Fireworks!

What a great firework show here in Sarasota! We were so close that it took Bill over an hour to clean up the debris that fell on sv Mary Elizabeth. It was a great night.

Happy Fourth of July!

Hope everyone is having a happy 4th.

It is a beautiful day here in Sarasota. Mary Alice came down yesterday. She and I did a few errands and went food shopping while Bill dressed the boat in honor of the holiday. Doesn't Mary Elizabeth look so beautiful?!? Later the three of us tried a new restaurant on Main Street called Mosaic, which was delicious.

The marina is bus, and since we are on the (otherwise empty and quiet) transient dock, we have enjoyed watching the docking follies, etc. Everyone has decorated their boat with flags, etc. which is festive and nice.

We have had a lazy day of reading, watching golf, tennis, and the Red Sox, brunch, and laundry. Mary Alice and I walked up to Starbucks and got back a few minutes ago. We are looking forward to grilling out on the boat and watching the fireworks here in Sarasota tonight. They will be shot off from the park directly across from us. You can see from the picture below how close they will be! We plan on having a hose ready in case there are any stray embers....

Happy Fathers Day

Happy Fathers Day to everyone. Hope you have a great day. 

It is another sunny H-O-T day here in Sarasota. There is actually a heat warning. The heat index is at 100+ degrees. Needless to say, we are looking forward to a day spent on the boat down below watching the Red Sox and the Masters and enjoying a home cooked Sunday meal. 

Enjoy the day. 

The last week and a half....

 

Well, the last week and a half has been full of interesting tidbits for us here in Ft. Lauderdale. 

The good news is that both Bill and I have finally received our Florida drivers licenses, which means we are officially Floridians. Yeah! 

We had a lovely Easter in St. Petersburg with Bill's mom. Mary Alice cooked a delicious Easter roast, potatoes, and green beans and we feasted. There were a few games of Skip-bo as well as a movie for Mary Alice and me (while Bill watched the Masters) and lunches in beautiful downtown St. Petersburg. 

Saturday night Bill and I celebrated our anniversary at Berns Steakhouse in Tampa. It was one of the most fun experiences we have had at a restaurant. We had a delicious dinner and then had a tour of the kitchen and wine cellar. Afterwards we went to a separate area and had dessert and coffee. We had reservations at 7:30 and didn't get home until 11:00! It was quite the experience. 

Bill and I drove back to Ft. Lauderdale on Monday afternoon in a rental car. We left our car in St. Petersburg (thank you Mary Alice!) so it will be there in June and we don't have to worry about it while we cruise the Keys for the next few weeks. 

 

On Friday on the way to St. Petersburg Bill and I stopped in Sarasota for a few hours to check out a marina. As we wrote before, we looked at 9 marinas in the St. Pete area but didn't find anything that we really loved. Since we are going to be on the West Coast of Florida for at least the whole summer, we really wanted to find somewhere that was close to everything and had the facilities that we have grown used to (pump out, laundry, secure marina, etc.) Well, we found that and more at Marina Jacks in downtown Sarasota. We are excited about our new "home" and look forward to arriving sometime in June. Sarasota is about 45-50 minutes from St. Pete so we will be making plenty of visits to see and stay with Mary Alice. 

 

Last week we were woken up by someone banging on the boat telling us our car had been vandalized. We went up to the parking lot to find the passenger side window of our car smashed. The police had already been and filed a report. Apparently someone smashed the windows of five cars in the parking lot in the early hours of the morning. The vandals took only what was in the glove compartment -- the registration, proof of insurance, car manual, and our AAA membership. We are very lucky in the sense that they did not take Bill's golf clubs, which were in the back seat!!! We called the glass company and they fixed the window that afternoon. 

 

Bill played golf last week with a few buddies and shot an 87, which he was very excited about. I went to the beach for a few hours. We also saw Amy and Juan for dinner last week, which is always fun. And of course we now have the Red Sox to keep us busy at night. We signed up for the MLB package again so we can watch all the games on the computer. We are still loving the Mac. 

So today we provisioned and are ready to leave for Miami tomorrow morning. We will spend a few days in Miami and then head to Key Largo, Marathon, Key West (and points in between) before heading up to the West Coast of Florida. 

We know we haven't been good about keeping up the blog (sorry!) and promise to be better about posting pictures and keeping everyone up to date with our travels. 

Hope everyone had a great Easter! 

Happy 2009!

Happy New Year to everyone! Hope you all have a fabulous 2009!

Bill, Cindy, Boyd and I celebrated the New Year here in Boca. We had a low key night on the boat. Bill cooked and we hung out. There were fireworks somewhere close (although we couldn't see them) at midnight. The resort did a 'thing' but we didn't participate.

We have had a very nice past couple of days, although I have been lazy about blogging. Bill played golf, I went to the beach, we had dinner with Cindy and Boyd in Boyton. We ran out of propane and filled the tanks, went to the movies again (Marley and Me) did some errands, went to the Laundromat. I got a haircut, we had two crazies try to pick up / off load people on the finger pier at our bow before security ran them away. We watched all of the season four episodes of Lost, which my mother gifted Bill for Christmas. (She also gave him these cool napkins below)

Boca has been really nice, but we are ready to leave. Tomorrow we head to Ft. Lauderdale. While work is done on the boat, I have plans to fly to Boston for a few days. Then its destination Bahamas!!

Amazing Christmas on the sv Mary Elizabeth

(Enjoying Christmas Eve dinner on board while watching a Christmas Story)

(relaxing post-dinner Christmas Eve)

Christmas on the sv Mary Elizabeth was great. Mary Alice, Bill and I slept in and, after enjoying Pamela's delicious banana bread, had a lazy morning and afternoon. After opening presents we enjoyed the sunshine and played with our new gadgets. Bill and I received Kindle from Mary Alice. What an amazing idea for two people who live on a boat and read a ton. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Kindle, it is an electronic book reader from Amazon. You can go online and download books (there is a library of 20,000 books to chose from and they are a lot cheaper than new hardcovers [each Kindle book is $9,99]). The screen is big enough to comfortably read (and you can change the font size) and it is very easy to use and navigate. Since Kindle was recently featured on Oprah's "favorite things" they are on back order. But Mary Alice's friend Monika lent us hers for the weekend so we could check it out and learn the ropes. It will be the perfect thing for the boat so we won't have to spend money on books that we end up having to leave at book swaps when we run out of room to stowe them.

(presents, presents, and more presents)

Bill and I gifted each other a Nikon D60 camera with a super duper lens. It is complicated and we are still learning, but it is an amazing camera. Since we take dozens of pictures a day, it is something that we will certainly be using a lot.

(Bill goofing with the new Nikon)

Our Christmas dinner here at the resort was delicious and fancy. We had a multiple course meal at the top of the tower. The three of us came back to the boat stuffed to the brim.

(Christmas dinner)

Friday we "left the compound" and went to the movies. There are SO many movies out at the moment; we saw the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which we all gave 'two thumbs up' -- despite the almost three hour run time. Doubt, Valkyrie, Marlie and Me, and the two Kate Winslet movies are next on the list. There is a really nice movie theater close by. After the movie we ate at the Whales Rib, a restaurant in Boca on the water that three different people suggested. It was very crowded and after waiting 45 minutes + for a table we decided to eat at the bar. It was as good as everyone said it was - and we all overate (again). We came back to the boat and Mary Alice taught me Skip-O - one of the five new games that we got for the boat (which we are both very excited for!!!)

(Mary Alice and Lauren enjoying the sun on Christmas day while playing with Kindle)

Today we took the resort shuttle over to the Beach part of the resort, which is under renovation but has recently opened on a limited basis. The resort is very crowded right now - I guess for the upcoming New Year holiday. We ate lunch by the pool and walked on the beach. The Atlantic was choppy today and two small boats capsized trying to get in/out of the Boca Inlet. We dropped Mary Alice off at the airport a few hours ago and we are enjoying an early evening on the boat.

(Bill doing his magic tricks for Mary Alice)

The weather has been great. It is warm but windy so it isn't hot. The clouds come and go but the rain has held off for the past few days. Tomorrow I have plans to go to the adults only pool (this place is crawling with lots and lots of kids.....) while Bill golfs. We'll pick Cindy and Boyd up at the airport on Monday and then find a different marina in the area until after New Years. We are really treating ourselves here.

So it was a lovely visit with Mary Alice and we had a very nice Christmas and hope that everyone else did also.

For more pics, click here.

Merry Christmas

We wish all of our family and friends a very VERY Merry Christmas. Hope everyone has a great day filled with loved ones, good food and great conversation.

Boy have we been enjoying ourselves here in Boca. Mary Alice and I enjoyed very relaxing massages this morning. Bill was supposed to golf, but because it was windy and raining decided to postpone for another day.

Tonight, Christmas Eve, Bill is cooking his 'famous' beef stroganoff. We have a game of scrabble planned for later. Tomorrow Bill, Mary Alice and I will have a lazy day and then an early dinner here at the Boca Club.

Bill spent a long time on the phone today finally convincing the AT&T folks that our air card (how we have access to the Internet on the boat) really is broken. They are shipping us a new one so we should be back 'online' and able to upload pictures soon.

Merry Christmas.

We made it to BOCA RATON, FL

Today was another perfect day on the water. We motored past West Palm Beach, Fort Pierce, Riviera Beach, Del Ray, Boyton, etc. And again we saw many simply incredible homes on the water. As a bonus today we saw two manatees! Today was a day full of bridges. We had 12 bridges to go under and only one was fixed. The rest either opened on signal or opened on the hour and half hour or at 15 and 45 past the hour. Bill's timing was perfect (meaning we didn't have to wait long for the next opening). But it did take us about 7 hours to go 38 statute miles because of all of the bridges.

When we got to Boca we were amazed. We are staying at the Boca Raton Resort and Club. It is a small marina (20 +/- slips?) in a large resort located on the ICW. We are the only sailboat here and most of the boats are huge yachts. Some of the same boats that we saw at Yacht Haven Grande in St. Thomas are docked here -- including Carbon Copy, the boat that our friends Amy and Juan were on. We are docked right in the middle of the resort; our stern looks over the pool (awesome!) Bill and I look forward to exploring a bit more tomorrow.

When we got in we cleaned up the boat a bit and decorated the tree. It is perfect for the boat. And we love it -- although we weren't able to find the extension cord so we haven't exactly plugged it in yet... but it still looks great (if we do say so ourselves) all the same. We recieved a package from my mother so we actually have wrapped presents under the tree for the full effect.

And we got to see Cindy and Boyd!!! They live in Boyton Beach and drove over to Boca - and brought goodies -- including our first Christmas card. It was so nice to see them and hang out for the night.

Tonight was the Boca boat parade (another awesome thing that we stumbled upon!) Out of the three boat parades that we have seen this Christmas (Thunderbolt, St. Augustine, and here) this was the coolest. There were probably 25-30 boats and all were decked out. There were 30+ boats anchored directly across from us (which is a show in and of itself) and the parade literally went right by across our bow. Cindy and Boyd were here to enjoy also. Because we are staying at the marina we got 'passes' to the dock party. There were lots and lots of (mostly older) 'club members' viewing the parade and partaking in the festivities. There were a ton of food stations (shrimp, sushi, pasta, seafood, etc.) and an open bar. Cindy, Boyd, Bill and I hung out on the boat for a bit and then went up to the party and feasted.

So it was a fun night -- sort of the culmination of our trip so far. Boca has been 'the' destination for so long and we are finally here and enjoying ourselves -- and very much looking forward to the next few days.

For more pictures, click here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our friends and family. We hope that everyone has a relaxing enjoyable day!

Bill and I have plans to go to Poogan's Porch (as recommended by Mary Alice) this afternoon for a traditional "southern" Thanksgiving meal. It is a beautiful day here; warm and sunny.

Happy turkey day!

Happy 4th

We hope everyone had a happy fourth of July. Bill and I really had a nice day. We did a whole lot of nothing, and it was perfect. Bill got the game on the computer, and I took a nice long walk out to Plum Island. I did some more work on my cross stitch, and we got takeout and, after a stunning sunset, watched about four firework shows from the boat. It was really relaxing and perfect.

On Thursday Bill and I visited the Maritime Museum, which is literally steps from the boat. We discovered that Newburyport is the birthplace of the US Coast Guard. And that there have been a ton of shipwrecks at the mouth of the River.

Thursday night we had a visit from Nathan and Lauren. We went to dinner at the Tannery and braved out the downpours and lightning.

Pictures....

Here are links to our photo albums on the web from the beginning of our journey before we started the blog.

• Bon Voyage Party October 2007
• Preparations for the Caribbean 1500 in Hampton, VA Nov 2007
• BVI Thanksgiving 2007
• St. Thomas, New Years 2008
• Al and Corinne's Visit Feb 2008