I didn't sleep well last night from thinking about things we still needed to do and what I was missing. When I finally got back to sleep around 5am I slept until almost 10:30. Whoa! That makes your day go fast! My biggest decision was to eat lunch or breakfast. I decided on lunch of leftover chicken a la king from dinner last night.
Laura went to Publix with a huge list of final groceries (and a little booze of course) while I started a good wash-down of the boat. This might be our last "free" water for the next month or more so I took advantage and spent almost 2 hours cleaning the decks, dinghy, solar panels and cockpit with a scrub brush and soft-scrub.
In the middle of my cleaning, Laura came back with a full trunk of groceries. I helped unload everything into our salon then went back to cleaning.
Since I had been running the hose for quite a while, I filled up our water tank with fresh water. We will need to top it off tomorrow morning before we leave but the 180 gallons I put in the tank today was very fresh.
Our $400 of groceries are all put away after we vacuum-sealed the last of our fresh meat. Storage shelves, fridge and both freezers are stacked to the top. Here is a happy Laura (everything is put away) with our full big freezer. Our smaller freezer (70 liter) is also full to the top.
Now to get the boat ready for leaving our slip and tieing up at the marina fuel dock. We don't need fuel but it will make everything much easier when leaving tomorrow morning.
It is now 7:30pm and we're sitting in the salon after dinner. I've had two glasses of tequila during our going-away party so am not typing very well right now but need to get this on-line before we leave tomorrow. 'nuff said....
Just before 4pm we got the boat ready to leave the dock. I walked to our neighbors and asked them to help us leave as we were facing east in our dock and the winds were 10-15 from the SE so would be blowing us sideways a bit. Here is the picture of the stern of our boat from the slip we've been in for the past 2 months. See how close the boats are behind us? It is only about 50 feet between the boats of our marina and the marina on the other side of the canal. Second Wind is 48 feet length-over-all so we have to be very careful.
With everyone in place, we untied our lines and power cord and backed out of the slip. Just at that moment, the wind died and the boat handled very nicely as we backed to the north and motored forward out of the canal. 5 minutes later we tied up at the end of Burdines fuel dock so we could leave easily tomorrow morning. Here is the picture off our stern where we are now. That's the ocean directly behind the boat and about 150 feet between us and the dock behind us. Quite a difference!
After we docked, I brought the car back to Willem and he drove me back to the marina where we had a cocktail (6 feet apart of course) and talked for awhile as we said our goodbyes and had a fun with our ad-hock going-away party. Sorry. No pics as I was having fun.
Later in the evening we decided to have take-out from the marina restaurant on our last night here. We ordered their huge blackened-fish sandwich and mega-fries (they don't have a small version) which we split between us. Laura cooked some bacon which we always add to the fish sandwich. For some reason, I can't convince the restaurant to do this on their own.
We are both looking forward to leaving tomorrow and have talked several times about the pros and cons of leaving or staying. Randy, the marina manager, made it easier on us when he said tonight, "Feel free to come back anytime. We will always have a slip for you."
Sounds like a great time !! Safe travels
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