Hunkered Down in Marathon!

We almost left Thursday morning to head up to Ft. Lauderdale, thinking there was still a chance Daren could make his flight Monday morning to CA. We only got as far as the fuel dock, where we discovered fuel in the bilge! Daren thought we might have a leak in the fuel tank, so we took a mooring ball at the City Marina. The tank's fine, and it's actually a good thing that we're here, as yesterday would've been an awful trip between Rodriguez Key and Miami, and then we'd still have a 3rd day up the Intracoastal to Ft. Lauderdale! So it all worked out, and we ended up getting new FL driver's licenses! No waiting at all, as we were the only 2 customers at the DMV! It was a lovely day and we secured the boat, but didn't take the sails off, just wrapped them up good. The mooring balls are rated for a category 3 hurricane, and we have 3 lines on it with fire-hose chafing gear, compliments of the marina. The weather experts keep downgrading the storm, so we decided to stay onboard instead of getting a motel, as we'd rather not be stuck onshore without our dinghy, which would be stored at the marina. This way we'll have everything we need, and not have to depend on restaurants for food. When Daren went through Hurricane Andrew ('92 in Nassau, with our trawler), he and Pete stayed in a hotel (its roof blew off!) and he had to eat out of vending machines for 3 days! I was on a trip for Continental, based in Newark, but made it to Ft. Myers from Ft. Lauderdale in a rental car and stayed at a motel near the marina in Ft. Myers with boat friends, but I digress! We're only going to have a Tropical Storm here, or at the worst, a Category 1. Today, it's raining hard and real windy, and lots of the anchored boats have decided to pick up mooring balls, and having quite a time of it. It's supposed to clear this afternoon, so Libby might get one more trip to shore before we secure the dinghy and motor. We'll see.... She's hopeful. Isaac's supposed to arrive Monday morning about 8 am. I was hoping for night, so we could just sleep through it! : )

Stay or GO??

We had everything ready to leave first thing tomorrow morning; groceries, fuel, propane, & charts. We even had a farewell dinner at Burdine's with our boat neighbor Kevin! Then we found out that the prevailing SE wind will shift tomorrow night to NE, which is unheard of this time of year, and the last thing you want on the Gulf Stream, which runs the opposite direction. We'd planned on a nice offshore overnight sail, but with north winds, it'd be a motor trip, hugging the shore (and dodging lobster traps!) to avoid the Gulf Stream's "square waves", as Uncle Bob calls them! On the other hand, the farther north we can get, the less weather we'll have from the hurricane. After agonizing over this, we decided to stay here on a mooring, take the sails and canvas off and stash them, and get a motel room Sunday night. Isaac's already been downgraded to a Tropical Storm, but should go right through Marathon, which means up to 70 knots of wind and lots of rain for several days. Then, when it calms down, we'll do that offshore trip to West Palm Beach and take the Intracoastal from there to Stuart, and Daren'll fly to work from West Palm Beach. Sounds like a good plan and it'll be a fun place for me to be while Daren's at work, hanging out with Tom and Jodie and Tracy and John.

Waiting on Isaac!

We're still in Marathon, and those of you on my e-mail list know the great news that Daren's office in Modesto, Mid Valley Engineering, is ready for him to come back to work, after about 2 yrs of waiting for the economy to recover! We're both excited about it, but commuting will certainly be a challenge! Daren planned to leave this morning at 4 AM on the Keys shuttle to fly out of Ft. Lauderdale, but because of this possible hurricane, he put it off until next Monday (8-27), which is now the day they're predicting it could hit! It's too early to know when or where or even IF it'll be any big deal, which certainly makes it hard to make a plan. So, we are trusting God will make the choice clear to us, but for today we're staying put. We just talked to Tom up in Stuart and thought, if we go up there (150 miles), Daren could still fly out of West Palm Beach. At this point, we're concerned that his Ft. Lauderdale flight could be cancelled on Monday. Right now, the weather's nice, and we are definitely overdue for a change of scenery, although it's been really nice here. Yesterday was good friend, Don's birthday and tomorrow's the 1 yr anniversary of buying our boat in Rockport! Time sure flies, although "Flying Dogs" loves to rest for awhile between flights!

Outboard Motor FIXED!!

SO happy to report that we finally have our outboard fixed! Hooray!! Daren rowed to shore to pick it up this afternoon from Jim, who finally found the part (coil) on E-Bay! We'd pretty much given up on our old motor, but finally asked God to solve the problem, and not 2 hours later got a call from Jim that he found the elusive part! Quite a "coincidence" don't ya think?! Sure wish we'd thought of it a lot sooner! It's really true that "God is in the details!". Daren came zooming home this evening and it was a wonderful sight...wish I'd had my camera handy! We've been rowing so long (over a month!) that my arms look like Rosie the Riveter's! We've met so many nice people here in Marathon! Our next door neighbor, Kevin, has a guest onboard with a cute chihuahua mix puppy, Sammy! It's fun to see him try to play with Libby when we take them to shore twice a day. She mostly ignores him! Every morning at 9, there's a cruisers' net on the VHF radio with all kinds of good info. Norm and Barbara left San Francisco 18 yrs ago, and are now heading for Texas to put their boat on a truck back to CA. I just finished reading a fun autobiography called The Motion of the Ocean, by a woman who left Seattle on a sailboat on their honeymoon and made it all the way to Hong Kong in 2 years! According to the author, you have to have a B-HAG, or a Big Hairy Audacious Goal! I prefer to say PLAN, as it makes for a better acronym! I love reading about other people's sailing adventures, and hope that someday we'll make it to the South Pacific, too, but we don't want to subject Libby to a trip like that! Meanwhile, we'll be glad to get over to the Bahamas, so I can change the photo at the top of this blog to something a little more tropical!