February 3, 2005
Location: St. Petersburg, FL

We’re still here in St. Petersburg but we’re getting close to our anticipated departure for Isla Mujeres, Mexico. Isla Mujeres (island of women) is a small island about five miles from the coastal city of Cancun. It is a small resort island and is a popular destination for cruisers.

We keep finding small projects to do around the boat and have done a little bit of reorganizing but mostly we’re learning to enjoy the slow pace of retirement. The big project we accomplished over the last couple of weeks was fixing our annoying oil leak. It involved removing the transmission and such but we’re glad to have this job done. If you’re interested in reading more about it with more photos click here to see what we did.

I’ve been e-mailing some of the marinas in the Rio Dulce to get an idea of when we need to think about making reservations. Most of the marinas there require boats to back up to the dock and tie off, then you get on and off the boat via a wooden plank on the back of the boat (called med moor). This would not be easy to do on our boat so we’re looking for a marina that actually has slips or a side tie. Found a couple marinas along the Rio Dulce and so we’re trying to decide which one so we can reserve a spot. The average marina rate in the river is about $150/month including live aboard fees, that’s about 1/4 or 1/5 of what we’re used to paying in the states! Also talked with The Shop, a marine repair facility on the lake. Their current labor rates for skilled labor is $30/hour and for unskilled $5/hour. And get this, they’re one of the most expensive on the river (though I hear they’re excellent). Others charge as little as $8 to $10/day for unskilled labor for things such as washing boats, polishing stainless and such. Other things we found out is that breakfast can cost as little as $2, a steak dinner $7 and so on. We’re exicted about getting down there, it’s obvious our dollar will go much further there.

David and I went for a dingy ride today and checked out some other marinas. Found a couple of good places to anchor so we might go out next week for a few days or so. Also dingied by downtown St. Petersburg. Not much else is going on around here, just hanging out and enjoying the wonderful warm weather.

February 10, 2005
Location: St. Petersburg, FL

Not much new going on around here, just taking care of some boat stuff. We took the boat out last Sunday and ran the engine hard. After doing all the engine work the prior week we wanted to make sure the engine was running good and it gave us an opportunity to check for leaks. Good news is the engine ran great and no more oil leak, but there was still a transmission leak. So we dropped the transmission again, replaced the transmission seal and while we were at it we replaced a questionable motor mount. So now we need to run the engine again for a few hours to see if the transmission still leaks. We were going to go to Desoto Point this weekend but it’s supposed to get cold, down in the 50’s so we’ll wait until next Tuesday to go. It’ll give us a chance to check out the rest of the systems before we depart for Mexico.

Yesterday we ordered charts for the areas between the Yucatan Peninsula to the Panama Canal. We ordered the grayscale copies from Bellingham Charts. There are a total of 47 charts, they are 2/3 in size and even bound like a chart kit. The vet is coming Monday (yes, a vet that does house calls) to give Ashley her rabies shot and so we can get a health certificate to allow her entry into Mexico. We would hate to have her deported! We’re still excited about having Bryan, one of our dock neighbors, go with us to Isla Mujeres. It’ll be nice to have a third person on board. We were hoping to buddy boat with Dan and Jamie but Dan said they are running a week or so behind. We’ve been ancy to get out of here so we’ll probably go as scheduled and see them there a bit later.

So the plan after we return from Desoto Point is to do our provisioning start monitoring the weather. Right now the seas in the Yucatan channel are 15 to 20 feet, hopefully we can find a weather window with better seas. Other than that we’re just hanging out around here enjoying the weather and the people on the dock.

February 12, 2005
Location: St. Petersburg, FL

Well, David is off getting some provisions. Dan and Jamie were kind enough to drive him around today. I was hanging up at the office this morning drinking my coffee, it’s always amazing how clear the water is here. I was watching schools of snook (type of fish) just swimming around, some of them as big as 3 feet or so. Usually in the late afternoons the jacks (type of tuna) come in and are in schools of hundreds.

