Plans in Pencil

The boating we do is relatively safe and we're pretty careful.  But stuff happens.  This time, poor Jeff had a couple of mishaps.  First, forgetting how that green film on the boat turns into very slippery slime when wet, he had a slip while washing the boat.  He bounced right back up and while bruised, kept on chugging.

dirty dirty dirty boat
This green/black soot is all over her after summer storage in the boat yard

Then, more seriously, a couple of days later on the dock, his foot caught on a raised section and sent him flying.  It probably would have been better if he landed in the water but instead he had an unfortunate rendezvous between a dock faucet and his chest.  Right dead center.  And hard.

Then thirdly, on the way to the head that night, groggy with sleep and pain meds, he tripped over a stepping stool that someone left out of place (hmmm, ok it was me) and took a nasty tumble hurting his shoulder.  So between his butt, chest and shoulder he's pretty sore.  We've extended our stay here in Fort Myers to let the captain have a little healing time.  Unfortunate, but as things go, not a bad place to be laid up.  Boating plans are in pencil.  We just go with the flow.

In the meantime, the boat has been cleaned and the provisioning is underway.  We've been enjoying catching up with old friends, local events in town - the monthly car show was on yesterday - and just relaxing on the boat.  We'll be here for a bit...  then who knows...

Car show in downtown Fort Myers

Great way to beat the heat....
An afternoon in an air conditioned pool hall
With Brian and Danielle (S/V Obewan)

Granvida in her slip at the Fort Myers Yacht Basin
where we've enjoyed many relaxing dinners in the cockpit at sunset.

Launch - Season 5 already??

Monday: Dinner with Susan's daughter and her family.  Tuesday: Dinner with Jeff's son in Eastern Ontario.  Wednesday: Cross the boarder and dinner with Jeff's daughter and her boyfriend in Virginia, Thursday: Dinner with Joe & Connie on their boat in St. Augustine.  Friday/Saturday: A visit to the Kennedy Space Centre.  Sunday:  Lunch with friends Cindy and Grant.  That's how our road trip to our boat progressed.  Awesome.  Hop, skip and jumping from family and friends.

Lunch with Grant and Cindy (M/V As the Crow Flies)

We squeezed in a visit to The Kennedy Space Centre, which was just so awe inspiring, from the miracles of engineering, to the reminders of the vastness of the universe and just how wee teeny tiny we are in it. We highly recommend it. It even made me teary-eyed with awe a few times (I'm a bit of a suck that way).

We did things a little differently with the boat launch this year.  Normally, we have the yard move the boat from the storage yard into the work yard so we can prepare it for habitation, paint the bottom etc.  This year, we thought what the heck.  The bottom didn't need to be painted and knowing that the boat would be nasty dirty, we skipped a step and launched right from the storage yard into the water, saving us a bunch of boat yard charges.  It was a little bit of a hard core move, but whatever.

We spent a quiet night at Glades dock, making sure nothing was leaking.  The next morning, over a peaceful coffee in the cockpit, we looked up and noticed a small gator, quietly gliding along in the morning mist.  Yep, we're back in central Florida!

We moved our very dirty and not-fit-for-habitation boat down the Caloosahatchee River to a marina in a lovely park (Franklin Lock Marina) and began the clean up.  It wasn't too bad of an experience - except for a few freak-out encounters with stow-away frogs - and it saved us a bunch of money, which we will justify by taking ourselves out for a nice meal or two sometime.

There always seems to be one of these guys floating
around when one stops on the Okeechobee

We'll spend a week or so in Fort Myers to finish the clean-up/organization and provision the boat.  From there...  we be boatin'

Summer 2018

We're beginning to feel a rhythm. Home/South/Home/South.  Being in virtual summer, for these two Canadians, we're starting to hardly get our seasons mixed up anymore.  We're learning just because it's hot and we're sitting here with fans blowing on us, it doesn't necessarily mean it's summer.  Winters, too, are now hot.  We're adjusting.

Back when we were traveling more we had a saying:  "Once we know our way around a city it's time to move on."  We're kind of feeling that way now about our half-looped lifestyle.  Thoughts of change are beginning to percolate.  There are murmurings that maybe winter at home couldn't be all THAT bad.  Could it?  Could it be time for a change??

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Summer of 2018 has come and gone.  Here's a recap:  We got some work done on the house.  Our Motor Home Airbnb was busy.  We got some family time in.  We bought and sold a couple of boats.  We took a trip to Newfoundland.

We got some work done on the good old house, replacing a double brick basement wall with a sturdy
2x6 insulated wall.  Much better and a good foundation to the next step, updating the kitchen,
which will be far more exciting (at least to me) 

Family visits!  So nice to spend time together.

The gargoyles and I enjoyed a camping trip in the Motor Home

My (Susan's) new boat.  She's a 22' aluminium replica "tug" that will get us out on the water
for daytrips and weekends,
and as she's trailerable, maybe a few extended trips.

We took a short trip to Newfoundland for a family reunion (Susan's).....

...and met (again) a whole bunch of cousins on my Mom's side....

 .....and learned a whole bunch of history on my Dad's side.  Here, Jeff and family members are taking
rubbings of the tombstones of my many-times-great-grandparents, who settled this little outport village
in Newfoundland a very long time ago.  Such a feeling of "groundedness". 

And...before we knew it it was autumn and the leaves were falling and it was
time to head back to the boat.