Indeed, life is good! Greetings to all from Florida!

After a fun few days fun-filled days with Sarah and her boyfriend Brian in Orlando in early Jan. (obligatory visit to Universal Studios and the Harry Potter theme park, we returned to Riviera Beach to drop Ladyhawke in the water and get her ready to leave for points south. What a massive effort to
clean inside and out, provision, polish fuel tanks, change oil and filters, etc, etc, etc. Ingo had his head in the head several times trying to rebuild
it...not a fun job in a very tight place! The last time we made this trip, about 11 years ago, we took several weeks, if not months, getting ready. This
time, we did it in a few days! Being a little older, the focus is a bit
different too. No home schooling preparations, no chicken nuggets, no mac &
cheese, more like how much wine can we stow and make sure we have supplies to make Caesar salad (although romaine might be an issue in the Bahamas...with cabbage?) Creature comforts seem to be more important this time too!

Having said that, we had fun running around West Palm Beach, stayed one night at the Marriott Singer Island Resort to pamper ourselves...it's gorgeous! Love those Marriott reward points! We also took a few days to visit Aunt Lucy on the Gulf Coast to reassure ourselves that her move back home from assisted living is good. Fortunately, she has wonderful home care and good friends involved.

So, we finally dropped the dock lines on Jan 23 for the first leg of our
journey, a day's motor/sail to Ft. Lauderdale. Friends, John and Barbara, offered us the use of their dock behind their fabulous home...what gracious hosts and what a wonderful place to leave the boat to explore Ft. Lauderdale and also to spend a few days in Key West for Jeri's birthday! Definitely a very fun place with lots of things to do and see. The weather has been great...sunny, high 70s/low 80s, checked out the touristy activities (Conch train, sunset at Mallory Square, margarita at Margaritaville, photos at southernmost point in continental US) and walked from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf. And, of course, did the Duval Crawl (bar hopping down Duval St, watching the interesting "local color"!). Jeri's birthday dinner was at Pisces...excellent!.

Now it's back to Ft. Lauderdale for last minute prep to cross over to the Bahamas and some serious weather watching.

Hope all is well and please keep in touch. We miss you all and would love to
keep up with news in your lives.