainment. On the way back to their Condo we stopped at Walmart for a few last minute items and then at Home Depot to find a cable to lock up our dinghy.

We had a great time at Nancy and Jim's... who is still very sore but looking much better, drank some wine and had enough to eat to call it dinner. It was a little hard saying good bye... since they really would rather be heading south with us, but they will follow along shortly.

Back at the boat we put things away, made some phone calls, and watched a movie before bed.