We got to Florida and Lake Worth just before Thanksgiving. We left the boat in a nice secure marina at Lake Worth on the East Coast of Florida just north of West Palm Beach and drove to Fort Myers where my mother and oldest brother live.

We needed to get all the usual doctoring things done, dermatologist, dentist, cardiologist, urologist and of course my visit with Dr Reeves about my ITP which is stable and doing well. Hartley also has been doing physical therapy for his thumb injury and is slowly getting it to move again.

It has been great getting to see some of my family again. My Mom will be 90 in February and is still going very strong. We ran the Turkey Trot, a 5K race , on Thanksgiving and she did very well. The age group was 75 and above and she came in 3rd at almost 90 and the two ladies who beat her were under 78! I was impressed with myself as I managed to run ( no walking) the whole thing.

 

Being on land has really shown me how lazy I have become and that I really need to get back with it. Running is an easy thing to do, no equipment necessary, so that looks like one of the activities I will have to keep up. It has become quite a family affair as Lya and Ariel in Phoenix, our two daughters, have started running and are doing very well.

Keeping up with my Mom is always a challenge. Her usual routine, and therefore mine when I visit, is water aerobics for an hour, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and running Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Also we go see her trainer at the gym for weight work once a week. My cardiologist said I didn’t need a stress test this year as he thinks I do enough that it is a self test. He also says he wants to meet my mother!

Mom and I drove up to Clearwater, Florida the second weekend in December so she could run in the state games so she could qualify for the National Senior Games in Alabama this summer. She didn’t have any competition as she was the oldest one who ran period and the only one in her category (85-89).

My brother Iain has been very busy this visit. He sold his old house and bought a new one just after we arrived. He was kind of sad as he had done a lot of work on his old house and had it the way he wanted. But the new house is right on the water and is beautiful. With a bit of work he will make it his own. He and his partner Patti are thoroughly enjoying it.

He has a dock at the back of the house where he can go fishing. He keeps his motor boat and PWC there as well.

The newest addition is standup paddle boards. I tried it when we were over on Christmas day. I did pretty good, only one face plant. The area near his house has some shallow spots and I got the fin of the paddle board stuck in the mud. I thought I had it freed but not really and when I gave a big push I went forward and the board did not!!.

While we were In Fort Myers we had parties.

We watched the boat parade with our fancy hats and in general had a great time.

 

Hartley had been running back and forth from Fort Myers to Lake Worth (about a 3 hour drive) to get some work done on the boat. I finally came out this week to get things ready for our next off shore adventure. I am busy, once again, redoing how things are stored in the port side bunk. Oh well maybe this time will  be the last. Ha Ha!

Cruising is more than a travel log. It has been a year and 3 months since we left San Francisco. My ideas about cruising have changed. I think I figured that my days would be filled with one exciting adventure after the other with little down time for other things.

I would say that cruising is more like “regular life” with a few amazing things thrown in. Last Wednesday and Thursday we had some truly amazing and beautiful things happen. We were sailing from Charleston, South Carolina to Brunswick, Georgia a distance of about  130 nm. Our previous sail had been from Beaufort, North Carolina to Charleston and had been pretty miserable. We left about midnight as the weather predictions said the wind would start off light and southwest but in 24 hours the wind would change to northwest and build to 15 – 20 knots. The trip is a long one, about 200 nm, (38 hours). Well the wind indeed did pickup but did not change directions. So instead of a nice following wind we had a wind right on the nose. The weather report did get one thing right, the wind speed picked up and was 20-30 knots. The sea was very choppy and we bashed in to the waves. Atsa was under power and not making good head way against the wind. We were going at most 5 knots. But as we bashed into the waves our speed would slow to 2 knots, sometimes 1 knot! I was sure we were never going to get there. I was seasick the first 24 hours which didn’t help things. If any of you have ever experienced the mal de mer, all you want to do is get off the boat. Make it stop . Fortunately for me I only get seasick now when the sea is rough and even then it only lasts 24 hours (the world’s longest 24 hours). Finally we got to Charleston and visited that beautiful city.

Ohhh, I started out talking about amazing and beautiful. Well the next trip, which I anticipated with great trepidation was from Charleston to Brunswick. The wind was northeast, so it was behind us,already an improvement. It was a pretty good wind too, averaging about 12-15  knots from early morning (we left at 7:30m AM ) until we were almost there and then picked up to 20 knots. About noon we really new things were going right. Four beautiful dolphins came and swam in the bow wave for over 20 minutes. Both Hartley and I stood on the bow and played with them. We waved our arms and the dolphins would turn on their side and look at us waving our arms. I am sure they knew we were crazy.

That night was beautiful and clear. The stars were sharp and twinkling. My favorite constellation, Orion, was sparkling. ( Orion is one of the few constellations I know, I am working on more). The moon was just a sliver as it was just starting its new cycle. The water was incredible. It had  what looked like balls of light. As the boat went through the water it must have disturbed these sea creatures and they lit up like Christmas lights. You could see 6 or 10 of them together one after the other and then there would be a break and then you could see some more. They weren’t little like Christmas lights though, they seemed to be about baseball to softball size. When one went off it started a chain reaction a bunch more would light up. I don’t really know what they were but I think they were ctenophores which  are kind of like jellyfish. There are many different kinds of ctenophores and we couldn’t see anything but the lights, but that is my best guess.

Since I am talking about trips maybe you wonder why we leave at midnight , 7:30 AM , 11AM etc. It all has to do with when you want to get where you are going. The rule of thumb is never go into an unfamilar port in the dark if you can help it. Navigational aids are red and green. Some are lit up at night and others are not. In general when you enter a port the red ones are kept to your right (starboard) and the green ones to your left (port). So at night if they are lit you have a chance of seeing them, but also you have a chance of seeing lots of other things too, like red and green traffic lights. Nothing is more frustrating and scary than to be focused on the red light ahead, feeling confident you are going the right way when all of a sudden it turns to green and you realize it is a city stop light! More commonly though as you turn into a busy city port it is just a maze of lights and there is little hope of picking out your red and green from the sea of all the other lights. Thank god for GPS.

Well we are almost ready to take a little break for the holidays.  We are currently in Port Canaveral and will leave tomorrow for Lake Worth,  which is on the east coast of Florida, where we will leave the boat for about 6 weeks.

We will go by car to Fort Myers on the  west coast of Florida and visit my mother and brother. We need to do our yearly doctor visits , see the dentist and get Hartley started on physical therapy for his thumb.He had an injury to his thumb up in Connecticut and now it should be healed enough to get it moving again.