Spring Break time in Panama City
Well, you can tell it's Spring Break time in Panama City because instead of having 80 year olds driving 20 mph we have 20 year olds driving 80 mph. This was in today's local paper and I thought it appropriate.
Sorry for being so long in posting. In mid January the time came for our friends Steven and Sharon with their "children" Max and Sophie on Stevedore to head on across the gulf to Stuart Florida. We made the trip with them to Port St. Joe and our other friends Joe and Linda drove down and picked us up there.
When we arrived at Port St. Joe we attended a Low Country Boil for AGLCA members. Ed on "I Love Lucy" prepared the boil and I helped where I could.
The mini-rendezvous was very well attended and we had presentations by Tom Conrad (Gulf Crossings), SeaTow, and the U.S. Coast Guard. Everyone had a great time.
We were visited by our friend Joan from "Christine" and she went with us to attend the mini-rendezvous. We last saw her when we stayed on Christine in the Abacos in February 09.
It was a quick trip but we enjoyed our time with her.
In early February we made a trip back to Athens. We spent a week there taking care of business and our good freinds the Pemberton's had us over for a surprise 50th birthday party for Stacy. The kids had decorated and we had a great time there.
When we returned from Athens I had a major project waiting for me on the boat. It was finally time to repaint the cap rail and dinghy chocks. I spent a long time scraping, sanding, taping, priming, and painting. It was not terribly difficult but I had to work it in before rainy weather came in again.
Ken and Darcy from "Just Us" were down to clean up their boat and get it prepared for transitioning to new owners. They have sold the boat to our neighbors at Goose Pond. We went to dinner with Ken, Darcy, Roy and Elvie for their last time at the boat. It was a sad time and a joyous time for us and for them. We will miss them on the boat but are glad they were able to sell as they are moving on to other adventures.
The morning they left we had breakfast on SEASEA and we said our goodbyes. I am certain we will see them again.
This week I went to Carl Vernon's and worked on his Raymarine system and got things working to his liking (I hope). We went with them to a "yacht club" meeting where Rudy and Jill Sanchez were giving a presentation on the boat they built and are living on in Panama City. I had been reading Rudy's postings on an email list for quite some time and it was good to actually meet him.
We had a good weather forecast for this past weekend and went out with friends on two boats that live around the corner here in Bay Point. We went to Shell Island and rafted the two boats to us for the evening. We had a good time with them.
We left them on Sunday and headed to Crooked Island to meet friends from Port St. Joe. We arrived at the same time and "I Love Lucy" rafted to us and "Lauren Grace" anchored separately. We had a beautiful sunset and dinner on board SEASEA.
On Monday we went to the beach to collect shells and had a great day. We have had some windy days and noticed that the wind had blown the sand away and left small dunes behind shells on the beach.
Ray & Patsy Whitney came over on their Boston Whaler with friends of theirs and we watched the drones launch from Tyndall Air Force base. These drones are lauched over Crooked Island and the fighter pilot trainees shoot them down out over the gulf. These are half-scale drones that are launched with a rocket so trying to get a picture is somewhat futile. We stood on our dinghy deck and watched the drones launch. The ladies remained below and we later put together a Mexican fajita burrito dinner.
We will be here for about two more weeks and then start our travels back up to Goose Pond marina on the Tennessee River.
