Back at the boat, Ft. Lauderdale Florida

January 5th, 2013

There is something about boats that has the ability to sooth and completely change your mind-set.  The worries of the world and the hustle and bustle of everyday life fall from your shoulders as you cross an invisible demarcation line that exists somewhere between your parked car and the pier that the boat is secured to.

This feeling was understandable in remote marinas near large bodies of water but here in Ft. Lauderdale, up the New River that has us basically in the middle of the city and literally in a ladies back yard, the feeling yet survives.

Great Escape in Terry’s Backyard.

Terry lets her dogs out, which she lovingly refer to as her children and with quiet and quick feet, something you don’t expect with the older generation, she crosses her back yard and leans on the chain link fence that divides her yard from our temporary pier.

Terry has three piers in her back yard that she rents out to boaters, we are on the last one and she had come to check on us.  In a motherly tone she asks if we need blankets or pillows or food or anything else.

We discussed our adventure and Terry asked simple and direct questions that displayed a resume of person who has “been there and done that.”

We busied ourselves with cleaning four months of crud from our boat.  Then came the loading of equipment and gear followed by checking all of the boat’s systems to see which pieces of equipment decided to break during our absence.  This led us to our last task of purchasing food and storing everything away.

We have made some modifications to how we intend to cruise this year.  We have purchased a used mini-van, which I have relabeled as a VUV (van utility vehicle) in order to make it sound cool.  Roxanne was on board with this change and used the new label in conversation when Logan said, “Mom, it’s not cool when Conrad says that and it certainly isn’t cool when you do it.”  Logan would have preferred if we had bought a Ford Mustang.

Our plan is to sail the boat 50-100 miles and then find some means of driving back to the car and moving it up to where the boat is located.  This plan is sure to present some real problems but not having transportation is a much bigger problem.

With everything in place and the boat working perfectly, we added the last touch and placed brother-in-law Red’s good luck charm back by the helm.

And after a 4 month break if feels great to be back on our boat and tomorrow we set sail and begin our 300 mile trek north to Jacksonville.