August--Moving back on the boat! How did we gather
so much STUFF in just one year?!! How can we get so much on
the boat? She looks so good and shiny, I hate to crowd her
with the accouterments of life. Ah, well. It's now the
23rd, and we are so tired of moving. So little time, with my
working. Every night a couple of hours at the apartment, and
then fall into the new mattress on the boat. I haven't cooked
a meal in two weeks. Not that I'm complaining about THAT, mind
you. I also haven't had much time to watch the Olympics, which
is the only time I watch sports. I have missed that.
July--I have a job! It's very different from the
Exec Admin jobs I did for 17 years. This is data processing;
mostly mouse work, a little typing. It's also a pool of work
shared by 4 people, which goes against my grain of responsibility,
and I still try to be "Mom" of the group. But I am finally
comfortable with all the processes and am enjoying it very much.
It's more money than I have EVER made in my life, but I am earning
every penny of it, chained to the computer for 8 hours a day!
June--I am trying to find a job, but not having any luck.
Have had a couple of interviews, but apparently the 5 year gap
between jobs (and probably my gray hair)doesn't inspire confidence.
Sigh. We have decided to stay on land another year, and plan
to leave Tampa late spring/early summer in 2009. It would help
if I could put some money toward the cruising kitty. Just had
to put down our 17-yr old cat.
March-April-May--We started spending weekends on the boat at the
end of March (a 3 1/2 hr drive away), and spent 3 weekends on the
boat, cleaning her up, getting her ready to bring "home" to Tampa.
After nearly 10 months mostly alone she needed a lot of work.
We also took off a bunch of things, so that my brother Walter could
sleep comfortably in the garage
V-berth, and so the car and the dining room were piled high with
stuff. How can we have so much STUFF?! We rented a car,
picked Walter up at the airport on Thursday, April 24th, and headed
to Green Cove Springs. We left Friday morning and motored
upriver, stopping for diesel in Jacksonville. We had carefully
planned to catch the tide, but we couldn't get any speed at all.
Fortunately it was better at the mouth of the river as we passed the
ICW, but we slogged along at about 3 kts for the next 3 days along
the eastern coast to Marathon, and were actually 24 hours behind our
plans to get Walter back to Tampa for his flight and Tony back to
work! Of course, the wind was never with us, and we still
can't figure out why we were so slow. We had had the bottom
cleaned twice, last time just the day before we left. We
stayed close into shore, most times about 2-3 miles off, to avoid
the Gulf Stream. We were in 30 feet of water a lot of the
time. Walter was a great joy to have aboard--he's not really a
sailor but soaks it up and had wonderful time. He did do one
night watch on his own, but once we turned into Hawk Channel we were
all more comfortable with Tony and me doing the watches. But
Walter did spend his 4 hours during the night in the cockpit!
We arrived in Marathon at 4:00 Tuesday afternoon, jumped off the
boat, rented a car and headed back to Tampa. We actually took
our time cleaning up and having dinner, so we left Marathon about
6:00 to miss the traffic. We arrived in Tampa about midnight,
got up early and put Walter on the plane. We kept the rental
that week (all 3 days of it), and drove back to Marathon on Friday.
We left Boot Key Harbour mid-morning, bought diesel (gaaaach!) and
motored to Tampa. It was great fun going through the
Seven-Mile Bridge and into Florida Bay--we had never been there
before. VERY shallow, but the passage was well marked--made us
pay attention. There's a Bullard Reef out there! At
least this trip we were able to move faster, and hit 6 knots a
lot--more like what we're used to from Columbine.
Again, the jib went up and down and was useful maybe half the time.
But we got into familiar territory pretty quickly, as we have been
to Charlotte Harbor and back before. We made such good time that
the 2nd night we were able to anchor in one of our old favorite
places behind Longboat Key. (It's been a lot of fun to go in
there as we learned about this anchorage through our yacht club (oh,
many years ago) and it's not on the chart. It was dredged to
help build a park, and it's tricky to get into. However, it
has been discovered, and not only was it nearly full with perhaps 8
boats, but half of them were double-anchored and what a pain in the
butt! The guy we talked to said he double-anchored because
most everyone else was. And some of them were empty, of
course.)
So we motored into Tampa Bay Monday morning and all the way up to
the Gandy Bridge to turn into our marina, which is in St.
Petersburg. It's small, and close, and we were too wide for
the first slip we tried, so moved into the one next to it.
Then we were too long, with the dinghy hanging off the davits we had
built in Trinidad. So we spent the next week going back to the
marina, seeing it was too windy, and finally moving the boat a week
later to another larger outside slip, which has a bump at the
outside which we can't get over at low tide! But the
self-appointed "mayor" got on the jet ski and pulled us in. So
we'll remember to leave only at high tide!
So Columbine is now home and safe and sound. YEAH!!!
We will stay in the apartment until the lease runs out at the end of
August and then move aboard. At this point we are expecting to
work into next year, and leave perhaps at the end of the spring to
spend hurricane season in the Chesapeake Bay. Then we'll go
south again, and into the West Caribbean. Or we may head to
the Mediterranean.
