Time to put the imaginary pipe in place and start puffing, sitting back and planning that dream.

It's about 36' and driving though the swell under a steady breeze off the beam. Peggy hsa been painting memories of our last harbor from photos taken of friends met and welcomed warmly aboard. The salad from the local market and fresh fish caught the day before is more than just another meal. It's the effort to keep both healthy and financially sensible, but it's also a platter of thanks for sharing the chance meeting and hours spent enjoying chance company.

In the real world, we have to work up to the boat, plan the finances, insurances, and bring our skills and confidence up to the dreams needy standard. But at least we're putting it out there.

So now the research begins, if you know of any good reading material on this fascinatiing subject, then point us there. I really believe that if you put it out there then it's there for the taking and I plan on reaching out to grab it.

This is the start.

As another Monday dawns, we're on land and the boat is alongside the house on her trailer, so I need to get to work to help pay for our passion.

Just to keep what it's all about, I updated my desktop to a pic from my Google Phone taken on our last trip.

It's a pic of Maimi on the Horizon as we left Black Point Marina and headed late in the evening towards an Anchorage at Sands Key on Biscayne Bay.

It was a beautiful fresh evening, clear skies, and light wind, and ... well you can see the sea state.

We're four months away from our summer trip, ever optimistic that we'll have good weather and our trip will happen, I have started to prepare some of the food for the 'Voyage' huh!

We live out of a pretty small cooler onboard JD, refreshing it ith ice when chances arise. Normally that's at least every other day.

I have become quite adept at preparing 'Freeze A Meals' and it saves a bundle on commercial frozen food packs.

So today I'm cooking Curry Chicken with Mango and Red Pepper, the smell is pretty darned good! 5lbs of B&S Chicken Breasts, Red Peppers, Green Onions, Curry Powder, Cloves, Garlic, Cilantro, Chicken Broth, Mangos, Rasins, Ginger, Apple cider vinegar, and seasoning. In the Crock pot for 4 hours. Recipe courtesy of Crock Pot The original Slow Cooker. PilCookBooks.com (I'm not related to them in anyway)
When it's cooked, I'll put some into Freeze A Meal bags and Vacuum pack them. Then into the freezer till we are ready to leave on our trip.

The plan is to create eight Freeze A Meals, for our twelve day journey from Biscayne Bay down to the keys as far as we get in 5 days, which could be around Pine Key.

It's confession time (I posted an article about this on the Catalina 25's Forum)

Because of our late launch yesterday, I did not hank the Jib onto the furler till Saturday morning when we were quietly at anchor off Sands Key.

Having done this so many times, I sat on the bag while hoisting the jib, but my butt must not be big enough so the bag escaped overboard.

I checked the water temp, cool but ok, and decided to take a dip to reteive the bag. Fool! I got really cold, really tired and really quick! Peggy threw the Lifesling to shorten the distance I had to swim back to the boat. Just as well I was exhausted within 10 to 15 minutes.

Motto! It might be Florida, but in winter the water is really cold. Don't go off the boat without a tether. The bag was not worth the risk. So lesson learnt (luckily!)

Anyway, once I recovered, we pulled anchor and took JD for a sail, it was just beautiful weather, clear blue skies, wind below the teens, we headed out and down to Billy's Point. If felt so good to get the wind in our sails, JD was well balanced, and there really are not many power boaters around to spoil things at this time of year (economy).

We anchored off Billy's Point after a few hours under sail. Time to take a nap.

If you see us onboard, it's probably in Biscayne Bay. Just 70 miles from home in Broward County Florida, we trail JD to Black Point Marina.

Last weekend was kinda typical for the time of year. We both worked late on Thursday, so it was late on Friday when we pulled JD from the side of the house to head down to Black Point Marina.

First order of business was to renew the Truck and Trailer Annual Parking permit, it's less than $100 a year for us (now officially 'Seniors') so it's a really good deal. No need to worry about security, and since the down turn in the ecomony, there's lots of space (the power boaters cannot afford to burn the gas dollars!)

We have to put the mast up every trip, kinda useful, so we spend about an hour plus getting everything ready to launch. That's when we hit a minor snag. The line securing the swing keel had detached from the raising blocks and as we bumped the boat off the trailer, the keel would hit the ramp.. not good. Only took 10 mins to fix it and the rest of the launch went easy.

Ok, so we're on the water, motor over to Sands Key anchorage and have a glass of wine and watch TV. We get to go sailing tomorrow!