Exploring Fort Pierce

The marina we are staying at has 3 complimentary beach cruisers for the patrons to use.  How perfect for us!  Until we went to take them out and 2 had flat tires.  Dan and Preston started blowing one up and blew it right up, "POP" it sounded like a gunshot.  I should start by telling you that the manager here, Rose, loves me.  She is fantastic and thinks it is awesome that a girl does all the work that she usually only sees men do.  I mean lets face it how many men do you know that went out a got a boat vs. how many women do you know that went out and got a boat?  It is primarily men that she deals with and likes seeing a girl around the boatyard.  So I asked her if she could have someone pick up some spare bike tubes and I would have Dan and Preston fix the flat bikes.  Two days later she told me the bikes were ready to use..............

We now have 3 brand new beach cruisers to ride around town.  Not fixed old rusty ones, but brand spanking new ones!!! Thanks Rose!  We took them out the first day and because everything is so flat here that are a joy to ride.  Lucy was most excited of all to get out of the marina and run!  We ended up pushing her a little too far and she had to hitch a ride with Preston for a while as her muscles were not used to running 7 miles.  This was hilarious.  I do not know if it was because she was so exhausted or if it is just her temperament, but we tried 3-4 positions of riding with her and she went along with all of them.  The one that worked best was Preston holding her on his lap with her leash going under her back legs like a swing holding her up.  Every time Preston's right leg came up Lucy's butt was in the air, then his left leg would come up her head was in the air.  Dan and I were laughing so hard as she teeter tottered down the sidewalk.  I don't imagine it was easy for Preston to ride his bike holding a 55 lb dog.  We now take these gems to the grocery store, West Marine, and even out to dinner if it's too hot to cook.

Happy Birthday Preston!

We have been busy celebrating Preston's Birthday.  He had been telling us that he wanted to eat desserts for every meal on his Birthday so that is precisely what we did.  I made cinnamon roll pancakes for breakfast, we rented a car for the weekend and went to the beach, stopped at Cold Stone for lunch, stocked up at Sam's Club, and made it home just in time to make Aunt Barbara's Banana Cake for dinner and played Monopoly (I won!) as it baked.  Other than that we received half of our LED's in the mail so Dan went up the mast to replace the old with the new and made it back down without any stunts!  We also got our wind generator delivered today.  We are now looking for a fabricator that can make us a custom mounting plate to go on top of our davit/bimini supports so we don't have to cut into our deck.  The manatees have been going crazy in our bay lately.  The show up in pods of 2-5 and munch down the leaves that float down the river every day.  Usually as the sun is setting we sit out on the dock and watch them chow down.  I don't think I will ever get sick of watching the sun go down here.

Going From Point A to Point A (taking the long way)

We have finally made a basic plan on how we plan to get our boat around the world.  We are thinking it will take somewhere between 40-50 months and should be 31,000-35,000 miles.  Probably closer to 35,000 miles with the way we sail!  Hopefully this can give you all a chance to make a plan to meet up with us somewhere.  We will try to stick close to this plan, but we know anything can change when you are traveling on a boat.  Also I have not named every single place we plan on stopping, just the basic countries so you can have a basic route.  We will be more specific on our next stops as we travel along.

November 2013- March 2014

• Bahamas
• Turks & Caicos
• Caribbean
• U.S. Virgin Islands
• Lesser Antilles
• St. Maarten
• Antigua
• Guadeloupe
• Dominca
• Martinque
• St. Lucia
• St. Kitts
• Barbados
• Grenada
• Panama
• San Blas Islands
• Panama Canal

March 2014-April 2014

• Crossing to Galapagos
• Galapagos
• Marquesas

May-October 2014

• Pacific Crossing
• South Pacific
• Tuamotus
• Tahiti
• Cook Islands
• Tonga
• Fiji

November 2014-March 2015

• New Zealand

April-September 2015

• Vanuatu
• Northern Australia
• Torres Strait
• Indonesia

October-December 2015

• Singapore
• Thailand

January-February 2016

• India
• Sri Lanka

March-April 2016

• Red Sea
• Suez Canal

May-October 2016

• Mediterranean
• Turkey
• Greece
• Italy
• Spain
• Morocco

November 2016

• Canary Islands

December 2016-April 2017

• Atlantic Crossing
• Caribbean
• Florida

Working as Hard as We Can

We have been working hard on making our tentative route around the world.  We are trying to fit in all the places we want to go within the weather windows each part of the world has.  Later this week I will post the basic route we will be taking.  Keep in mind this can change at any moment, but we still want a basic time frame, so all you reading can come visit!  Ours days seem to be dragging by lately.  We have been waiting for our LED lights the last week and they are STILL not here.  To fill our time we get up, eat breakfast, usually pancakes, shower, then each of us then works on a small boat project until the heat gets to us all and we go take a dip in the pool, then we eat dinner, watch a movie and go to bed.  The pool has been our paradise the last few days.

