Road Trip to Ft. Myers and St. Petersburg

On Thursday morning Bill and I left Ft. Lauderdale and took our first "road trip" in the new car -- destination FT. MYERS. We saw the opening Red Sox Spring Training game against the Pirates. The field at Ft. Myers is great - small and not a bad seat in the house (even the bleacher seats and they didn't cost an arm and a leg like they do at Fenway.) It was a sold out game - lots of people visiting from New England. The Red Sox lost, but we got to see Ortiz, Pedroia, Lester, and the other Red Sox stars.

Ft. Myer is about 4 hours from Ft. Lauderdale and only two hours from St. Petersburg. So after the game we kept driving north to see Bill's mom. The weather in St. Pete is amazing - it is sunny and much cooler than Ft. Lauderdale. We are going to stay for the weekend and drive back on Sunday.

We had a very nice weekend with Cindy and Boyd. They came over on Saturday afternoon and the four of us enjoyed the sunshine and hung out, then had an early dinner. We had every intention on going sailing on Sunday but there was absolutely no wind, so we stayed at the dock.

Bill was supposed to go to DC for a follow up doctors appointment on Monday but US Airways overbooked the flight so he got bumped until Tuesday. Since his appointment was supposed to be first thing in the morning and by the time he was bumped from the Monday flight the office was closed, he went to the airport Tuesday and called to get an appointment later in the day. The doctors office looked up his records and told him he doesn't have to be back for six months -- the complete opposite of what they told him two weeks ago!! So - he didn't end up getting on the flight afterall. Very frustrating.

Tuesday Bill and I made a decision. We are in Lauderdale for another few weeks at least. We are planning on spending the summer in St. Petersburg, FL. So... yesterday we went to CarMax and got a boat car! It is a 2002 Ford Escape - perfect for grocery shopping and doing errands. On the way home we thought about all the things we can do with a car; eat Taco Bell, explore some of the neighborhoods around Ft. Lauderdale, visit Miami, go and see Bill's mom in St. Pete (which we are doing Thursday), go grocery shopping without having to take a cab, pick Andrea up at the airport (she is visiting later this month!), go to Target, visit the Boggesses in Boyton and the Taylors in Largo.... We are very happy.

Grocery shopping!

For our boater friends, this post might be boring; duh! of course we all go food shopping! To all of our non-boater friends, hopefully you'll find this interesting.

So.... what do we do about grocery shopping? Well usually we can find a supermarket relatively nearby. If we walk, I bring our big boat bags and try to stick to things that aren't too heavy. Here in Ft. Lauderdale there is a great Publix about 3 miles away. I usually take a cab and, depending on how long I know I am going to be, the driver either waits with the meter running or I call another cab when I am done. We use dock carts to get the groceries down to the boat. Hall of Fame is great because there are always dock carts available (which we have found isn't the case at a lot of marinas.)

Bill and I get the groceries where they need to be in a few steps. First we get all the bags in the cockpit.

Then Bill passes them to me down the companionway and I get them down below. And we begin the fun task of putting everything away...... Our fridge and freezer are top loading since when we are sailing and heeled over the doors could open otherwise. So our countertop doubles as the top of our fridge / freezer. We use bins inside the fridge to keep things organized and so we don't have to dig and dig to find things. It works for us - although it is a pain when that green pepper I am looking for is way in the bottom bin and I have to empty everything out to retrieve it....

We have a very small pantry that holds the few dry goods that we use regularly. Everything else goes behind the couch. The IP485 has storage in places you wouldn't believe..... We use behind the port side settee for snacks, canned goods, rice, cooking stuff, etc.

A little different from living on land, but all in all - not too bad! The key is to stay organized and always put things in the same place.

Other cool sites

Here are some sailing blogs that Bill and I sometimes read. Check them out if you get a chance!

http://svthaleia.blogspot.com/ We met sv Thaleia when we were in Daytona Beach. They are currently in the Bahamas.

http://bristolrose.blogspot.com/ Bristol Rose is also in the Bahamas

http://www.splendido57.com/Splendido/Welcome.html Splendido is the beautiful boat of our friends Michael, Daniel, and Jeremy. We first met them last year during the 1500 and caught up with them in Marthas Vineyard and Annapolis this summer and fall.

http://sailmarylee.com/index.php
http://www.tripsailor.com/
http://sailingnightwatch.wordpress.com/

It has been a quiet week. Bill and I have enjoyed the weather (plenty of sunshine) and hanging out on the boat. We have been cooking at home, which has been nice.

