Saturday, March 28, 2009

The End of Staycation - Spring is in the Air

Saturday morning Brittney helped me with the botched haircut I had received earlier in the week. It took forever and suddenly our morning was gone, but at least my hair looked better. She and I went out for a taquito and a quick shopping trip. Then she packed up her stuff and went to Alice to meet up with her Dad and Melissa for the rest of the weekend.

I had a whole list of things that needed to get done before I returned to work on Monday. As we began to do them, they somehow didn't seem as important as they had when I was dreaming them up... so we ditched it and ran off to the boat to get a little bit more out of my remaining vacation hours. We ended our day on Saturday with me catching some rays...


Bruce cooked some wonderful Mahi Mahi we picked up on the way out to the boat. He loves his little grill. It has really got the workout this week.


After dinner, we took a walk around the marina. It was a beautiful evening. Everywhere we looked the birds were pairing off. We love the Brown Pelicans.













The seagulls were two by two all over the park. It's fun to watch their ritual. They are very loud!


These two are taking a comunal bath. We stopped to watch as they flapped and flopped water over themselves.


I felt kind of bad for this guy. I think maybe he's not so attactive... he's all alone here and doesn't seem to get it.

We finished our walk along the ship channel. I love to see the new spring growth everywhere. As my staycation draws to a close... Spring begins at last!

Friday, March 27, 2009

Staycation Day 7 - Brittney & Layla's Visit

Saturday began with clouds and less wind... but not still. Bruce and I were expecting Brittney and Layla (our granddog) to arrive before breakfast. We took advantage of the lesser wind and went for a buzz around the marina in the dinghy. We looked at all of the boats and went for a quick jaunt outside so that Bruce could open the outboard up and get the cobwebs out.

It was a great morning for bird watching! We saw this beauty looking for his food along the breakwater. You've gotta love a guy with yellow feet!

This pelican was just taking off from a fast meal when we found him.


We brought the dinghy back to the boat and began tidying up a bit for Brittney's visit. We had just begun to worry about her when she showed up in her jammies with our granddog, Layla! I had grown tired of waiting and started working on breakfast so it worked out just fine. She arrived just in time.

Me and my bacon became Layla's new best friend.

After breakfast, Bruce enouraged Brittney and I to take his Miata and go out shopping. I couldn't let him down so reluctantly... off we went leaving Bruce at the boat with Granddogdaddy duty. We hit the local stores and bought some miscellaneous stuff, then came back to the boat as the sun came out.
We hurried into our swimsuits and hit the deck! It was a gloriously sunny (and hot) afternoon. It was the first day of my staycation that could be described as such! Finally!!! I took possession of the dinghy dock. We drowsed and read. It got so hot that we had to use the deck shower to cool off.


OOOhhh and cool it was!!! We spent the whole afternoon just enjoying the fine weather while Bruce puttered. (whatever does he do?)

As the afternoon wore on... our thoughts turned to dinner. We got dressed and packed up our stuff...then off to Hooks for a quick bite. Hooks has an outdoor patio and they allow dogs there so we took Layla in. I had a scrumptious Rum Punch! This brought our day to a close. We went back to the house for the night.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Staycation Day 6

Thursday morning we woke up late... nearly 7 a.m. As we sat in the saloon drinking coffee, I started thinking that maybe I had not left the cats enough dry food. We had originally planned to sleep at the house on Wednesday night after the race and feed them then, but since we didn't race... So, we dashed home (in our jammies) and did some more things at the house. We assembled the bench in the atrium. I think it turned out great myself. Now if we can just find a seat cushion that goes with my color scheme!

The next project to finish was spray painting the metal chairs that go with the little table in the atrium. I hate spray
painting! My index finger hurt for days after doing these two chairs. You should have seen all of the faintly black overspray on the garage floor outside of the drop cloth. I know that stuff is on everything in the garage! Once every year or two, we grind off the rust and re-paint these chairs with Rustoleum. It was long overdue.

We fed the cats, took showers and went back to the boat sometime after lunch. There was a lot of wind and it was cloudy.

I was sitting on the deck reading my book while Bruce puttered... when I noticed that there were some rather ominous dark clouds building towards the north. I asked Bruce if he had zipped the window on the Beater... he ran off do do it. We began putting things inside as it looked like it was really going to get us this time. We went inside and listened to the NOAA radio. Wow! A bad cell was moving in a line from Cabiness Field to PI Country Club which included a direct hit on my office and basically... our home. Darn it! The car was parked outside and they predicted hail. We had left a couple of windows open a bit too! Bruce said "no way we're going to drive back into that"... so we sat tight hoping for the best. At exactly 4:45 (when NOAA said it would hit the island) we began to have huge raindrops. We sat huddled inside watching it from the port light windows.

After about 20 minutes, it stopped raining and cleared... out came the sun and a fabulous rainbow out to the northeast. It was definately worth waiting around for. We came creeping out of the cabin and started looking around.

