Sunday 1 December 2019
Wow! Here it is December already.

Those of you following the blog may have noticed the comment from our friend Ken aboard Silverheels III who is also following our adventures from way down south in Grenada. After my musing yesterday about possibly just saying the heck with it and staying in Florida all winter he pointed out something to me that I already knew but had forgotten. We can't do that without running afoul of US Customs. We have to "go foreign" at some point and then renew our cruising permit for the following year and as he said September is not the time to go to the Bahamas. So, it's back to plan A and a hop across to the Bahamas for a couple of months before coming back and dawdling back north to Deltaville.

Louis was kind enough to gift us a laptop that he wasn't using so we spent a piece of this morning uploading software. We still have to do some hardware upgrades. For instance we will need some conversion cables - nine pin to USB, external screen, and most important, a USB splitter to give us more USB ports to work with. We will see if we can get them from amazon and have them shipped to the marina. If not it will be an Uber ride to a Best Buy or something.
We found most of what we needed on amazon so we placed the order today. If should be delivered here sometime next week. Barb and I spent a productive albeit frustrating hour undoing all the wonderfullness of my electronic cable routing that I had installed over time for various bits that I added over the years. Amazing what a dog's breakfast you can end up with over time. We now have more space for storage, less tangle for frustration and embarrassment and a soon to be functioning ship's computer. There are a number of devices that I want to connect to the computer that require drivers that I either no longer have or that we left back in Shelburne. Sigh. I guess we will bring the computer in to the marina within easy range of their Wi-Fi and try to download the drivers from the internet tomorrow.

We came into town this morning to the weekly Farm Market. This happens to be one of the really nice ones - fresh vegetables, cheese, meat, seafood, pastries of different kinds, a small number of arts and crafts, coffee, breakfast meals. Bob and Louis checked out of their B&B and came down to join us.

We have pretty much decided to remain here in Stuart until after Christmas. So we have made arrangements with Louis and Bob to visit them before Christmas vice after. We are still looking at going to Everglades City for a night and then either going to Fort Myers for a day or two and then coming back to Stuart. After Christmas we will head on down toward Miami and across to the Bahamas. Our thoughts are to visit Andros, the Eleutheras, and perhaps head on down the Exuma chain before coming back to the US.