January 5

January 5. Happy Birthday Chris! We will be in Vero Beach for a few days so I will be taking another short hiatus from our daily reports. The weather here is between 75 and 82 degrees, there’s been sunshine and 15 to 20 knots of wind for the entire day so the batteries are completely charged.

The wind did make for some good boat watching today. You hear boats call in on the VHF and ask for a mooring ball assignment. You sit and pray, as everyone else does, that the ball you’re on does not get called out. You really don’t want to share a ball if you don’t have too. I mean, I like people, it’s just that I like em’ more over there than over here. The wind was kicking today so anytime a boat came into pick up a ball that already had a boat on it, it became an adventure. We see a lot of people make really silly decisions and you can’t help but wonder what were they thinking and how did they survive up until today.

We took the free bus into town and went to a dive shop, West Marine (of course) and a food store. Things went well and we were back on the boat around noon. I spent the day doing boat projects, mostly minor improvements to increase the livability of the boat.

In the evening we went over to Non Linear for a cocktail hour (or 2). They seem to know 25 percent of the people here from having cruised for over 5 years now. We thought that we had learned so much before we left but it’s amazing how many tricks we’ve been able to pick up from all the people that we’ve met.

Boat Name of the Day goes to a sailboat named Cloud. I know its nothing special but his dinghy was named Silver Lining, as in every Cloud has its Silver Lining.