Bruce went out to see if the Beater had leaked any and found that the drivers side door had blown open. (It must not have been completely closed when he left it) There was about an inch of rain water in the drivers side floorboard. We bailed it out and dried it as well as we could. By this time the North wind was really kicking it up providing a blow-drying effect. I told him to relax... I didn't think they made convertibles with much resistance to being rained on. It turned out fine once we got it dried out and the carpet is now much cleaner!

The rest of our evening was spent relaxing on the deck drinking our favorite beverages and reading. It was beautiful except that this wind was beginning to wear on our nerves

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Staycation Day 5 - Back In Port A

Wednesday morning we had clouds but not quite as much wind. I was hopeful for some sunbathing time. While we were away, something died in the refrigerator so before I could make breakfast, I had to clean it out. This requires lots of hot water, a little bit of eco-friendly soap and more standing on my head.

While I was doing that chore and making breakfast, Bruce got out all of the stuff to work on some much postponed boat projects. He wanted to put at least one side of the cabin table back in. He had taken it off to sand in preparation for refinishing it. By the time he was done with the walls, he was not in the mood to do the table... so it will be done with the next go-round.

As usual... I got all involved with the project and took over the fun parts. Besides... I'm much better able to get into the small places. First, I had to figure out which hinges went on which brace pieces. It wouldn't matter except that over the years, they had been bent. I got all four of these braces back in place and it was time for the table piece. See Bruce getting ready to throttle me while we discussed the best way (my way) to do this?

So... I climbed down below with the drill while he held the table piece in place. Once there were three screws in, he left me to it. There were 10 little bitty screws all tightly up against the table. Thank goodness for the cordless drill!

After all of this work... I was exhausted and took a little siesta. Hey! I'm on vacation right?!?

The sun came out for a while and I spent some time on the deck reading and sunbathing. Ahhh, it was nice for a while.

We had been planning to go back to CC to sail in the Wednesday night races and were actually in the Beater and on the road... when we got a call from Steve with a wind update. It was too windy to go out really but we could if we wanted to. Bruce opted for us to stay in Port A. So we went by the Beach Lodge for a drink and back to the boat. By this time, it began to cloud up again and I was forced to change into my warm jammies. We made a pitcher of Pina Colada and read in conpanionable silence until our tummies prompted us into action again.



I put together some shish-kabobs which Bruce grilled up on his not-so-new-anymore grill. It was still a bit windy so he put the grill out of the wind. It was a delicious dinner that Bruce said he would be happy to get in an expensive restaurant. He sure takes the husbandly code seriously! It was a good day and ended with the sunset.

















Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Staycation Day 4

Tuesday morning we got up and had some breakfast then I started in on the project. I guess it was about 10:00 when I got out there since Bruce said I needed to wait until the humidity was burned off a bit. I picked out some lovely colors... a soft Caribbean Blue and a Miami Pink. It was a very tedious job doing the blue coat.



I used it for the frame as well as the slats and there were little crevices at the end of each one. I had to use some little bitty brushes to get in there and practically stood on my head to make sure that I covered every spot. I painted all day...finally finishing with both colors at 5:00.

We jumped into the car and raced out to Port A to spend the night on the boat.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Staycation Day 3 - House Projects

The wind was pretty much howling so Bruce and I took the bench for our atrium home to work on. We spent the morning on Monday shopping for what we would need for our project.


I put on my painting clothes and set up in the garage. Bruce did some things around the house and cleaned the atrium walls for painting while I put a base coat on the bench.


I painted all day and got it all painted nicely so that it won't rot. Our atrium is a very humid environ- ment and things don't last long out there.



Once that was done, I noticed that Bruce had moved on to installing the new ceiling fan we bought for the atrium.


I always want to help (take over) any fun job like that so it wasn't long before I had him pushed out of the way and was doing it myself. We had a bit of trouble with the electrical and had to take it apart and do it again a couple of times... but finally we had it up and whirring quietly along. We're looking foward to trying out our new bench with the fan cooling our private sanctuary. It had been a long productive day. We got lots of things done. The best part was that when it was all done... we were still speaking to one another!

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Staycation Day 2

Sunday morning was beautiful. We had coffee in the cockpit as we watched the sunrise. Ahhh, this is the life. We contemplated the days stretching out before us and made a list of the things we needed to do. Just a couple of boat chores and get in some sailing.

We had breakfast on the boat and Bruce did some puttering while I cleaned up a bit down below. Bruce had invited some sport fisher boaters from down the dock to go sailing with us. It's always fun to have company!

We sailed up and back in the Lydia Ann Channel for a few hours, chatting and laughing and, as always, sharing boat stories. Bruce gave everyone who wanted it a chance to try the helm. It was a surprise that this power boater did so well!

We went back to the slip and I finally got to do some sunbathing. I didn't have the nerve while we were out with friends as I'm still carrying around those extra winter LBs.

We lazed around all afternoon and had an early dinner of leftover boat chicken. Daisy from two boats over thought it smelled heavenly and came over to try her luck.

After dinner we took a nap for an hour or so and then decided to go back to the house for the night. The winds were supposed to howl on Monday and I was excited about starting the paint project. Remember we had bought the bench for the atrium? Home we went!