Where have we been?

Where have we been?  Well since our last post in December we've had a very busy couple of months. We made it as far south as the New River in Fort Lauderdale, where we welcomed in the New Year with Ted and Nancy ,who are aboard their vessel Aloha Friday.  This year the music the band played wasn't the Doo Wop fifties that we  had heard last year, but what made the night special was celebrating the event with our friends Ted & Nancy. Isn't that what makes life special,,, friends celebrating together!

January 1st we moved the Summer Wind to a dock on the New River. It was a perfect spot, and we have to thank our friends Ted & Nancy for finding us this gem after our dock reservation fell through. We can watch the mega yachts go by at a slow pace. Each day we watch  and hear the parrots fly from tree to tree. The manatees swim by with the current, and this year we're happy to report several baby manatees have been spotted. There's a house across the river from us that have 7 dogs  and each time a manatee swims by they are out there trying to get the manatee's attention,, very cute to watch.

 As most of you know we plan to begin the Great Loop this year so we began our ‘maintenance list’ to get the Summer Wind ship shape.

• installed new batteries
• installed battery monitors
• changed/installed new shower sump
• changed waterpump on the engine
• changed a few head hoses
• replaced horns that stopped working
• removed moustache from the hull
• had our anchor light pole hinged so that we could clear 16’ bridges
• installed yardarms to display our flags
• bought new deck furniture (great find at Home Goods!)
• repaired our ice maker
• installed a new anchor light, rewired that and the steaming light 
• changed the oil and filters
• fixed our x-changer pump
• cleaned and polished the stainless steel 

The whole month was not spent working, we enjoyed several walks on the River Walk. We met friends and family for lunch/dinner, thanks Naomi, Leslie, Hans, Gisela, Craig, Kathy, Giuliana and Karl. We participated with the MTOA for the Trawler Fest. Our treat of the month was to see the play Les Miserables,, fantastic!

The end of January we returned to our home in New Jersey. Let's just say it was definitely a different climate up north. Our first day back the temperatures rose to 20* . Now, that was almost a 60 degree difference. The snow was piled high and there was a 2 inch layer of ice on the driveway.  So why be where its white, cold and slippery??? We rented our house for a year and the tenants have their own furniture. It was a fast month of packing , storing and making things shipshape for our tenants. Needless to say, we decided to bring a 'few' extra things back to the Summer Wind.  Our rental car ( a Ford Focus) was jam packed. Our first rental car was a VW Beetle!

Upon arrival we 'unloaded' the car in several trips. There wasn't a place to move around and several times "The captain would say, the Summer Wind looked like it had been bombed."  One of the most important rules on a boat is that things need to be put away securely and you definitely need to know where things are when needed. 

The captain and I had always been discussing about removing our washer/dryer from the cubby closet. NO,, we weren't trying to get out of laundry detail,, the machine isn't as useful or as practical or efficient as one might think. We rarely used the machine for two reasons, it took a great deal of our fresh water to wash a tiny load and it would only wash tiny loads and would take forever to wash/dry one load, probably because it was in a tiny cubby closet with no ventilation. We're normally at a marina when we wash laundry anyway and most marinas offer the use of their own machines. That cubby space could be put to better use, and with Ted's  not only offer of assistance, he researched that we could donate to Habitat for humanity. We decided the machine definitely had to come out. So how do we get the darn thing out?

Here are a few pictures of that removal and our new cubby closet! It's now 10 days later and we've found a spot for almost everything,,, including the toaster oven! The Summer Wind is almost ship shape!