Pre-Departure

Unfortunately the weather has not been as cooperative as we would have liked.  We were scheduled to pull out tomorrow morning to head to West End Bahamas, but instead we'll go to West Palm Beach,  hang out for the night and weather permitting we'll do the crossing Tuesday.  Today we spent most of the day cooking and preparing for our guests arrival.  It's a little strange knowing we will have two complete strangers spend the next 5 days aboard with us.  After we finished our chores, we went to the Vero Beach Rotary Nautical Flea Market and met our Captain's, Chris and Alyse Caldwell.   They seem very nice and knowledgeable, I feel a little more at east and at least we had an opportunity to spend a few minutes with them prior to taking off.

Yesterday I had a close encounter with a Manatee, I had never seen one before so I was pretty excited.  I was walking down the dock with a load of groceries and noticed this very large object floating in one of the slips next to our boat.  Fortunately, I had my camera in my purse and was able to capture a few shots to share with you.    I don't know why, but my gut tells me it was a male and I named him Maurice.

One of the neighbor children fell in the water while feeding him lettuce

Maurice the Manatee

While I was busy with Maurice, David was cruising "Little Girl" back from the Black Pearl Boat Ramp.  She spent about a month at St. Lucie Outboard getting overhauled.  In hind sight, I wish we would have upgraded the old outboard.  She runs good now, but I still feel a little silly spending good money to have a 13 year old outboard overhauled.

We'll I guess I'd better get to bed, we have a busy day tomorrow and our guests will arrive at 8:00AM sharp expecting breakfast.......I want to be fresh and on top of our game because we have A LOT to learn.  Say a prayer and wish us good luck and good weather