A day in paradise?

Sunday 7 Feb 2016: Barbara is whipping up dinner as the sun sets on a virtually windless, beautiful sunny day at anchor in Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Florida.  We’ve spent the day on the boat doing little projects.  Listen to the weather to see when we can leave for the Bahamas, double check the markings on the anchor rode, put a connector on the end of the secondary VHF antenna, find receipts for things which need to be returned to West Marine, enjoy a tasty lunch, measure a fitting and a hose which need replacing, add a couple trolling lures to the tackle box, dig out the lazy jacks which didn’t get re-installed when the mast was down 3 years ago, rig up the bosun’s chair, wake Barbara from her nap and send her up the mast immediately so she doesn’t have time to worry about it, take her picture while she is up there because my son tells me if there are no pictures it did not happen , Make Barbara a Dark and Stormy as a reward for installing the lazy jacks and making it back down alive, clean out the cockpit cubbies in search of the frog which was in there but must have jumped overboard, sell a piece of equipment which I’ve been hauling around for several years to “Diesel Bob”  who responded to my ad on the morning VHF radio cruisers net, visit with “Uncle Dev” who stopped by for a while (We met Dev only by radio two years ago in Eleuthra.  He is friends of our friends Jeremy and Heather and Thea and Shea), plan our next trip to town with Dev’s help, beat Barbara in a game of cribbage (she is still several games ahead of me this trip!),  have a glass of wine while writing this, smile because Barbara is happy puttsing around in this version of her nest.

This is a sunrise picture Uncle Dev took of us in Governor’s Harbor, Eleuthera, Bahamas two years ago.

This is proof Barbara went up the Mast, Ben!

Night before last was rainy and very windy.  Yesterday was very windy all day, blowing 20-25 with occasional higher gusts.  Our wind generator topped up the batteries so we turned ot off for a quiet night last night.

We would have moved north today, but we would have only been able to make it to anchorages with poor protection for the weather predicted over the next several days.  Big wind is supposed to arrive again tonight.  We may be able to move later this week.

We’ll make at least one more trip into town and pick up some replacement provisions.  We’ll probably top up the propane tank we’ve been using since launching, just because we can and who knows when the next opportunity will present itself.  The wine supply is a little light on volume, so we may add to it.  We could buy supplies in the Bahamas, but they are significantly more expensive so we may as well load up what we have room to store.

We are biding our time, waiting to sail from one paradise to another.