The new marina is very tidy.There are about 200 to 300 other boats at the marina. Today was a very busy day. We did not have a car so we had to walk everywhere. We started on the river walk to a private birthday party with a bounce house. It was very tempting to go on but we had to go to the bigger playground. While up in maine you are freezing, down here we are eating ice cream.
Back to Mom, as Lily’s appetite for dinner outweighed her interest in carrying on in the blogosphere. She barely made it through the meal before flagging; they ran hard today. (And ate ice cream, so she was dead serious about the situational differences between Stuart and home, I might add.)
It was more than lovely to wake up to ‘mooring sounds’ (dinghies tooting past, wakes lapping the hull from passing speed boats in the channel, etc), and it was lovelier still to see our solar panel soaking up the rays and dropping amps into our bank. With our strings of AA-powered LED lights as our main light source for the cabin, and the decision to keep dinner dishes unwashed until daylight (which disgusts me, I’ll admit), we’ve been happy to draw very little power in the evenings, but regardless, it was nice to see that with conservative usage we’ll be able to keep up for the most part.
After a couple of hours of sourcing parts (starter, dinghy mount piece) and learning that we’ll be here through the long weekend, we went ashore for a walk. The River Walk is a great boardwalk along -you guessed it- the river. The St. Lucie river to be exact, and it dumped us out right in the old part of town, which is a charming set of streets with all of the ice cream, t-shirt and collectible shops you would expect. We searched high and low for a store with postcards and came up empty, remarkably, so you’re not getting one from Stuart, in case you were waiting.
A great lunch out, eight million hours at the playground with friends (the best one we’ve found is within walking distance, so that’s a major bonus), showers ashore and little else accomplished except total exhaustion.
Tomorrow’s goals are to enjoy the marina’s Valentine brunch, find the farmer’s market that’s nearby, and for personal measures I plan to put a major hurt on my book while sitting in the cockpit drinking coffee. Dream big!