Sunday, December 03, 2006

Blizzards Knock Out Air Transportation Throughout the US

Just as we were about to join the Bushies and declare that the "theory" of Global Warming was nothing more than a radical, hippy, pinko, commie, tree-huggers conspiracy -- we found the sun and the warm. A day after the above headline hit the papers, we anchored off our own private tropical island about 20 miles north of Vero Beach, Florida. Actually, the islands are made from dredging spoils which naturally generate vegetation. This island has palms, pines, flowers, and all kinds of other stuff. At times, it seems that most of the "nature" in Florida is man made.

Up to a few days ago, the trip has been a might chilly, with a number of lay days for cold fronts coming through. Now we seem to have broken through to the tropical paradise we were looking for. Here's what the little island we anchored behind looked like this morning.

Not too shabby, huh?



We left the boat at a marina in Jacksonville for a couple of weeks and went to our daughter and son-in-law's house in Kissimmee to play with our grandson and get ready for a family Thanksgiving which included son Sean's family (who we flew down for a few days) and Allen's brother Jock who is working his way south with his own boat. All the kids spent a day at Universal's Islands of Adventure while Grammie and Poppie stayed home with Michael. A grand time was had by all!

We took care of a broken anchor windlass before we left Jacksonville (neither the mechanic or the skipper knew what fixed it -- it just started working after being taken apart a couple of times). We have done more reorganizations of our little boat than Aetna did in the 20+ years Judy worked there. We got back to the cruising mode by heading down to anchor off St. Augustine for a couple of nights. A tour of the fort, a great lunch ashore, and a few frozen rum drinks at the "oldest lounge (aka: bar) in the country" and we were ready to head a bit further south. We anchored just off the bridge at Cocoa Beach where Allen rediscovered the crab shack and fish market that he had found a couple of years ago. The crabs are identical to the ones in the Chesapeake, but they charge far less. Actually, most of the crabs from the area are "exported" to the Chesapeake where they are sold as Chesapeake Bay blue crabs. Next up, Vero Beach (aka: Velcro Beach because people tend to stick there for a while with their inexpensive moorings and free bus to every kind of shopping imaginable -- plus a lovely ocean beach.) Then across to the west coast from Stuart to Fort Meyers via Lake Okechobee.
Yummm!


1 comment:

lilragbag said...

Just wanted to say, lovely blog. Keep them coming. A great thanksgiving was had by all. Thanks for everything. Mikey has just not been the same since everyone has left. I think he's starved for attention or something.