Stuart, Florida

We're heading down to Stuart on Thursday October 30 with stops in Albany to get another SIM card so that we can have two unlocked phones while we are in Florida, in Columbia, MD so that Liz can go shopping at the LL Bean store, and in Annapolis to pick up our spinnaker sails that we shipped there a year ago. This is what it looked like when we left after a freak snow storm knocked out electricity and phone for almost a week.

We hope to get there on November 1 and start familiarizing ourselves with Snow Shoo again. We will be there when the mast gets raised with the new rigging in place. This year we hope things will be quite different given that we are much more familiar with the boat and have bought a few things that should solve our power issues that we had to contend with last year.

On arriving in Stuart we had a look at Snow Shoo and we were pleasantly surprised that it weathered the summer with very little damage other than being very dirty. The work started in earnest after we had been to Fort Lauderdale to pick up our equipment that we had shipped to our friends Yoli and Chris and knocked off a number of things on our lists of things to buy and do. We stripped out the refrigeration and freezer systems, the watermaker and the rear AC unit. The new refrigeration system is almost installed and and arrangements have been made to repair the AC and the watermaker. We have spoken to the canvas repair people and we will have to have a new bimini top made before we leave. The mast with the new rigging is supposed to be installed next week. That leaves mounting the solar panels. After that we are down to maintenance items and cleaning. We have a tentative splash date for the 20th of November. Then a few sea trials and if everything is ok we will head south to below Miami where we will wait for a weather window to cross the Gulf Stream.

More later