Monday 16 December 2019

Sigh.

Another Monday and we are at the mooring working on boat chores and gazing lovingly into each other's eyes.

We went into shore for a brief walk about to check out a few things that we noticed on the trolly tour the other day. Most notably the mayor, who says that his career is that of an urban farmer has his farm right down town on a couple of acres and we wanted to see it for ourselves.

We could the place right where we heard it was and what an interesting concept. Almost everything is produced hydroponically and for sure everything is done in pots. Tarzan could have swung on the vine tomatoes and they have towers of lettuce which you can see in the picture with today's post. The towers are made out of the smaller styrofoam coolers stacked on top of each other, held in place by a central pole and rotated by 45 degrees with each level. Really clever. Barb and I are going to try it on our garden at home next spring. The tomato vines were in large pots on the ground and from a height of about 6' a piece of twine hung downward that the plant was able to use to climb. The plants were about 2' apart and every two feet the twines were tied together. As I said the vines were as thick as two thumbs held together.

Back aboard we got at working on a couple of boat projects that we are making headway on. The biggest was tightening the hose clamps on the head pipes to the holding tank. No leaks, just precautionary but we don't want any nasty surprises do we?

We also finished staging and photographing Nelleke and sending the pictures off to two yacht brokers. We will see what they come back to us with as recommendations.

Barb and I were talking about this last night and much as we will hate to part with Nelleke, the time has come simply due to our mutual ability to jump about on deck and below, plus it will be more comfortable aboard a Cat or a trawler. Indeed, on our last four cruises our intent was to get south into the Caribbean which we haven't yet been able to do. How much easier if we simply sell Nelleke, put our stuff in a few boxes and fly to say, Grenada and buy a boat that is already there?

This is a really nice place but a month it too long for anywhere that you don't have roots in especially if you have concerns, as we do, about our cruising permit expiring at the end of the month. We are going to call US Customs and snivel a little bit and ask for a months extension due to repairs that we need to make and for which we are still waiting a couple of parts. Unfortunately the guy we got this time at Fort Pierce isn't as accommodating as the last one. We will have to get a permit to proceed. So, we will go to a customs office In Miami and get one of those and wait for a weather window.