Sad and Challenging Times

Company gone, time to get down to boat chores. Last visit to Epicurean to stock up, one last bus trip into St. John's for fruit and veg, then motor over to Hermitage Bay at Five Islands. It was calm, so decided to take the butterfly hatch apart, strip and sand everything (hasn't been done since we bought the boat), ready to teak seal. The new main should arrive in 2-3 weeks, so we'll just hang out at the various anchorages and get all the chores done we've been putting off.

Up early Monday and started work just after 8 a.m., scraping and sanding. Finished up just after 3, and after a swim and a really late lunch/early dinner, decided it was time to check the email. The first email to come up was from our good friends Larry and Melody - Mom Coon had died in her sleep at 90+. Shocking and unexpected. Booked our flights back to Florida and took the boat into Jolly Harbour Marina for the 2 week stay. We'd planned on being off at remote anchorages for a bit, so we were fully stocked. Gave all our perishables away, plugged in and left our fridge and freezer running. Had a good flight back to Miami where we rented a car for the 7 hour drive to Homosassa. Well, Allayne was driving, so it was 5 1/2 instead of 7 hours.

All I'm going to say is it was not a good time back in Florida - thank God for Larry and Melody! Did spend time with Dean and Gina, Jen, Scott and little Alia. Then Kelly and Charlie arrived with our darling grandkids, Parker and Brooklyn - and those were all good things!! It was really good for Dennis and Kelly to spend all that time together with their Grandma Coon stories. Larry and Melody drove us back to Tampa to pick up the rental car to go to Miami, and we loved that goody bag!!!! Chocolate bars, licorice, gum drops, gum - you name it!!! Then we picked up our own goody bag of stuff in Ft. Lauderdale and Miami, hitting all the marina stores before we headed back. If you ever need a place to stay near Miami Airport, The Embassy Suites is definitely the place. A five star hotel for a three star price!!!

Felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz - please let me click my heels and go back to Audrey Paige! Great flights back to Antigua and all we wanted was to collapse and have a cold beer. Put the bags on the boat and I went below to turn the fans on because it was so hot. Hmmmm ... something not good here, the fans are turning really, really slow. Look over at the power outlet indicator - OMG - no power. Someone who had been next to us, obviously shortly after we left, had turned our power off when they turned theirs off. Everything in our fridge and freezer was gone and, oh yeah, the smell was lovely. The marina did make good on all of our 3 garbage bags of ruined food and the extra day in the marina since our batteries were almost dead. Yeah, that's what you want to do to 3 year old batteries, run them till they're almost gone!

Off we go to English Harbour, waiting for our new main sail to arrive! ~~~/_)~~~