Complete and utter exhaustion bowled over any attempts of typing last night, so I’ll use this snow day morning (just got a text from the district!) to write instead. No snow here, but we had rain and wind last night; our first chance to be woken by rain on the face through the hatch, and the slap of halyards on the mast. If only it were accompanied by the rocking of the boat, it’d have been enjoyable!
Yesterday was yet another whirlwind. I’ve driven to Stuart and back so many times in the past five days that I feel like I should slap a bus route number on the car. Which would be a total joke, considering that we cram the car to capacity with every trip- no room for extra passengers! It’s a good thing that 90% of the drive is so gorgeous (the other 10% is in the city itself, so picture one block of chain stores of every type after another). We run along the canal that will eventually take us to the ocean, and the countryside is serene and lovely; a bamboo nursery, acreage of fruit trees, cattle farms, horse farms, and plenty of birds swooping back and forth to keep us occupied.
Trip #1 to Stuart yesterday was to visit Vanessa again and to have a final dip in the pool. Still cold, but fun nonetheless.
Meanwhile, back at the boat, Andy was doing this:
The water line is now cleaned and waxed; gaaugeous.
A propulsion note: our shaft has now been removed and we’re awaiting diagnosis. It wasn’t completely true, but once we know how far ‘out of whack’ it is we’ll determine if it’s something we can live with or not. Also, our new shaft seal arrived, so that’ll be installed once we have the shaft back in place. Our guess/hope is that all of this will happen today, and that we’ll launch on Monday. Here’s to driving to Stuart a few more times this weekend!
For the afternoon we had the chance to meet up with friends from the island, which was such a treat for all of us. Violet’s dear Montessori friend and his older sister, who Lily knew from Pemetic, and their mother met us at a great park in Jensen Beach, complete with fountains to play in and a great beach. While we were perfecting our drip castles, a Portuguese Man O’War washed up, and while we blessedly didn’t get stung, we got a great close up on the strange medusa.
They gave us a lot of great ideas of activities in the area, so we have a lot on the docket if we are in fact here through the weekend. We’ll keep you posted. And happy snow day, MDI friends!