Happy Christmas

     Happy Christmas and a terrific New Year to all our friends and family!

     We are at our second home, Marathon, FL for a planned two month stay. We arrived after a wonderful weather window from Fort Pierce. Sorry to upset anyone but it's been blue skies and mid-70s for a while now. Hoping it stays that way for our entire stay. Okay, unlikely. We have had less than ideal winters here.

     From Ft. Pierce we went down the ICW to Lake Worth, West Palm Beach. The air temperature AND the water temperature was 74 degrees. I took advantage of these conditions to go for a swim in crystal blue water to check the props and keels for any damage from our time aground at Riverside Marina in Ft Pierce. Just a little bottom paint missing from our port keel. 4 inches high - two feet long. Not bad. We've done that before! We discovered that we broke our new transmission on that side of the boat. The actuator shaft that goes into the transmission itself has a pin or bolt at the end of it to engage the power forward or aft. That pin is gone so the engine only goes forward and cannot be put in neutral or reverse. We're hoping it's an easy repair and covered under the waranty. We'll see. It's always something. From West Palm we went offshore all the way to No Name Harbor on Key Biscayne, Miami, FL. A very long day, 0645 to 1745. The great weather continued as we went to Islamorada area and then had a great sail in the Hawk Channel all the way to Marathon. So here we are as the outstanding weather continues.

     We met people we've known from previous visits and have found that the mooring balls were all filled the day after we arrived. It's getting too popular here. Pass the word... it's boring here, nothing to do, no shopping or restaurants, unfriendly, just stay away!

     I'm taking it a little easy as I recover from my prostate procedure but I've already played some softball with no major side effects. Just the usual early season soreness. Holding off on batting until next week. Yoga starts tomorrow for Carol and we'll be fully into the community here as we get through the holidays.

     Heather arrives in a few days and boyfriend Mike arrives two days after Christmas.

     Once again Happy Holidays to our friends and family! Please try to keep any news of bad weather up there off the internet. It tends to make us gloat and feel smug. That's not good for us.