I didn’t sleep well last night, I think I’m getting nervous about the trip (had dreams of 50’ waves!). David and I are really excited about moving on and getting to Mexico, it’ll be our first foreign landfall. I can’t speak for David buy I’ve been a bit nervous, our fist major crossing in some of the worst waters around. I know we can do it and that the boat is a very capable boat, but I guess it’s just my nature to be a bit scared. When I think about it, if I didn’t do anything because I was scared I would not have done a lot in the past, as a matter of fact life would have been kind of boring. Spoke with Bryan, our friend that’s going with us. He went through our tackle box and made some notes, he’s going to get a few extra lures so we can try our luck at fishing on the way to Mexico. I’m looking forward to seeing if our fishing gear actually works! I think we’re heading over to Desoto Point on Monday or Tuesday and will be back by the end of the week. Time is getting short and we have a few more projects to get done. Oh, we signed up for Skype, it’s an internet phone service. It allows us to call computer to computer for free and from computer to landline phone for 3 cents per minute, it works really well. We’ll use that to call home when we have internet service. If you have Skype you can add us to your calling list and call us if we’re online, our directory name is Bruadair

February 19, 2005
Location: St. Petersburg, FL

Well, it’s been a hectic week. Last Saturday we got hit by another boat while our boat was tied up in it’s slip. The other boat was trying to get into it’s slip, over shot then backed up, into us. It put a hole into our dingy and tweaked our davits. After the guy parked his boat he left! I had to stop him up at the office but he wouldn’t give me any boat or insurance information so I filed a police report. As it turned out he wasn’t the owner and when I finally got a hold of the owner he refused to give any boat or insurance information and finally decided to offer me some money to make it go away. Since we were only 10 days from leaving for Mexico I took it. As it turns out his boat is not registered or documented and he has no insurance. We’ll have to get the dingy fixed when we get to Mexico.

Other than that everything has been going good. David has been working on varnishing the cutting boards in the galley and I’ve been busy lashing things down on deck and making sure everything is stowed for the trip. Spent the entire day yesterday plotting our course and loading waypoints into the laptop and the chartplotter. Last night Brian and Debbie took us out for a farewell dinner at Backfin Blue in Gulfport, the rest of the gang on our dock went with us. It was a great dinner with David having the portabello mushroom stuffed with lump crab and I had the salmon topped with asparagus and lump crab. Excellent! This morning we went with Debbie, Jan and Kristel to the farmer’s market and bought some goodies for the trip including oranges (15 for a $1) and beef jerky. Afterwards we went to the Italian market and bought a variety of salamis and cheeses for the trip. Later today or tomorrow we’ll be making our major provisioning trip. Brian from down the dock is going with us so we’re really excited, it’ll be nice to have a third person especially when it comes to the nightly watches. It’s hard to believe that in less than two weeks we’ll be sitting at anchor in Isla Mujeres (island of women) in Mexico. Below are some pictures of us at the market (click on the picture for a larger picture). Well, back to work as there is more to stow and we leave in 8 days!

 
Farmer’s Market in downtown St. Pete                           Debbie and Kristel looking at all the spices

        
Young vendor selling oranges 15 for a $1                       David, Kristel and Debbie buying tabuli

February 21, 2005
Location: St. Petersburg, FL

Last Saturday night everyone on C dock got together again to celebrate our pending departure. Wait a minute!, are they trying to tell us something? Because the evening was a bit cooler than normal we went to the lounge above the marina office and enjoyed each other’s company for most of the night. There was so much food and it was all good. Though we have only been here for two months it feels like we’ve known everyone a lifetime, it’ll be a bit sad to say bye to everyone in a week. Anyway, we were very surprised as we were given a few gifts including some exotic spices from Kristel, a C-Dock burgee from the group and a beautiful hand painting of Bruadair nicely framed. Debbie, she lives two boats down, took one of the pictures from our web site and painted us an 8” x 11” water color painting. David and I were so pleasantly surprised that we didn’t know what to say. It’s going up in the salon later today. To see a bigger picture of the painting click on the thumbnail (it’s a large file). Thanks everyone!!!

February 26, 2005
Location: St. Petersburg, FL

Well, we didn’t leave today as we had hoped to. The weather out in the Gulf of Mexico is kind of nasty and there are some storms forecast to come through here tomorrow. If all the storms pass through here tomorrow we’ll be heading out Monday. This is the hardest part, sitting here waiting for a good weather window so we can continue cruising. I’m sure the wait will be worth it though, I’m not sure I would enjoy being out in the ocean in 12’ seas and thunderstorms. Be sure to check back in a week or so to see how our trip went. If you’re interested in learning more about Isla Mujeres (our next destination) then click here.