Day 140: Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Port to Port: Fort Myers Beach

Underway: 0:00 am      Motor Off: 0:00 pm      Miles Traveled: 0      Stayed At: Marina

First Things First: First time experimenting with closeup photography (I’m running out of big obvious things to take pictures of so I have to be creative).

Mile to Mile: We started the day with another party – an ebleskiver party – with Richard and Sally on Boomerang. This time Cindy cooked them on a small ceramic/electric stove top and they came out perfect – no naughty words or reject ebleskivers. There is a good chance another ebleskiver pan will find a new home on Boomerang.

Cindy and I took a long walk along the beach. The beach was blissfully quiet and peaceful – the handful of other people lounging on the beach were wearing sweaters or covered with towels to stay warm in the cool breeze – we thought it was perfect. One disadvantage, though, is the lack of bikini girls (okay, okay…and muscle guys) when a cool front is passing through – a small price to pay I guess to have the beach pretty much to ourselves.

We did talk to two other couples walking on the beach who noticed Cindy’s Lake Superior T-shirt – they were both from Wisconsin. One guy had just flown in that morning and it was 27 below zero when he left home so a cool 70˚ F was heavenly to him.

I finished a quick boat project after our walk. We bought a new jib halyard – the line used to raise the jib sail – at West Marine a couple days ago. The old one was showing a lot of wear and had a weak spot – we use this line to raise and lower the mast so the line needs to be strong since a failure could be painful. The project went amazingly smooth for a boat project. I butted the end of the old line up to the end of the new line and sewed them together with sail thread. I just had to pull the old line out and feed the new line in and I was done. Slick. It’s a huge pain to run a new line if you lose the old one in the mast so having this project done was a relief. One of the disadvantages of upgrading one halyard, though, is that now the other lines are looking their age – they are still strong just a little worn and gray. We’ll have to keep our eyes open for a discount marine store (oxymoron?).

We also finally finished our New Year cards. Always a production but it is finally done. We sent out some electronically to some of our friends along the way – its nice to try to keep in touch. We hope you like it. It was challenging picking 30 pictures out of 5,000 plus to represent our trip so far – hopefully it tells a good story.