Day 135, Year 10: Someone Flipped a Switch
Date: Sunday, February 22, 2015
Weather: Mostly Sunny and WARM, SE 10
Location: Dinner Key Marina Anchorage, Coconut Grove, FL
Today it felt like summer. What a nice change to be forced to shed the long sleeved shirts and long pants because we were too hot. I figure someone must have just flipped a switch to cause this sudden, but positive, turn in the weather. But whatever, we’ll take it. It was glorious.
We spent our day ticking off things that need to be done before we can leave for the Bahamas. Mark took the dinghy into the gas dock to fill the two jerry jugs we have onboard and discovered that it was the perfect time to bring the boat in. He was going to make multiple trips in the dinghy to fill the tanks, but the perfect conditions changed his mind. It was slack tide, nearing high, and the dock was an easy on and off. So ‘tick’—first job on the list done. Unfortunately we couldn’t fill the water tanks. When I asked if there was water, the young man on the dock simply said, “No water here. We’re a gas station.” Duh. When we got back to the anchorage another boat had taken our spot, so we searched for a deeper place to anchor. We had no luck, so now we are in an even shallower spot (only by an inch or two) and we continue to bump the bottom at low tide. At first this made me very nervous, but now I’m just viewing it as preparation for the shallow anchorages in the Bahamas. I did some ‘house’ cleaning while Mark rested. The heat and sun had gotten to him. But once I was done and we had lunch, he was ready for the next job. We went to shore, took a bus to Mary’s Laundromat, and did the laundry. So ‘tick’ ‘tick’—boat is clean and laundry is done. On the way back to Dinner Key Marina, we decided to stay on the bus and go to CVS to pick up prescriptions Mark will need while we are in the Bahamas. ‘Tick’—one more job done. And finally when we got back to Windbird, Mark took our empty water jerry jugs to shore to get some water. When he got back, I gave our pathetically dirty dinghy a perfunctory cleaning with a promise to give it a thorough cleaning when we are in a beautiful anchorage in the Bahamas. So ‘tick’ ‘tick’—two more jobs done. We are now ready to concentrate on having a good time with our friends Tom and Detta when they arrive tomorrow. We are renting a car and going to the airport in Fort Lauderdale to pick them up. It is two train rides and one bus ride away and with the connection time figured in, it was going to be late afternoon before they could get here. With the rental car, we will get back much sooner. Plus, we plan to take one of our two propane tanks that we use for cooking with us to get it filled. That will allow us to ‘tick’ off one more job that needs to be done before departure. We’re getting there, one little ‘tick’ at a time.
