One weekend, we visited friends, ex-Michiganders, now living in Boca Raton, FL. Tom (ex-German, too) and Kim have a nice apartment overlooking the ICW. On Saturday we went fishing on their boat and caught some. Nightlife in Boca is great too, including German beer and bretzels.
During another cruiser gathering on an island here, we learned about Todd being in this area, with another boat, and girl. We had met Todd in Antigua and then in Curacao, Todd was instrumental to our decision to cut short the time in the Caribbean, but head for the Pacific. Todd was on a >60ft Steel schooner back then called "One World". This boat was big and needed extra crew. Now Todd and Gayle cruise on a Westsail 42 "Small World". We managed to see them the evening before they set off to the Bahamas, then continue thru the Windward Passage, to Panama, then the Pacific. Good luck to them, now we are following vicariously.
A lot of paperwork these days, including taxes, and we visited the German Konsulat in Miami to explore options for dual citizenship.
On the boat, we did a bit of brightwork-work, got the mainsail back from repair, cleaned the barnacles off the hull, and changed the propeller: We changed back from the simple fixed three-blade to our favorite, now re-manufactured, 2 blade Max Prop. Putting this Max-Prop together while on the hard usually takes a couple of hours. This time we did it in the water, saving $400 for a haul out. Three days later, 5 scuba tanks emptied, we did get it done.
The new part (6) did not have enough clearance for part (4), this took a while to figure out and modify. All good now. The difference in stopping the boat is like night and day, also the prop-walk is much reduced, the boat maneuvers much better with this prop. And while sailing, it feathers and we gain about 0.5 knots of speed, at lighter winds.
They have a lot of small boat regattas here, fun to watch:
