February 8, 2012

It is official, we have sold Never For Granted. Chris left early yesterday morning to deliver the boat to Pensacola. He is meeting the new owner in St. Pete, and then they will take the boat together to Pensacola. He anchored last night in Charlotte Harbor which is just North of Pine Island, and today he is planning on getting to Tampa Bay. He left Charlotte harbor this morning and is about 3 miles off shore with the wind in his face, which makes for a slow passage so if he can't make it to Tampa Bay before twilight he will head into Sarasota. Then St. Pete tomorrow.
It feels so strange to have him out there on his own. I know he is perfectly capable of single handing that boat, but it still feels like I have abandoned him. It was either we all go with him to Tampa, which would have required us to take linens for all of us, more food, and clothes, which we had already off loaded. Then the kids and I would have had to rent a car to drive back to Naples. He choose the less complicated option of going by himself, and it does make the most sense, but it still feels wrong.

February 4, 2012

We hit the Naples car show today. Deason was in his glory....well, so was Chris. It was an enormous show. We probably only saw 3/4 of the cars that were there. I am not the biggest car enthusiast, but you can't help but walk around there and be envious of some of the owners of these old cars. The pink Crown Vic was my favorite.

February 2, 2012

It was so nice coming back to the kids, and they even seemed just as pleased to see us. We get to relax for a couple of days before we close on the boat, then Chris will be helping the new owner to deliver the boat up to Pensacola.
I will greatly miss all that we had on the boat, but it is kind of exciting knowing that we have endless options open to us!

January 31, 2012-Naples

Today was like Christmas morning. I woke up at 5am just waiting to be able to get going to see the kids. We wanted to wait until the sun came up so we had a better view of crab pots, but that meant we had to wait until 7am. It was a beautiful morning, the winds were out of the East at 18-20 knots, and we motor-sailed the last 10 miles of our trip up to Naples at 7.5 knots. We entered Gordon Pass at 9am (the inlet into Naples) and were escorted by two dolphins that swam off of our stern for a good half a mile into Naples docks.
It really couldn't have been a better morning....Dolphins and our kids!

January 30, 2012- West Coast Florida

Sea turtles head....they are not easy to take a picture of!

We had an unbelievable day today. The wind was strong, but because it was a NE wind the land kept the seas small and we were flying. We averaged over 7 knots, and we saw over 8 knots quite a bit. I wasn't too lazy to sail today, so we sailed from anchor up to anchor set. We had to keep one reef in the main and played around with the genoa as the winds picked up. We couldn't have asked for better weather for this trip.
We had hoped to make it to Marco Island, and we almost did, but we anchored just a mile south of there in the lee of Kice Island. We had to do a fair amount of steering around crab pots during the day, and rather than continue on another mile to Marco in the dark we decided to get in before all the light was gone so we didn't catch a pot on accident. We didn't see any pots on our way in to anchor, but better safe than sorry.
We saw two sea turtles today, right after Chris and I were talking about how we had seen a ton of manatees and hardly any sea turtles...two of them pop up one right after another. Dahlia would have loved it, they were fairly big too. Then, as we were heading into where we were going to anchor, I was on the trampoline near the bow of the boat looking out for crab pots and I was nearly scared half to death by the surfacing of two dolphins on our bow wave. We have been waiting so long to have dolphins swim off of our bow, and they show up when I can hardly see them. There is something really special about being able to stand only feet away from them while they were swimming along with us.
This is definitely one of those trips that I will never forget. Chris and I miss the kids terribly, but it was nice to have this time for just he two of us!

January 29, 2012- Florida Keys

 We were up before three and had the anchor up just after that. We took our time getting out, and made it through the 3:30 am 17th Street bridge. On our way there we had an interesting side show. We saw this boat coming out of New River as we had just gone by, and who ever was in it was yelling something but, we couldn't make out what he was saying. As he caught up to us in his small wooden hand made skiff, we realized that he was heavily intoxicated. He was hanging on to the wheel of his boat, waving a beer bottle in the air, screaming at the top of his lungs "Obama is a fraud", repetitively. If we hadn't been concerned that he was going to smash into one of the channel markers (which he came very close to...twice) it would have been really funny. Only in Ft. Lauderdale!
 The transit out of the inlet was effortless. The wind was blowing NE at 15 knots, and we could have sailed, but I was too lazy to raise the mainsail at that hour so we ended up motor-sailing with just the head sail out. We were traveling along at 7 knots for quite a while until our wind had dropped off in the afternoon and we had to roll the genoa in. It was a very comfortable ride, we had a trailing wind and following seas the whole way, if the sun had been out a little more it would have been perfect.
We made it to Long Key around 5:30, but we decided that we would have better wind protection on the inside of the Keys. The wind had started to pick back up after 3pm. So, we crossed under the bridge and anchored just off of Lower Matecumbe Key. It was a little more protected from the wind, and the waters were relatively calm for the amount of wind there was. It was blowing steady at around 20 knots, but both Chris and I were so exhausted that I probably could have slept through a hurricane!

January 28, 2012

 

The sea trial was yesterday, and both Chris and I feel that it went really well. The weather was perfect and we had a blast!
We had a bunch of errands to run today before we could leave the dock, but we were able to accomplish them all and leave the dock by 2pm, we had to stop and get fuel and now we are anchored in one of our old favorite spots....Lake Sylvia.
 We have to get going so we can get around to Naples to get the kids. Dad and Jodi have had them since Thursday, and I feel like a whole part of me is missing with out them. I knew we would miss them, but I didn't realize that it would hurt this much to be away from them. They are apparently having the time of their lives!!!
The weather looks fairly good for tomorrow, and we plan to leave at 3am so we can get in a nice long run down the Keys. Our plan is to go outside through Hawkes Channel then cut in between Lower Matecumbe Key and Long Key. The forecast is for NE winds so hopefully we will have a nice down wind run!!!