Vacation is Over, Now Back to Work

We finished up our vacation in West Palm by running errands in my parents rental car.  We finally got a flag pole mount, and some much needed locker latches from West Marine.  We also returned our air conditioner, mailed some packages, and got a few more organization tools at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  We also spent the last day on the beach with the sun out!  It was fun to spend the week with my parents, even though the weather only allowed us to take the boat out one day.  We are now back in Fort Pierce and the weather has changed,  almost like fall arrived when we were gone.  We slept like babies last night with no A/C and I have been able to cook on the boat with out even breaking a sweat.  I hope it continues to stay cooler the next few weeks while we finish preparing the boat.  We are waiting for some LED lights to be shipped to our marina here.

We left the rain gear up just in case!

Nothing is Ever Easy

So we had been waiting around Fort Pierce for the engine locks and finally got them a few days ago.  Went back to the boat pulled the starboard engine out and started taking it apart and thats when we ran into the problem of it being rust welded together.  Now that it is all said and done is anyone looking for some Yamaha outboard engine locks?  We have 2 that we will never use!!  Preston and Dan "Macgyvered" a new handle to lock our engine down, and it works like a charm.  We have since moved down the ICW to West Palm and have been enjoying the downpours every day.  We sailed through a thunderstorm and got a little nervous every time the thundered roared so loud we could feel it in our heartbeats.  Currently we are anchored in the north end of Lake Worth with about 8 other boats.  The plus to rainy days is cool, breezy evenings.  Thanks Jay for recommending the breeze boosters.  It is just what we have been needing.

 Got the Rain Gear Up After the Storm

Rush Limbaugh's House (Sorry mom that's the closest we will get unless the rain lets up)

35th Anniversary

When you get married and start having kids, where do you think you will spend your 35th anniversary?  On your kids sailboat getting ready to see the world?  That is what we did for my parents 35th wedding anniversary.  It was a perfect day for my mom, who is EXTREMELY seasick, to go sailing.  We only had 5-10 knots of wind and 1-2 foot swells.  It was a smooth ride and her patch worked great.  We sailed through a field of jellyfish, but other than that didn't see much wildlife.
We also went to the Navy Seal Museum, which was amazing.  We had a ton of fun seeing the history of the Navy Seals.

"I'm Sailing"

Fully Loaded

We sold one of our 3 dingy motors, which leaves us with one extra we still need to get rid of.  After hours of persuasion I convinced Dan and Preston to get rid of that giant cooler, that we have no need for.  We took it and our old table bases down to the marine surplus store to see if they would trade for some store credit.  The owner gave us $40 bucks in credit so we got an awesome fillet table that mounts to our back rail!!! We even took the floor model to save us $10 bucks.  We all agree that the fillet table will be used a lot more than that cooler.  I am SO happy to get rid of that eyesore.  We altered and installed new table bases to turn the settee into a bed, ordered new LED lights for all the indoor and outdoor fixtures, and installed the new stereo Dan brought back as ours had bit the dust.
We stocked up on some canned food at Sam's Club, filled all our gas tanks, and finally pick up our motor lock.  After putting another Ford Focus full of "stuff" on our boat our waterline moved up a couple inches!  We are definitely fully loaded.  As it goes with boats we thought we would get the new lock for the motor swap the old one out and off we go.  Well we are on day 2 of trying to take the rust locked motor apart to put the new lock in.
We have made some good friends on our dock over the last couple weeks.  One family we hope to see in the future as we both cruise along.  Jay and Tanya are sailing on a catamaran named Take Two, they have 5 kids, and have been living aboard for the past 5 years.  Jay and Tanya are both amazing!  Tanya has a pantry bigger and better stocked than my mom's 10 year supply of food storage.  She has buckets and buckets of grain that she grinds herself to make flour.  Jay has the tool for every situation, and has let us borrow a few to help with our motor.  It is fun to sit around and hear stories of where and what they have done, along with the problems that occurred on their way.  We have fun with their whole family and can't wait to run into them at some remote anchorage somewhere.

Great Day to Go Up the Mast 

New Stereo That Works!!!