Tammy here...
Marathon is great for having arts festivals, live music shows and other funky get-togethers and this past Saturday it was the local seafood festival at the park. After Doug and I had breakfast at the Stuffed Pig (a Marathon tradition - at least for us!!), we had a day (or half-day) of work on the boat and then it was off to the festival with Carol and Dan (Lucky Stars).
As we were walking around the funky jewelry, crafts and pirate booths beers in hand, we ran into Robin and Jim (Adventures) and friends of theirs, Leslie and Larry (Algonquin)
- we were soon pigging out on wonderful fresh seafood like stone crab legs, oysters and smoked fish.
Jim (aka Sweetie) of course traded off his seafood for 2 desserts, but who's counting among friends?? Doug, known for his dinghy envy, was quite bummed to hear that Leslie has shoe lockers on her boat for all her shoes (Doug has been called the male Imelda Marcos on our boat - although not to his face ... too often). There were even bands of wandering pirates roaming the festival grounds - while there may be some resemblance, trust me ladies, he was no Johnny Depp!!!
A great evening was capped off by listening to Rocketman and Tommy Tunes (the Florida Straits Band) play as the sun set. Certainly a day to remember - Carol and I, however, overheard the greatest line of the day from one of the guys in the spice booth who was trying to get someone who didn't like hotdogs to try some of his spices - "Well I'll just click my heels and see if I can pull out a cucumber" was all we heard before dissolving into fits of giggles! Guess you had to be there....
On Sunday we spent most of the day working on the boat, especially dumpster diving (our name for getting stuff out of the lazarette which is pretty packed!) and moving stores around to figure out what final provisions we need to head over to the Bahamas - bottom line is we needed more beer and wine!!! The wisdom we have received is to throw away spares to make room for beer and TP ...OK well maybe not that extreme, but we got the message - you can never have enough of either! Sunday night we had a couple cocktails on the flybridge and then headed up to Docksides for dinner and to watch the Florida Straits band for their Sunday jam night - while we were having dinner, we got to see the space shuttle launch - very cool!!
While we didn't have as great a view as Tide Hiker and Rickshaw who are on the east coast, it was still pretty impressive! The band rocked it as always - and we had a ball dancing and just generally whooping it up! Give me my crocs and watch out DWTS...here we come!
On Monday Colleen, Doug and I set off in our rental car for a provisioning trek to Miami - we hit the Apple store to get our computers all tuned up and then it was on to Walmart, Target, Costco and then a second Walmart since we bought the first one out of wine (seriously!!) By the time we got back to the boat, it was too late to do much more than put away the frozen and refrigerated stuff and call it a night. That meant most of Tuesday was spent breaking everything down and packaging it to store away. When you live on a boat, you take off all the cardboard boxes and put things in ziploc bags or snapware and you even take labels off cans that are going to be stored since cockroaches love the glue on labels and cardboard and once you get bugs on the boat, you are seriously not a happy camper - or so we've heard - so far we've had a bug free boat and intend to keep it that way!!
By Tuesday afternoon we were looking pretty good, except for one thing - we hadn't found any decent prices on beer (and when you plan on buying in bulk, it pays to shop around!) Taking advantage of our last afternoon with the car, Doug and I hit all the required local stores...Home Depot, West Marine, Boaters World and several different stores in search of beer - mission accomplished!! We came home with everything on our list (of course our list is always expanding) and 16 18-packs of beer - since we got the beer all stowed, we realized we have room for more, that will be tomorrow's mission! We also had to take the boat kitties to the vet for their health certificate that they need to enter the Bahamas - very traumatic (for them and for me)!!! But we got wonderful news - for 21 year old kitties they are in great health!! They are back on the boat loving life and as cute as ever - they are just raring to get to the Bahamas (they don't know exactly why, but they sense we are excited so they are along for the ride and happy for the opportunity!)
Meanwhile Colleen was out desperately trying to find some live Irish music (St. Patrick's Day is somewhat of a religion to the Kelly family) and she was sporting her green! Unfortunately live Irish music appears to be scarce here in the Keys, so we found ourselves at Docksides once more listening to Dan Sullivan with Carol and Dan from Lucky Stars and Larry from Algonquin.
We had a stealth visit from our musician friend from Key West, Scott Kirby, who was headed back to KW from about a month long tour - unfortunately he was only able to stay for about a half hour but it was great as always to see him and we may be able to hook up with him in the Bahamas in early April.
By 8:00 pm it was time to head back to the boat where Colleen had made the traditional corned beef and cabbage dinner along with a Guinness french onion soup - St. Patty's Day was saved!
Yesterday was more boat chores and provisioning - runs to Home Depot (do they really know our names by now??) and assorted places. Colleen's family hit town so she and John got to spend time with them. Doug and I visited down the dock with Carol and Dan on Lucky Stars - they have become great friends and we are looking forward to traveling to the Bahamas with them and September Song whenever Mother Nature allows. Dan is a fishing guru that we are taking lessons from and we hope that he will help us catch lots and lots of fish when we cross the Gulf Steam and into the Bahamas (if not, maybe they'll share!!!!) Looks like we will be here at least through Sunday as the winds are from the NE until at least then and you never cross the Gulf Stream when the winds are out of the North quadrant. So I guess the only thing left to do is plan a party - we just got emails from Robin on Adventures that the mini-rendezvour is on for Saturday afternoon and the planning is well underway!
This morning it is raining which I can't really complain about since it hasn't rained in weeks and weeks - sounds like a day for more boat projects which is good, because we still have a ton that we want to get done before we do the crossing to the Bahamas!! The work on a boat is never done.....
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