We started off the season being sick. Common cold but annoying. Not covid. Carol got it from Kaia then passed it to me. I lost my voice but improved after a few weeks. Carol's persisted and turned into a sinus infection. My congestion and cough lasted awhile longer beyond being sick.
I started playing pickleball before I should have but kinda took it easy until I was healthier. After a week in Marathon I started giving tours at Crane Point again. Cleo started losing weight again and after another very expensive vet visit, lab work, etc., we found that she is getting old. Duh. Kidney issues. Elevated blood pressure and more. Her meds are very costly. Sigh.
Turkey vultures circling overhead in Marathon. Same birds as in Old Lyme?
Bad weather moved in and lasted nearly 5 full days. By bad weather I mean gales, downpours, windshifts and other nice stuff. Anchored boats dragged. Moored boats fended off anchored boats. Generally not a good time. Improbability fared pretty well, secured to the pilings of our friend's home at the south edge of the harbor. We had to adjust our fenders several times and replace a couple of chafed fender lines but had a lot less stress and tension than our moored and anchored friends. A lot of reading got done. Some cleaning and organizing. Minor other chores, too. We had trivia and bingo played over the VHF radio as we monitored the weather situation, available if a major, life-threatening event occurred. Unusual weather even for the Keys. Normal is a day or two of poor weather then back to paradise. Not 4+ days. Missed pickleball, Crane Point and food shopping but we did not run out of food. That would take a few weeks. After about 25 days secured to the pilings we got a mooring assigned to us. Not a bad one: K-3. Bad means a distant location. Low numbers are closer to the marina and prefered by us. At about the same time, our broker came out to photograph the interior of our boat for the sales listing websites. Then Christmas came.
A Green Turtle (sea turtle) at the Marathon Turtle Hospital we visited Christmas Eve with the visiting kids.
We drove a huge Ford Explorer to Miami airport to pick up the kids and grandkids. Three rows for the car seats and adults. Hard to park but surprisingly comfortable. We went to a famous football coach's restaurant in Key Largo coming back home. Kinda not too bad. Service was friendly, anyway.
Our first tourist trip was to the Marathon Turtle Hospital. I hadn't been in about ten years. Cobbe had a great time having seen a Jack Hannah show on TV about the place. Later in the week they released, at Sombrero Beach, three rehabbed green turtles we had seen at the hospital. Cobbe got a close-up look with the other kids. Some of the adults needed better training about manners, however.
The weather wasn't great, a little cool, but only one morning was a total washout. Several beach days happened for them as well as a trip to Key West. I participated in none of those, thank you. After eight days we returned everyone to the Miami airport and did some shopping in Homestead on the way home.
We continued preparing the boat for possible potential buyers and had our broker out to take mostly interior photos. Still playing pickleball and volunteering at Crane Point. We also volunteered at the Celtic Fest again. It's fun, has great music and has all the free beer (mostly Guinness brands this year) we could drink. For us that is very little. I learned my lesson quite a few years ago in over-serving myself at this event. Ok, I was voluntarily reducing the inventory of a hard cider to save it from being wasted as the remainder of the keg was paid for and would have been dumped at the end of the festival. My story, and I'm sticking to it. It rained very hard for about 90 minutes the 2nd day (Sunday) of the event which cut down the demand for beer. Everything closed down for a while but the deluge eventually stopped and the music resumed a little late. Fun and enjoyable despite the delay. The rain was a symptom of this year's El Nino weather pattern. Cooler. Breezier. And more rain, too. This is our 3rd El Nino winter in 14 years. Not too bad.
Barn owl at the raptor exhibit at the Celtic Festival.
This mid-winter posting is a little later than our normal, as it includes the Celtic Fest. We will continue our usual activities and add preparation for showing our boat to potential buyers to our routine. We'll see how it all progresses. Medical checks for Cleo and me coming up. Separately.
