Nice boat, nice weather, not warm but certainly an improvement over what we’ve had. Impressive boat – nice space, good sailing speed – not as fast as ours, but a good cruising boat.The whole week we tried to ignore the fact that we were about to leave, but also prepare to leave. We ate all of our leftover food, including a wonderful broccoli and spinach stew?
We had Barnacle Bill dive on our boat to clean off the buildup of barnacles that have accumulated in the one month at Marathon harbor. Lots of growth here – the boat was pristine before we got here – I dove it, but this harbor while improving, still has lots of stuff down there, and I didn’t feel like gulping in any water myself. Bill is a likeable gruff old guy who does this for a living – could make a good living doing it if he wanted to.
Then, after an exciting laundry day, we finally took down all of our gear on Thursday, meaning dodger, bimini, solar panels, radar, sails, etc. and finally the mast. This was the first time we had dropped the mast while on the water – usually do it on the trailer with the trailer winch, but with some help from friends Phil and Cathie on a similar boat, we had no problems.
Amazing how easy it goes when you have 4 people who actually know what they are doing!We said good bye to all of our friends – AJ, Lisa , and their overly-friendly dog, Tinker ( there are tons of small dogs on the boats down here), as well as the other friends we made over the month of being in Marathon. Nice people, all.
Dick on a rare nice F-33 – big brother to our boat – and Cathie from the previous day, helped us haul the boat out at a ramp at the end of the harbor – it went smoothly again – 4 people knowing what to do and a good ramp.Finally, we brought the boat over to the trailer guy, a colorful character – ex drill-sergeant, bouncer and smart guy – who took until 6PM to redo the bearings and brakes on the trailer. He did a good job – we have brakes for the first time ever.
We took about 2 hours to drive up to a motel in Homestead, just off the Keys, because there is no place to park this big a rig on the Keys!The next morning, we drove up to Stuart and squeezed the boat and trailer into a very crowded lot at the Finish Line, a dealer for our boat, who is also a buddy. We buttoned up things, and then drove over to give a second look at a Seawind cat that we have been considering buying, but after inspecting it carefully there are structural issues with some modifications that were made to it, and we were looking for an excuse to reject it anyway.
We still love Freebird!
Staying at Ronnie’s Moms for a few days and then headed up to visit my brother in VA by next weekend sometime. Then home.
Wrap it up next week.
