Life Aboard: Christmas 2017

We had a great time back with family and friends. As always, it just didn’t last long enough! We have too many people to try and see and not enough time.

Billy, Chelle and I got together with our cousins Tammy and her husband Barry, Donna, Danny, and our uncle Dan. We had seen Tammy and Barry during the summer and wanted to spend more time with them. You all know how it goes, we have family and friends we want to see, but just don’t make definite plans and the time slips away. So, before we left Vero heading back we set a definite date and time and made it happen. And we are all glad we did it and want to get together again when we get back up there.

We had our usual get together at Chilie Rojo for fun and great food. We saw George and Pam, David and Betty, and Mike and Phyllis there. Chelle and I went on several long hard walks and loved spending that time with each other. I went back and forth to daddy’s several times during our two weeks back. Chelle and I both spent a night at daddy’s and we haven’t done that in years! We ate way too much good rich food and had several “carb comas” as a result of it! Lauren didn’t spend as much time back home as usual, so we tried to cram as much time together as we could. We did our usual day after Christmas returning and shopping.

My family all had Christmas at Daddy’s on Christmas Eve as usual. We had a great time. We were very busy with lots of eating, talking and laughing going on.

Michael, Ethan, Sarah and Michelle

Michael, E-man and Sasa

Me and my babe, Lauren

Lauren and Sarah

Billy and Daddy

Daddy and his crew

Daddy and his baby girl

Daddy and his oldest daughter, as he introduces me

Papa and his babies.

Sarah, Rascal and Papa

Rascal loving on Sarah

Daddy in his favorite chair with some of his favorites

Me and my "first child". I love her so much!

Three peas in a pod.

Shay, Jason, Travis, Lauren, Jean and I had a great breakfast prepared by Lauren Christmas morning and then opened gifts Christmas. We all got too much stuff and were very blessed.

Lauren's famous breakfast braid

...And her baked French toast. Yummy in our tummy!

Shay got a drone so he can watch overhead while..

...Jason fixes things with his new tools....

...While Jean stays warm in her new coat...

...and Lauren takes it easy in her new lounging pants.

Travis I don't know what happened to us? I know we got gifts. But not pictures??

Shay’s family got together for their Christmas that afternoon and we had a house full. Jean said if we kept adding people, the young ones were going to have to chip in to add on to the house. We are definitely getting too big and we had few people that couldn’t make it. We missed Zac, Sabrina and Aryanna. They are in Wyoming now and couldn’t make the trip back. Jason’s fiancé, Amy had to work so she couldn’t make it. And Lauren’s fellers were back in Wilmington. We had a great feast and lots of gifts to open. More “carb comas”.

Jean and all the kids. Look at those yummy desserts.

Wish I had some of those now! I would really appreciate them now!!

Jean, kids, in-laws, except Lisa. You left too early!

Shay, Jenny, Phil, and Joey.

As always, the trip is too short and it’s time to head back. We will start looking for a weather window as soon as we can. You never know, we could get really, really, really lucky and get one in the next few days!

Well, the weather has not cooperated, but hey, Vero is still a great place to be “stuck”. We keep seeing more boaters coming in. Some stay for a while and others are just overnighters.

Beautiful sunset at Vero

Full moon on New Year's Eve. Beautiful weather. We ate dinner outside.

A nice change from the NC weather.

We’ve enjoyed spending time with Richard and Connie and had several great meals with them. Connie had us over for her “ham junk” a few days after New Year’s. Yum. Then she had us over another night for crockpot meatloaf and veggies. Another masterpiece.

The only thing missing is Five Flip Flops. We have spent some time with them since we’ve been here but the boat is MIA. They left it in Daytona for a paint job and it ain’t going well. There have been major delays and problems so Sir David has gone up and been the overseer. The job was supposed to be a 2 week job and at the end of two weeks he went up to see the progress and there was NONE. The guy had told him they were sanding and stuff, but they had not been. So he stayed and waited. And waited. And waited. Finally after about 8 weeks, many discussions, and much ranting from David the job was finished and they got out! They are slowly making their way down to Vero for provisioning and a weather window.

As usual, Shay had been doing hours of weather watching each day. Listening to Chris Parker, looking at lots of weather sites, and discussing options with David, our weather guru.

It’s January 22, 2018, and we have left Vero heading to Lake Worth. It will be a long day for us; we usually take 2 days for the trip. But we want to leave in the morning from Lake Worth so on we go.

We’ve been making lists of things to do before crossing and checking them off. It’s not even 12 noon yet and I’ve already walked over .6 miles. That’s just on the boat, going up and down the stairs getting things and checking things. We have lots of gadgets to charge, things to get out of drawers and cabinets, and people to call and tell we’re leaving.

We had a good trip down. We left our mooring and went to the dock to fill up on water. We were empty so it took a while to put on 400 gallons. We left the mooring field at 8:23 heading to Lake Worth. That's a full day for us and we're getting a late start. We got here at 5:30 after traveling 9 hours at 6.5 for a total of 60nm. We had a good day, no problems, nice weather and not as many boats on the water as we usually see.