Saturday, February 11, 2017

      While John is working on getting the boat ship shape for our trip, with the help of Olsen Marine in Ft Myers, Florida, I have been struggling with setting up this blog.  I think his job has been easier, but when my daughter Catherine said she made all of her students have a blog, I figured maybe I could navigate the issue and get started.  
       The short pre history of the trip.  John's idea, but it sounded like fun as long as we could play golf along the way and I get to navigate on land, i.e. places we stop, restaurants, activities.  
So in April of 2016, while I was in London visiting my daughter Maria and granddaughter Laila, and Justin too, John and his buddy went boat shopping in Florida.  A whirlwind 500 mile trip around Florida came up with really only one boat we thought would work.  LoQueSeA  (good name to change) a 37 foot Great Harbor trawler he found in Jacksonville.   It was big enough for John and me to live on for a year, and in pretty good shape. So we bought it, spent two days taking it to St Simons Island, GA  for the summer and Went back to playing golf in Colorado.
        We were glued to the weather reports as Hurricane Matthew blew up the east coast in the fall, but fortunately the boat survived the hurricane and was almost ready to go when we got back in November.  We headed out of the marina, only to find that there was something wrong with the propellers.   So we sat waiting for  (I'm told that refrain will be sung over and over again in the next year)  Diver Dude (see pictures) to show up to scrape the barnacles  off of the propellors,
    Once on our way we had a great trip south along the Florida coast.  We viewed a lot of damage from Hurricane Matthew, played golf at the LPGA home course in Daytona, visited the Kennedy Space center and came across the Okechobee Canal and Lake and the Caloosahatche river to Ft Myers.  We left the boat with long list of issues with Dominic and Olsen Marina and headed home for Christmas.  
      Back in Ft Myers in early February "we are waiting For..." for the boat to get ready.  Actually,  for us another way to sing that song is, "So we are playing golf."..until the boat is ready.  So far, beautifl weather and three rounds of golf and maybe we'll be able to leave the end of next week.
     Now I'm going to try to make a YouTube video of the boat being hauled out of the water.  
If it works I'll post it here.

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