COLLISION (almost) BY A VIKING!

A day in the life of boats in a marina can be exciting or just boring. Today was exciting enough to have an audience from everywhere! As Paul and I are in our flybridge washing the inflatible we see a large Viking Sport fishing boat outside of the marina floundering with a small motorboat beside it. For the first few moments we think nothing of it as we didn't realize at the time that this small boat thought it could tow a 80,000 pound Viking Sport fish boat! Not going to happen!! Yikes, so before we could scramble and grasp what was happening it is veering towards us and our friend's boat beside us, Tom and Annie. Our eyes enlarged big time with worry! Paul goes to our bow and I scramble out of our boat to Tom and Annie's boat to their bow (there were away). Fenders are untied, instructions and words are exchanged and the Viking comes to a halt inches (maybe 12) from our bow. The Viking tied their bow to a post right across us to the dock but their line was quite long.

They only stayed a few minutes to try to get their engines going. I wished I asked them why not just drop your anchor out there? Hmmmm, the simplest of things are not thought of?! However, their boat was a beautiful boat, we just didn't want to see their swim platform so close.

We have zero snow but below average temps, sweater weather here, no bathing suits!

RAINY DAY FILING SYSTEM

HELLO everyone. We are here in sunny Florida (NOT). It has been cloudy for days and now it is raining like crazy, yes, it is better than freezing rain and snow. When one is on a boat "what do we do all day" while it is raining. Time for inside jobs. Get that list out Paul! Just yesterday Paul was trying to get information on our horn as it didn't work at Christmastime. He disassembled it and wanted to read about it in the information pack that should be in the filing system we have on board. Okay, "system" is a loosely used word. Rain came today so a system was implemented.

FROM THIS ...( I actually could not get all the paperwork in one photo)

TO THIS

A green garbage bag of garbage is going out later! Feels good to have a great system for filing all the handbooks, paper etc. And after all that, still no booklet on the horn. We did fix the horn yesterday, turns out some bees decided to make a home inside. They had buzzed off but their "honey" was still there.

We are here in a nice marina in Stuart, Florida. We are meeting many nice people on the dock and love the quiet residential area we are in (The Manatee Pocket). We may go to the Exumas, Bahamas or may not, haven't decided yet. The weather there is very nice is what we hear from our friends down there.

Stainless Steel Tubing Cutter.................. This will make Paul's life easier this week as he is going to cut the railings up in the flybridge and install railings down the starboard and port sides. Make is safe and usable up there. We ordered a great round teak table to use up there. This cutter takes seconds to cut the stainless steel, "cuts it like butter" Paul says. His life will be much easier with this tool. I feel the "tool box" gets fuller every year, hahahahha!

I try to not let Paul look at the dollar exchange, as Canadians our dollar is weaker every day and that means everything we buy goes up in price. We ask ourselves all time "do we really need this?"

I will try to have more interesting pictures and stories to tell in the days to come.

This is our way down here