Day 56

Tabbie didn’t sleep very well last night, so she spent part of the morning sleeping in. Grant washed down the entire outside of the boat and rinsed off the saltwater. Tabbie then went into town to check out the boutiques at about 11am and spent 3 ½ hours checking out the town. Grant had a mechanic come out to take a look at the boat and diagnosed a few problems that were easily fixable. It ends up it was the antisyphon valve on the fuel tank that was corroded and was allowing air to get into the fuel line causing the hesitation. While the mechanic was there, Grant had him look over the rest of the engines and help us prepare the boat for salt water. The mechanic also repacked the packing nut to fix our leak so we don’t have to worry about the boat sinking anymore…

We did a few loads of laundry, which was pretty expensive. Three dollars a load to wash and dry! We are coming to find out that everything at this marina is pretty expensive. Dangerous Love came over to invite us to watch the basketball game when Tabbie was in town and then invited Tabbie later to come to the boats for drinks, which we did that evening. After drinks we all went to eat oysters at the bar, and come to find out it was the last day they would be open for the Holiday season!! Well, that wasn’t good, so we needed to get our fix full of oysters - Tabbie had oysters called Captain Jacks, which we the best that she had ever tasted. They were Jalapenos, hot sauce and cheese. Grant had raw oysters on the ½ shell. We also had to try their signature appetizers of Oyster soup and bacon rapped oysters that were deep-fried. We stayed until bar close (10:00 – weak!) and headed back to our respective boats to retire for the night.

It looks like we are going to be here for a few days. Grant spoke to the owner of the marina who suggested that we make a crossing to Steinhatche, which will only be an 8-hour trip, doable in one day, during the day. It would then be 2-3 days to Tampa. He suggested that we look at leaving around Tuesday because there was a cold front moving in and the best travel happens after a cold front. All weather accounts verify that this will probably happen on Tuesday. This gives us limited time to make it to Tampa by next Monday, which is our day to fly home. But we can only do what the water lets us to. Mother Nature is always the boss!