Anchored

Dear  Friends and Family,

Here we are with a quick update of our progress and whereabouts.

We motored Sanibel from the dock at All American Boat Yard on Monday to the Charlotte harbor in Punta Gorda, FL. Our friend Ray came with us to offer his help and support. As we motored, we used out autopilot, which worked well and kept us right on course. The 25 mile trip took about 4 ½ hours in all. We are anchored and doing well. Some of our systems are having problems, but they just need some adjustments and tweaking. We are still organizing and reorganizing, which is to be expected.

We are just about a quarter of a mile from shore, which makes for an easy dingy ride. There is a place here for us to park our truck, as well as free water, and lots of places to get groceries and whatever else we need.

The water has been calm so far. Jimi said it got pretty rough  our first night, but I slept right through it.  A rocky boat is soothing for me and I don’t mind it one bit. We’ve been cooking on our gimble stove and we tried out our new grill once. Despite minor things like getting used to minimal electricity after dark, limited fresh water and no hot showers, etc. all is well.

Molly is doing well. She didn’t like the engine noise while motoring. She stays below mostly and is comfortable with moving about the cabin, eating, drinking and such. She likes to explore the deck at dusk and sunset, but otherwise is still a little skittish up above. She’s coming around though and soon enough will be well acclimated.

We’ve updated our SPOT location, however, our blog website has been taken over by spammers. So, if you go to our website you will more than likely be told “Congratulations, you’ve won. Take our survery”. We urge you not to do it, as we don’t know what will happen. Our host company and Jimi have tried to fix it with no luck. Jimi still works on it, as time permits. We are hopeful to be able to get it back eventually. More to come.

We’ve also experienced some issues with running our computers on 12 volt. It’s not happening. I am currently sitting at a public park plugged in to a 110v outlet and this is how  it will have to be until we can figure something out. I’ve still got my Cencorp phone with data and can use that to some degree. We’ll keep you posted on this issue as well.

Here are a few pictures: Image 3 is the lock we had to go through to get from the fresh water canals to the salt water ocean.

Image 6 is Jimi at the helm talking with our friend Ray.

Image 7 is Lorie.

Image 10 is Molly laying in the forward berth during the journey.

And image 14 is the chart plotter Jimi used to get us where we are.

Tomorrow we are expecting 9mph winds steady and are planning to pull the anchor for a day sail. It should be fun.



That’s all for now.

Love everybody,

Lorie & Jimi