I know... I know... It's been too long since I've posted anything. I have thought about making a post many, many times. However, to be honest, not much has changed since the last post. We're still on the hard in St. Augustine, FL. We're still spending every day working our butts off to get the boat ready to go back into the water. Work, eat, bathe, sleep, repeat. That's how we have spent the entire summer.
Okay, maybe a few things have changed: School started at the end of August, so our children are back to working hard (or rather sometimes hardly working) on their schoolwork five days a week. The boat work is officially finished. Which means we could put her into the water at anytime. So why the heck are we still here? Well it's certainly not the location or company. After all, we are headed into month five here, and the sight and sounds of a working boat yard have long since lost any and all appeal.
I mean, who wants to walk at least a block across gravel and rock to go to the toilet several times a day (especially when you have to walk past several workers gawking at you as you go)? Did I mention that out of the three accessible toilets, one is perpetually clogged, the other is always out of toilet paper, which means the third is generally occupied? Not to mention that two of the three toilets host mosquitos parties every evening. Since you weren't invited, you had better be careful hanging any pretty parts over that bowl of water - spend more than a second or two and you'll have plenty of bites to remind you why you don't use those. Did I mention those two toilets happen to also be the closest ones to us? Which means a longer walk to the generally occupied toilet, to then wait your turn and hope it's been cleaned recently.
How about heading to the single shower every evening (still at least a block away across rocks and gravel) and wondering if it will be occupied, or if you'll have to stand outside being a feast for the mosquitoes while you wait your turn? Speaking of the shower (a single shower used by both men and women, no toilet or sink, just a single shower stall), you should definitely wear your shower shoes and don't touch anything while you're in there. I'm pretty sure the years worth of mold and mildew are looking for a way out of there, and I'm not interested in giving any of it a ride.
Ahh, I know what you're thinking. At least we have a great view of the river behind us and the wonderful smells of the ocean. The view of the river typically includes a variety of ill behaving boaters yelling loudly at one another and speeding through a minimum wake zone. The smell of the ocean is obliterated by the foul odor of the water treatment plant down the road. In general, one tries not to smell anything when outside. Yes, even the sounds are drowned out by the various equipment, vehicles, and machines working in the yard. If you're really lucky, you get woken in the middle of the night by the large lift preparing to haul some poor chap's boat that's taking on water. At least the newly damaged vessel gives us all something to gawk at for a few days afterward. In case you couldn't tell, we are sick to death of this place. So again, then why the heck are we still here? The answer is relatively simple: Colin, Hermine, and Julia.
When Colin came through, we bailed to a hotel room for the evening. When we returned, the starboard aft end of the boat had managed to sink into the mud. They brought the lift over and set us right (well, mostly right - we haven't really been level since then). We had the boat strapped down for for Hermine. Actually, we strapped everything down. Then we sat and waited while Hermine shot north doing nothing to us but dumping some rain. Julia caught us totally off guard. While the boat remained strapped down, we were completely unprepared. We got a lot of rain and a lot of wind, but we came through it just fine. One of our kayaks managed to blow a few feet, but otherwise all was fine. We're heading into October - the middle of hurricane season. Our boat is already on the hard and strapped down. Now would not be the best time to hop into the water and start traveling again. Unfortunately, we're better off staying put until November and then stage for the Bahamas. So, staying here is killing us slowly, but we don't want to risk a quicker death by heading back out just yet. That means it's time for a vacation.
Since the boat work is finished, there's technically nothing keeping us here. Since we have four to six weeks until we depart, we decided it would be a good time to go and see family. We've rented a minivan (groan - I know - but it's the only vehicle that will house us and the cat comfortably for hours) for three weeks in October. We will be running from here to see family in Texas and Arkansas. We leave in less than two weeks, and that window can't close soon enough. It will give us some much needed to time rest and relax. We will also be able to reset a bit and look forward to moving on in our travels. The sheer volume of work that we have accomplished this summer on the boat is staggering. She is all but a new vessel now. We will be immensely happy and proud when we launch her again in November. I have not included a list of all of the work we have done to date (since it would be pages upon pages for you to read through). Many of you out there aren't really interested in specifics like that, so I didn't want to fill this post with long drawn out specifics. However, I realize that some of you DO want to know all of those specifics, so I'm attaching a .pdf at the end of this post that shows all of the work done to date. That will give you some idea on how busy we've been ;-)
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Here's the .pdf that shows all the boat work:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0PUO-NSdonTWEdBeEdneE1SQk0
