MIDORI ADVENTURES

We arrived in Englewood, Florida on Friday, October 27, 2017 where we checked into the Lemon Bay Motel for a few nights. The next morning we were up early, grabbed a quick breakfast at Macdonald’s and got to Charlotte Harbor Boat Storage ready to face our first day of work. We found MIDORI to be in good shape (after hurricane Irma) both inside and out! It started to rain about mid morning and continued all day, so we had to change our priority of removing the boat cover and cleaning the exterior of the boat, to cleaning the interior. We moved aboard on Monday, October 30th to a nice clean stateroom with freshly washed mattress cover, sheets and comforter. And so the work has continued for the past three weeks to get MIDORI ready:

- moving the “stuff” out of the salon and putting it where it belongs
- cleaning the interior and getting the salon cushions out of storage
- getting the sewing machine out of storage in order to repair the sun shade cover where a few seams had come apart
- putting the eisenglass enclosure on and taking a couple of the pieces to the Boat Canvas Shop for repair
- with the enclosure pieces now out of the port stateroom, clean it up and sort through the deep storage under the mattress
- wash exterior decks and bimini top; wash the exterior of the hulls; wash the hulls underneath and the bridge deck.
- get dinghy outboard motor from storage and run it; run the two outboards on MIDORI in a barrel; put the propellers on; run the Honda 2,000 generator
- bring sails and lines from storage and start working on the rigging
- with the spinnaker halyard, lower the dinghy from the trampoline and put it on the ground where it can be cleaned and polished
- take stuff back to storage, bring more stuff from storage like charts, guides and electronics, take empty bins to storage
- hoist the clean dinghy up on the davits
- put the Mack Pack on
- put the mainsail on and insert the battens

The weather has been very nice with temperatures in the 80’s F during the day and the 60’s F during the night. In fact, it hasn’t rained since our first day! Some days have been too hot to work, so we have seen a couple of movies where we can take advantage of the A/C.

More snowbirds keep arriving, and The Hut is getting busier with meal preparations and the use of the bathroom facilities. We have had a couple of group “outings” to see our favourite band Tidal Wave at the Elk’s Club and a nice dinner of “all you can eat” prime rib at The Hills Restaurant at the Rotonda Golf and Country Club. Of course, there have been many trips to Home Depot, Ace Hardware, Mariner’s Trading, West Marine, Beall’s Outlet, Publix, Walmart……………

Next Thursday is Thanksgiving, so we have decided to splash on Wednesday, spend two nights on the dock, then depart on Friday morning. It will be the usual itinerary of Cayo Costa, Fort Myers Beach, Indian Key or Pavillion Key off the Everglades, with our final destination being Boot Key Harbour, Marathon. Weather permitting, of course.

First Mate Lynn