Passages and it's a Boat Time (red tug).
Delay, delay, delay……. Without sounding too much
like the 45th and past President of the USA, it’s delay, delay,
delay for us. I will elaborate further, but firstly referring to Mr. Trump;
since we have been in Fort Pierce, he has been in town a few times.
The main federal court where he is under investigation for having classified documents, is here in Fort
Pierce. When we hear lots of sirens, and a helicopter or two flying overhead, we can assume that Mr. Trump is in town. In fact, the other day, Mel was out and about when he was forced to take a detour as he was reluctant to have to walk through a rather large group of Trump supporters who were outside the courthouse.
Anyway, back to us. Not much to report other than
we were hoping to be on our way to the Bahamas by now, but we have hit a few
snags.
After trying his best to put the windvane up by
himself, Mel has realised that he needs help. We have asked Colin at Mack Yacht
Services, where Passages had her chain plates done, to assist, but
unfortunately, he is unable to accommodate us, so we have had to come up with
another plan. We were hoping to leave for the Bahamas by Wednesday 6 March,
however, when Mel checked over the engine, he wasn’t happy with a few things,
so we have delayed our departure from Fort Pierce, until the engine has been
sorted. We also found a boatyard here in Fort Pierce that would be willing to
assist Mel with the windvane. So, we left Fort Pierce City Marina for the Riverside
Boatyard. Let’s just say, at the time of writing this, we are unsure of whether
we have made the correct decision but remain hopeful that everything will work
out. It is a very ‘interesting’ place to say the least, as there are many
different colourful characters around. I often think when sitting in the
cockpit and observe the different characters, ‘What is their story?’.
Unpacking our new dinghy.
We are planning on returning to Fort Peirce
City Marina on Wednesday 13 March, where the engine will be serviced and
hopefully by the weekend, we can start ‘staging’, the appropriate term for
preparing for a voyage by watching the weather and waiting for a good/great
weather window to sail to the Bahamas. In the meantime, we have been finishing
off projects and have taken possession of our new dinghy and life raft. I have
been cleaning and polishing the boat, while Mel finishes all the electrical and
mechanical things that need to be done. We have marked our new anchor chain
with red and yellow spray paint, in increments of 5 and 10 metres.
There have been times when we feel we will never
get going, as there always seems to be something else not working or needs
fixing. This is the life of living on a sailboat… there is always something to
be done. We do feel confident, that once the engine is looked over and
serviced, with or without the windvane, Passages is ready to head out into the
great blue yonder.
An aspect of staying at the Marina, are the
wonderful people one meets. Across from us, in our newish pen, were a wonderful
couple from Wareham, MA, in their lovely tugboat called Boat Time, Susan and
Dan. Across the way, was another couple in an Island Packet 485 (much bigger
and newer than Passages) Ed and Anga, on their boat called Sweet Dream. Every
Wednesday evening, we still go across to B Dock, where we first were to have
Docktails and we see Sheila and David from the Full Monty, Scott and JoAnne on
Folly Sq’d.
Last week Saturday, there was a ‘whipping parade’
through the streets of Fort Pierce. It was to celebrate
Our new life raft.
and acknowledge the
cattle drives and the people involved in them. Apparently, Fort Pierce was a
central meeting place for the cattle ranchers to bring their cattle into town.
This past Wednesday, Mel happened to be going
passed the Sunrise Theatre, where he was offered two free tickets to see Tim
Elton. He is a performer from the U.K. who sings Elton John songs. He was very
good, and we had an enjoyable evening.
We hope that the next time we post a blog entry,
we will be in the Abacos, Bahamas, enjoying the wonderful clear blue waters.
Fingers crossed.
Until next time…. Take care, Keep well.
Mel and Caryn
P.S. Our intention is to upload something to our blog
every two weeks. We are busy sorting out Starlink, so hopefully this will assist
us in downloading the all-important weather forecasts but also to put in our
current position and blog entries. Fingers crossed.
Film clip to follow when we have faster Wi-Fi 😉
