Our good friends Jim and Margaret left Tuesday morning for Marathon, in the Keys, and then hopefully a short stay in the Bahamas. I took this picture as they were motoring away from Regatta Pointe; I didn’t realize that Margaret, at the helm, was also taking a last picture of the marina. Our friendship hasn’t ended, and we will see them again as they pass this way in May (wherever we are), but we are no longer cruisers, and we might not even own a cruising boat by then.

I also managed to list Earendil on sailboatlistings.com. That seems like a very final step; although it is a first step in selling her, it is a final commitment to her sale. Bud is having a very hard time with this. I’m not happy about it either, but we both know it must be done.

Meanwhile, the work goes on. We’ve contracted to have the red stripe painted and I am prepping it for that. I already stripped off the Earendil from one side of the bow. That hurt. I made a small repair to the bimini and covered the throw pillows in a light tan to help brighten the interior. We stripped off some crumbling sound insulation in the generator cabinet, fastened some wires up more out of the way, and I put new insulation in. We took all the sails down, managed to stuff them into the land barge, and took them to a sail loft in St. Petersburg to be washed and mended. Earendil will be in as good a shape as we can get her by the time we sell her, and that makes it even worse. Our only hope is that by selling her in such good shape she’ll go to an owner willing to keep her up. She’s a great sailing yacht and deserves many more good years at sea.

But they won’t be with us.