Well February certainly whipped by within the blink of an eye! We spent a good deal of it on land. First we traveled to the condo to watch the Super Bowl. We spent a couple of days there doing laundry getting groceries in addition to watching the game. We returned to the boat on the 8th with plans to return to the condo on the 18th in anticipation of Scott’s second Covid shot on the 19th. Mine was scheduled for the 22nd. We had heard that the second shot could have some side effects so we planned a couple of extra days in case either of us didn’t feel well after the second dose. We felt it would be best to be on land with all the amenities that entails if either of us were under the weather. Scott had no ill effects from his second dose. I wasn’t as lucky, and had a low grade fever, chills, headache and extrodinary tiredness for two days. The headache lingered on for 4. Still it will all be worth it to be able to go out without an extreme fear of contracting Covid. We have a 12 day wait period for the antibodies to build up to provide sufficient immunity. We will still be wearing masks, practicing social distancing and avoiding crowds. Supposedly you can still spread the virus even after vaccination as a carrier. Out of respect to our fellow still unvaccinated citizens we’ll stick to the CDC guidelines and comply. Neither one of us is in any rush to spend long periods of time inside with people we don’t know. Hair cuts and in store shopping will wait a bit longer.

We are looking forward to being able to have an outdoor dining experience, going to the beach and taking a few walks into downtown Stuart. Second big sister and her husband are coming to Florida this month and we hope to get together along with First big sis and her husband while they are here. It will be great to see them in the flesh. We’ve been Zooming once a week since the holidays. They have all been vaccinated so it should be a reasonably safe visit.

And we are absolutely looking forward to traveling north this summer and seeing friends and family. By then we hope they will all be vaccinated and we can have some lovely visits. I’ll probably torture the poor Grandgirls with my goings on about how much we missed them.

We returned to the boat on the 26th and quickly settled back into our routine. Poor Light Reach must have been some flock of birds resting place while we were gone. She was covered in bird poo, ewwwww. We brought out a bladder full of water and swabbed the decks. Such is the glamour of boat life.

Sunday was a day full of excitement. The Captain’s glasses decided to break, the bow fell off in his hand when he put them on. That put him in a mood, his second pair were at the condo. He did have another pair on board but a much older script. They’ll do until we get back to the condo in a week or so. He was able to glue the bow back into place but it’s a precarious repair.

The winds were piping out of the southeast with a steady 20 knots gusting to 25. We had just come back from shore and I was down below when I heard Scott shouting to come let him loose. George (SV Gracie) needs help. I ran up untied Scott and looked up to see George onboard SV Mambo (another cat) pushing Mambo off SV Lily Grace and frantically deploying Mambo’s anchor. Her mooring ball had broken loose from its anchor and Mambo was dragging through the mooring field headed toward A dock and a multimillion dollar motor yacht. Holy Sh*t. Scott got our dingy between Mambo and the motor yacht and was pushing her out and away from it. George had the anchor our which fortunately bit. By this time Mambo had drifted back enough and the folks on A dock were out to assess and help the situation. By the grace of God there was an open space on the dock between the two mega yachts and lines were tossed ashore to pull Mambo into the spot. Scott squirted the dingy out from the dock side of Mambo and with some shoving, pushing and a lot of luck they got her tied up.

The whole incident was serendipitous as George just happened to be in his dingy ready to head to shore when Mambo broke loose hitting Gracie in the process. He had the presence of mind to jump on her, start shouting and deploy the anchor. We had just gotten back from shore and Scott was able to help and there was an opening on the dock big enough for Mambo. There were some angels working with us that morning. Mambo was locked up tight as her owners hadn’t been around for a while. They were notified by the marina of what had happened. The damage to Gracie and Lily Grace was cosmetic and thank goodness she hadn’t hit the Grand Banks Trawler or brand new Mega yacht on the dock.

Yesterday we got an e-mail that the mooring will all be dived on and checked in the next few days. Thank goodness. We really do put a lot of faith in a mooring ball.

The picture is of Light Reach on her mooring, that little ball in the water behind her is the mooring ball of one of the other boats in the field. We tie a 14000 lb boat to one of those little balls. Not sure what that says about us.