December 12, 2013 Baytown Marina Destin, FL

Wednesday December 11 was Mary's birthday.  This is her  ... (National Secret) birthday.  A few presents arrived here via the mail.  We slept in, some longer than others. It was a cool 55 so I turned on the stateroom heater and even made coffee!

Field Trip in the Travel-Lift

We had to help Field Trip leave the dock and run over to Destin's inner harbor in the morning.  It's about a 10 mile trip across the bay.  He needed to be hauled out so I went along to help.  And I really wanted to see the inner harbor at Destin by boat.  Next best thing is to ride in someone else's boat.

Mary and Martha stayed behind and drove down to meet at us at the marina where the boat was hauled.  We ate lunch and A J's on the harbor.

Grey Camry rental

Martha and Bob had borrowed a car from a relative living here in Destin but we rented one for a few days  to do our errands more easily since they would be tied up with the boat yard.  I was a little startled when they gave us the car though since it was almost identical to the Camry we owned for many years..

Quick and easy drivers license switch

And we had to get our drivers licenses for Florida. That process was incredibly easy.  So yes, we are now fully fledged Florida citizens!

Mary Ann in a less cranky mood

Mary Ann the marina parrot took a chunk out of Mary today.  Minor cut but she nipped Mary while on my arm attempting to grab Mary`s jacket.








Working on setting up my new laptop.  The wifi booster is still not working so it has to be the wiring in the cat 5 cable.  I'm just going to scrap the home made POE and buy one with a new cable.

Mary elected to stay behind when we were given a tour of Solaris, a big dinner cruise boat based here in Sandestin at the marina.  No bow thrusters on it either.  He maneuvers it all with twin screws and pivoting off of pilings to get it it turned around and in to the channel.  Pretty neat bridge too.







Field Trip had the new transducer installed and so we brought the boat back across the bay to Baytowne marina.  Well actually I drove it most of the way since Bob and Martha were getting Simrad integrated systems lessons down below from R1 (Robert #1) of Alpha electronics.  R2 (Robert #2) did the installation the day before.

It was blowing pretty good and the air was a cool 40 degrees.  I had to drive from the fly bridge with the windows open so I was bundled up like I was already in Wisconsin.

Went to the driving range to test my latent, skill-less golf swing.  No worries.  I'm as awful as I ever was.  The year long layoff didn't effect me at at all.

On Monday I'm golfing with friends of ours here, Don and Linda and they're really good golfers.  Hopefully the weather wont be too cold.  We have a north wind blowing around 20 mph here today and its only in the 40's.  Mary is next to the heater with a blanket.  I'm guessing she wont be moving all day.

We met another looper boat, Merchant Marine, that rolled in here yesterday.  We thought we were the last ones.  We had a nice little cocktail party on board with them.

Starting to gather together the few cold weather articles of clothing we own. Luckily we rented a mini van.  I'm sensing an approaching packing dilemma.