I have also started two virtual volunteer projects. The first project that I am working on is with Bookshare. Bookshare is online library of digital books for the blind. The way that it works is someone scans a book into the large Bookshare database (or the publisher 'donates' a scanned file.) What I am dozens of other volunteers do is basically download the file and then proofread and format the scanned books. Sometimes the scans aren't 'clean' and there are extra characters or misspellings. The page numbers have to be added and the bibliographic information verified. Once the file is proofread, I upload it to the database. A staff member does the final approval and then the book is available for 'check out' in either Braille or adaptable technology (text recognition) formats. Pretty cool. I have done 5 books over the past few weeks.

The second project that I am working on is with 50/50 Leadership, a non-profit that focuses on gender equality in leadership. I am working with a team of five to create a comprehensive online database of women's conferences, seminars, courses, symposiums, etc. The team was formed this week and the database is in the beginning stages. It should be posted on the 50/50 website within six months.

So I have been spending lots of time on the computer....

Here are some pictures of the beautiful flowers that I picked up last week. They are still in full bloom and make the boat smell pretty.

Hope everyone has a nice weekend.

Joe and Nancy sent us this picture of the Wet Dog, the sandwhich shop at Port Annapolis Marina where we stayed this summer. I guess they are doing some major renovations. Hopefully we'll be back up that way to see the new cafe when it is finished.

Well, it was a great weekend. Bill and I hung around Ft. Lauderdale all weekend, including Valentine's Day. We were going to try to make it to the Miami Boat Show, but since we don't have a car, we decided to skip it. We did wash the boat, which was badly needed. Mary Elizabeth is now sparkling.

Friday night we met a gentleman from Newburyport, MA. He is here for a few weeks and is staying at the marina next door. Come to find out, he kept his boat at the marina in Newburyport where we were this summer. Since it was a small marina and we were there for a few weeks, we definitely remembered the boat!

Last night Bill and I were invited to tour the inside of his amazing boat, which we loved! It is amazing. We had a nice steak dinner on board before he drove us back to Mary Elizabeth via dinghy.

Valentine's Day was low key for us. Bill and I hung out, had a yummy home cooked meal and enjoyed each other's company. We hope everyone also had a nice day.

Nothing crazy on the agenda for the week except to get Bill's phone fixed; it basically just stopped working (so if you need to get in touch you can call my phone for the time being).

Thanks Katie

Thank you Katie for your hospitality. It made things a lot easier for Bill to be able to stay at your house in DC. You are the best.

Bill came back from DC with several "Alex stories." Alex is Katie's beautiful and amazing 3 1/2 year old son. Here is one of my favorites....

Tuesday morning Alex came into the guest bedroom to see what Uncle Bill was up to. He got really close to Bill's face (who was still asleep) and said, "What are you doing here?" Bill grumpily replied "Trying to sleep." Alex looked all confused and said, "But it's light out!?!" The kid had a point....

I am planning a trip to DC sometime in early March. Katie's due date is March 6th and I can't wait to meet Alex's little brother!

It is another spectacular day in Ft. Lauderdale. It is supposed to remain in the 80s with a nice breeze through the weekend. Yesterday we went to the beach for a few hours in the afternoon, which was just perfect.

Not a whole lot planned for the weekend. Things feel weird when there is no football to watch. Happy Friday (the 13th none the less) everyone.

Favorite sites

I added a new "Favorite Sites" box to the blog. We have received several emails lately asking for advice on cruising and livingaboard. Although extremely flattering, Bill and I are hardly experts. We find Cruiser's Net, Living Aboard Forums, Lats and Atts etc. to be very helpful, informative, and the perfect places to post questions about various things from boat maintence to insurance questions to suggestions on liveaboard-friendly marinas. Anyone have a site you regularly visit that we might be missing?

Bonnet House

Yesterday while Bill was in DC I visited the Bonnet House, which is right up the road. The Bonnet House was the winter vacation house of Frederic Clay Bartlett and his wives Helen (who died shortly after they were married) and Evelyn who gave the land to Florida before her death in the late 90s. The brochure stressed that it was the last piece of land not developed with mega hotels and condos in Southern Florida. Supposedly the property is 35 acres, although I only saw a sliver of the land.

Yahoo travel summarizes:

Built in 1921, this historic two-story, 35-acre waterfront house was once the winter home of artist Frederic Clay Bartlett and his wife Evelyn. The Bonnet House is serenely elegant and preserved amidst the urban expansion of Fort Lauderdale Beach, which is what makes the land so special. Mrs. Bartlett, who died in 1997, gave the estate to the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation in 1983 in order to keep the property unchanged. Several concerts and events are held here throughout the year, and the house is available for private events such as weddings. Named for a waterlily that once inhabited the property, the Bonnet House is open year-round for guided tours.

So I sat through the hour and a half tour of the house and learned all about the lifestyles of the rich and famous. I was disappointed because I didn't catch a glimpse of any of the supposed monkeys and all types of birds that live on the property (although I did see a swan). The tour guide was great, but it was a very expensive 'home' to look at ($20 bucks!) It was a beautiful afternoon and I did take some nice pictures of the courtyard. Bartlett was an artist / art collector and the House featured some of his works as well as a gallery of contemporary artists, which was nice. I got my 'cultural' fix for the week I guess. They also collected sea shells from all over the world and had an extensive orchid garden (which was what peaked my interest to begin with). Unfortunately, the orchids were housed in a green house which we couldn't enter - although we could peak through the windows and they were spectacular.

Views from our cockpit

As I have mentioned (several times) before, the marina where we have stayed for the past month + is fabulous. We are at Hall of Fame Marina, although we kind of ended up here by accident. Why is it such a great marina you might ask? Well because it is clean. And close to everything. And the staff is great. For example, yesterday I was returning from a Target, liquor store, Laundromat, Starbucks run (yes, we are with car again) and had a very large and heavy dockcart full to the brim. As I was going down the ramp trying very hard not to dump a bottle of wine or the freshly laundered pillow cases in the water, I saw Scott the Dockmaster walking the other way on the phone. He waved for me to stop, hung up the phone, and proceeded to take the dockcart from me and walk me back to the boat. Oh, and I should mention that it was way after 5:00 pm and he should have already gone home?

The marina office has also been very flexible and patient with our plans. We had a reservation for only two weeks. We are going on six.

Another great thing about this marina is that it is small. There is a north side (where the big boats are) and a south side (where we are) which is mostly liveaboards. Last night when the wind was howling out of the East pushing us onto the dock at low tide, my mind started doing that thing it does best when Bill isn't around to solve all the problems of the world (or at least give me the impression that he will). I conjured up the scenario of how the fenders were going to be caught under the dock as the tide started to rise and the boat would list to port and / or the fenders would be lost. But I did go to bed assured that if anything happened while Bill was in DC, I would simply knock on the boat door of a neighbor and ask for help changing the lines or whatever. Of course it didn't come to that.... But it was nice to feel comfortable enough that I could ask for help.

Cruising, living aboard, boating in general brings out the best in people. For the most part, it has been our experience that everyone is willing to help and be helped and then pay it forward. It is nice to feel part of a small community in some way... especially when we are so transient.

I will admit that we don't really know our neighbors at Hall of Fame too, too well. There haven't been any dock happy hours or dinners. I think part of the reason is because Bill and I have only been in Lauderdale to hang out one of the five weekends we have been here (Boston, Largo, my dad was here, Lake Wales). Ironically we were invited to a BBQ on a neighbor's boat last night. Bill was in DC and I politely declined since I was rearranging and cleaning out all of the closets on the boat. Plus I had to get through Mama Mia before Bill came home or I would never see that damn movie! When the cats away.... yeah right! Hopefully there will be another invite or we can host before we leave.

Saturday we had a nice visit from Cindy, Boyd, Ginger, and Darren. We hung out and enjoyed the afternoon and had tacos for dinner. Tacos are easy and we probably have them for dinner at least once a week. I am becoming more in tune with our oven. I have learned that as long as I let the oven warm up for a good 20 minutes and turn it up an extra 25 degrees from what the recipe calls for, all is good in our baking / broiling / oven-cooking world. Of course Bill and I just have to remember the pan! Last week when Bill cooked chicken tettraziti, he had the mushrooms, chicken, and pasta all cooked and ready to go into the oven when we realized we didn't have a baking pan. Oops. So I jumped in the car and made a very quick run to Publix. We use the disposable tinfoil-like pans since they come in smaller sizes. Our oven isn't big enough to hold the regular size pans that you would get at Bed Bath and Beyond or Target, etc. Plus, we gave my sister Amy all of our baking pans when we moved out of our place in Alexandria in October (which she and her roommate Allison are now enjoying as they moved into their new place last weekend.)

