Out of Hiding

We took “hiding out for the hurricane season” too literally this year.  We’ve been living in hiding for the past three months.  It was our own choice-but still. We broke free this week and feel ecstatic.  Remember us mentioning that we found a cheap slip to keep the boat (the boat only, no persons living on the boat) and that our plan had been to bounce around between anchorages and the slip for the summer?  Well, once we plugged in to shore power and turned on the AC that plan disintegrated.  It is really hard to walk away from AC in a Florida summer!  The downside was that we lived in hiding, complete with all the windows blacked out and sneaking Kai out for walks. To our surprise we weren’t booted out, but living in a dark (albeit cool) cave takes its toll.  I NEED to see the sun to be happy, so the past few days of living on the hook with all the hatches wide open has been refreshing in everyway.  That, and the excitement to get underway again has us feeling good. (It also means that I can revive the blog writing. For, now, obvious reasons I had to refrain from advertising our status)

Actually our first two days of living on the hook didn’t include very many open hatches as we had Hermine passing safely to the north of us but she still gifted us with some gusty squalls and lots of rain.  It was kind of funny that at first having the boat tied up in the slip was nice in that we got the welcomed break from always worrying about wind and finding the right anchorage.  I would say we were definitely ready for that break and for the past few months it hasn’t mattered to us one bit where the wind blew from or how hard. On the first night back out on the hook we had plenty of wind and squalls to pay attention to-but enjoyed it.  Oh, and we didn’t go far either, we just anchored out in front of the marina.  (you can see our old slip in the photo below) 

Once Hermine moved along, we did do a short two day sea trial down to Sebastian inlet with our friends on Nessa and Anywhere.  The routine of dinghy rides, dinners in the cockpit, and beachcombing is starting to return us to a state of normalcy.  Keith had done some major maintenance on Wrightaway the past few weeks including replacing the transmission and realigning the engine along with a whole host of other mechanical projects so we wanted to do shake-down before we hopped off into the Gulf Stream.  Everything was a thumbs up and we are a GO!

So…what’s next?  Well, it is still peak hurricane season and there is still a lot of activity out there even if there are no immediate concerns so we are going to take our time and wander south at a creepy-slow pace until we feel a little bit more confident about the season, even then we will stick close by to some good hidey-holes in the Abacos (Bahamas) until we are really confident about the end of the season.  Then what?  Well, this trip will be a little different in that the previous trips we always knew that we would be heading back to Florida in a few months so we were always doings loops and circles.  This time we are headed out and not looking back!  Unless of course we change our mind, it could happen.  But the plan is to keep on moving this time—so excited!!  We will hit the parts of the Bahamas we loved, or missed, on previous trips and soak up some more of the gorgeous water and plentiful fishing there then head on to the islands of volcanos and rainforests and maybe even monkeys.

^^Nessa

^^Anywhere

^^ I love the stowaway pigeon on top of the mast.

^^ the old Dragon Point house on Merritt Island.  Not much left of it.