87 - The leaving is the hardest part!!!

With all due respect to Tom Petty, while the waiting is excruciating, the leaving is really the hardest part.  We spent a little over 4 months in Port Canaveral Yacht Club and literally cried as we were telling everyone good-bye (even though we're sure it was only good-bye for now).  We've visited a lot of marinas and made some amazing friends but we have never lived in a marina where we amassed such an amazing family.  I am tearing up again now just thinking about them.  As I type this, we are sitting at anchor in Biscayne Bay (just south of Miami) awaiting the arrival of our 2 buddy boats who left the yacht club on Wednesday and decided to take the intracoastal down from West Palm Beach to stay safely away from the strong winds.  We formed our own mini flotilla making way to Key West for a few weeks.  Pedro and I followed a day and half later as we left Port Canaveral Thursday late afternoon and arrived in Miami at sunset on Friday.  Our 26-hour sail was sporty to say the least.  The winds started out slight so we had full sails raised and were moving along nicely at about 4-5 knots (that's almost 4-5 mph) quickly rising to our cruising speed of about 7-8 knots.  The wind slowly started to rise so we changed out our big Genoa (head sail) for our smaller staysail and found we were still maintaining speed.  Sweet!  Well, the winds which were predicted to be about 20 knots, started creeping up towards 30 knots so we reefed the mainsail (lowered it some).  For the next 24 hours or so, we had 30-35 knot winds (with the accompanying 4-6 sloppy waves) and were flying along doing 8-10 knots.  Thanks to our wonderful friend Brenda who remade our canvas while we were in the marina, we managed to stay somewhat dry.  That was until we got a little too close to shore in 17 feet of water and had a huge wave wash over the side flooding the cockpit.  Alas, everything drained out and no damage to anything but our sense of warmth.   The icing on the day of salty sailing was this picture that a fellow Cabo Rico owner took of us as we sailed just off the coast of South Florida yesterday.

Now, to catch up the blog.  As we said last time, we left Maryland with our "new to us" boat and sailed south.  Our first stop was Deltaville, VA where we met up with our sailmaker to have our brand-new mainsail installed.  We ended up spending about 4 days in this friendly adorable little town where we met some amazing people both in our marina and at a local restaurant.  The marina even had courtesy bikes so we took advantage and rode all around town.  While in Deltaville, Yves and Louise - friends we'd not seen since our time in the Caribbean - saw our boat name on a marine traffic search of boats in the area.  As they were anchored outside of Hampton VA and would still be there when we planned to be, we arranged to meet up with them. What a wonderful happenstance!  We spent about 3 days with them catching up and meeting new friends and even got to ride on the beautiful city carousel before we got our weather window to sail south.  Again, we bid farewell reiterating that it's just good-bye for now!

Leaving Hampton, we headed out into the Atlantic for our first "real" sail with our new boat.  The winds, as we should by now expect, were not as predicted.  Forecasted at 15-20 knots, we started seeing 40 knot winds regularly.  Now the saving grace with these winds were that were coming from behind so we were sailing like a really fast (for a sail boat anyway) sled!  While we'd originally planned to sail directly to Port Canaveral, after 48 hours of strong winds, the humans called "uncle" and headed into Cape Fear inlet in North Carolina to rest for a couple of days.  The boat performed beautifully and would been happy to continue but we were so happy to get a rest.  We spent 2 days relaxing and waiting on another weather window.  While the first day was a little slow, the wind picked up nicely and we had a wonderful 3-day sail into Port Canaveral about 6 am with 4 cruise ships and a freighter. 

If you’ve ever been lucky enough to have stayed at the Port Canaveral Yacht Club, you’ll understand what I mean when I say we were there about 15 minutes and felt like we’d come home. Everyone was welcoming and friendly offering to help in any way. We walked past the tiki bar a couple of hours after arriving and the girls offered Pedro a case (literally) of beer that they couldn’t sell because it was expiring. If there was any doubt before, that cinched it. He definitely knew we were in the right place!

We quickly settled into our new marina home wasted no time starting on a few more boat projects and planning a lot of catch-up with friends.  Not satisfied with the fishing results of our trip, Pedro joined a fishing charter with our friend Doug and his family.  We even got invited to take a cruise on the Indian River Queen out of our old marina.

For the Christmas holidays, we decided to travel back to Louisville to see our families.  Despite the bitter cold weather, we still managed to have a great time. And with my niece Brooke out of town, we got to babysit her dog Lola and her cats, Cora and Molly.

We thought we left the cold and headed back to Florida.  However, the weather was still not warm enough for my taste so I volunteered Pedro to whip up a batch of his amazing shrimp bisque for a fundraiser at our tiki bar.  It was such a huge hit, we sold out.

Apparently I didn't get enough of a pet fix in Louisville, so we also managed to work in some local pet sitting gigs. We babysat our sweet little Marcus for a couple of day, our friend’s Marty and Rishell let us babysit the most perfect Golden Retriever named Kai twice and we also got a long weekend with Tula (Frenchie’s grand-dog).   

 

Probably my favorite treat of the entire winter was having all my siblings (we are all confident it was the first time) in Florida together.  My sisters were all planning a cruise together with the in-law’s family so they came a day early and stayed a day late.  My brother was also staying in town so we managed to get together several times. I even got to celebrate my birthday in style as my beautiful friend Frenchy even made me the most amazing raclette dinner - it was as wonderful as the ones we shared with her in France a few years ago and a homemade cake (the first ever for her and it was delicious).  Keeping the theme of family time, Pedro’s parents also decided to get out of the cold for a couple of weeks and came to visit.   Between family and friends visiting - well, we had to show off our new boat – we were the talk of the marina.  Every time someone new was seen walking the docks, the first question asked was “Are you looking for Gary and MaryAnn?”  

As if we weren’t having enough fun at our new marina, we managed to talk our friend’s Dan and Terri from Cocoa Village Marina into bringing their boat, the Dani Lynn, over for the weekend and we got to go along for the ride.  To sweeten the deal, their daughter Danielle, whom we hadn’t seen in years, even came over for a visit.  

We also managed to meet up with several old friends from Orlando many of whom we hadn’t seen for years when our friends Roger and Terri hosted a party for a mutual friend’s retirement that was so much fun the party lasted 2 days!   Thankfully we didn’t completely wear out our welcome because we met several of the friends again the next weekend for dinner and Larry the Cable Guy’s comedy show.  Terri and Roger even came over to the boat the next day.  Again, you don't see them often enough but good friends are always nearby in your heart and you just catch-up again when you can!

While we were there, we caught as many sunrises, full moon rises (including right from my bedroom overhead window), one lunar eclipse and rocket launches as we could.  One of our boat neighbors invited several of us from the marina out of a ride for a great view of a launch (launch was scrubbed but the boat ride was perfect) and my sister Julie took our picture.   We had a meet-up of fellow Cabo Rico owners (one 38, one 45 and the only two 56's ever built which were both in the marina at the same time which we thought was way cool).  Our last weekend the club organized a dinghy raft up so it was a great way to shake the cobwebs off that too! 

    

Now, I swear our time wasn't just all fun (regardless of what our dear friend Tony says).  We did have a ton of boat projects that we completed getting her the way we wanted and doing a few repairs as well as routine maintenance.  At last, our boat projects seemed for the moment to be completed so it was time to start our next adventure.  But we’ll fill you on that next time.

 Until next post!