So we had a nice time on the boat Saturday afternoon. It is fun having people on board and entertaining. There was some sort of sailfish tournament hosted at the marina across from us on Staurday and Sunday. We watched about a dozen big sportfish boats come in with their sailfish flags flying. One boat had 19 flags flying (meaning they caught and released 19 fish!!!) Most of the boats had between 5 and 8 flags flying. The clouds and the sunset both Saturday and Sunday were simply stunning.

Today Bill flies to DC for the night. He has finally given up on trying to get a straight answer out of the folks at TriCare (his medical insurance company via the military). They are at a loss on how he can get a doctors appointment since our address on file with them is Alexandria, VA but we are physically in Florida. His records are in DC, which is a different 'zone' than Florida so a referral is needed. Sounds easy, right? Right.... He has literally spoken to a dozen different people who have passed the buck and given him another phone number to call. This has been going on off and on since Thanksgiving! Very, very frustrating. It is discouraging when it is easier to get on a plane and fly to a different state than to see a military doctor down the street.

A year of blogging...

It's been a little over a year since we posted our first entry on "....with the sea as our living room.... And this will be our 206 post. Bill and I have written about our adventures, the people we have met, the places we have visited, living on board, the sites we have explored. And of course we have posted hundreds of pictures!

We got the idea from Cindy who kept a blog chronicling the Caribbean 1500. Paula, a friend I worked with at the State Department, came up with the name ....with the sea as our living room. Our intentions in creating the blog were two-fold. First, we wanted to keep a record of our travels for ourselves. More importantly, however, we found that it is an easy way to keep in touch. Instead of sending email updates we write one post and whoever is interested in keeping up with our travels can simply visit our blog. This was particularly helpful when we were in the Caribbean last year.

We do receive the occasional comment (which we love). And we have received several emails (to our google account) from people we have never met commenting or asking questions about living aboard, etc. Cool.

I discovered Google Analytics in May, 2008, which has allowed us to keep stats on how many people are visiting our site, what city they are from, and how they find us (by typing in the link, doing a google search, referring link from another site, etc.). Since May there have been 6,767 page hits on our blog. 4,430 people have visited from 525 different cities in 60 different countries including Italy, China, Latvia, and Uruguay. The most hits we ever had in one day was 45 on December 20, 2008.

So thanks for reading. We have enjoyed looking back on the past year and remembering all of our adventures. And we hope you have too.

the beach!

Here are some pics of Ft. Lauderdale. Last week Bill and I went to the beach for an hour and saw a cruise ship going out. They are massive.... We also saw lots of kite boarders, which is still something that Bill wants to try. Since it was a beautiful day the beach was fairly crowded in front of the hotels. Since we are a little further south, where we planted our chairs was perfectly quiet.

The weather has been chilly but we aren't complaining. Some of the restaurants on the beach have been closed at night since there is no inside seating and the 'strip' is pretty desolate at night with the cold.

On another note, we received the replacement part for the propane and are now 'back in business' which is nice. Bill cooked a delicious chicken tetrazzini last night for dinner. We have a ton of leftovers. Today we are turning in the rental car (after two and a half weeks!) so I have stocked up at the grocery store, etc.

Happy Friday to everyone.

More pictures of Lake Wales

Here are a few more pictures of the awe-inspiring scenery that we experienced this past weekend. It was so peaceful and quiet in Lake Wales; a truly stunning place to be. We are so lucky to have incredible friends who shared such an awesome part of Florida with us.

Clay Pigeon Shooting

Here are some more pictures of everyone clay pigeon shooting up at Lake Wales.

Airboating pictures

As you know, Capt' Dave took Bill and me airboating while we were up at Lake Wales, which was truly amazing. An airboat is a flat bottomed boat that is powered by a propeller. Because they are flat and there is no engine in the water, airboats can go where other boats can't (including land!) Dave took us through water that was only inches deep. On Sunday Capt' Dave let Bill drive. It is a weird feeling driving straight over reeds, lily pads, and other vegetation in the water. But nothing can get caught in the prop (since there isn't one) and it is impossible to 'run aground.' Also, since the seats are high and essentially part of the bow of the boat there is nothing to obstruct the view. I felt like I was part of the incredible sites as we were gliding over the water.

To learn more about airboats, click here.