First Guest!!

Since we were involved in so many things yesterday, the boat cleaning had been totally neglected. So, I was up with the sun this morning in an attempt to reestablish some semblance of cleanliness to our floating home. Cleaning wasn't a huge task as I try to keep the boat mostly clean anyway and it is so small that it usually takes no longer than an hour. The biggest task of my day was to empty out our Vberth. While we are traveling, we use the front berth area as our garage. Everything is stored up there - sails, food stores, pet food, extra blankets and towels. This works great 95% of the time. But, when we have a guest visit, suddenly everything needs to find a new home - not an easy task on a boat that is already stuffed full. This task took my significantly longer, but finally, after much shifting, readjusting and lots of cramming, I managed to safely find everything a new home. Add sheets and pillows and voila! guest quarters!

Since we had a bit of extra time on our hands, due of course to my incredible ability to multi-task - we headed over to watch some of the fun volleyball games that some of our friends were playing in. Fun volleyball happens everyday at 2pm on the main beach. During the regatta, it is only held once during the week and it is turned into a competition. Although, I will use the term competition lightly. Fun volleyball consists of 9 people on the court, any types of hits are legal and there is no maximum number of times it can be hit on any one side. Their motto is "No one moves, No one gets hurt." It is the antithesis of the regulation volleyball that we play, but everyone has a lot of fun and it is fun to watch.

Finally, at 2, Brad headed in to pick up Holly and I finished getting the boat in order. By 3pm, Holly was safely on board and moved into her new room! It was perfect first day for her - the wind was light, the sun was shining and the sky was clear. We headed to the beach for a bit just to let her get a taste of our paradise. At 5, we dinghied over to the middle of the harbour where a dinghy raftup was in progress. This is pretty much exactly as it sounds. Everyone meets in a predetermined location and ties up to the dinghy next to them. People bring their own drinks and a snack to pass around and we all just sit, float and chat it up until sunset. It was a great time for Holly to meet some of our friends and a really fun event for her first night in town. Hopefully we can keep up the excitement for the rest of her visit!

First Regatta Flags!

Monday was a busy day for us as we had signed up for two events. We started first thing in the morning with the Scavenger Hunt. This, of course, was my idea. I'm like a 12 year old when it comes to these things. I was so excited I could hardly stand it! We had teamed up with two other boats, whom we did not previously know, and were going to split the list into thirds. There were five other teams of 6 competing as well, so we would have to be fast!

The list was long - two whole pages - and we had two hours to complete the hunt. We quickly went over the list and separated the items into areas around the harbor. Meaning, one team went to town, one went South and Brad and I went North. Some of the items we had on our boat so we were able to run and get those and then others were things that we had to collect off of other people's boats or questions about buildings around the harbour - how many butterflies are on a wall, who is the contractor of this building, etc...

We made it back before the allotted time and were thrilled to find that our team had collected all but one very elusive item (a cruisers regatta tshirt from 2000?!). We gathered our items and had the judge check us in. Once all the teams had returned, they announced the results - and we came in First Place!!! I was so excited! We each got a blue Regatta Flag and a gift certificate to a local restaurant. It was already shaping up to be an excellent day!!

Next, we wandered over to the beach to watch the small boat races. These were very entertaining, especially the blind rowing race. Two people were in a rowboat, the rower was blind folded and the other acted as a guide. They had to row quite a ways out around two buoys and back in. It was hysterical, with boats ramming into each other and going far in all kinds of wrong directions; most boats ended up having to be towed back in, but it was very entertaining to watch. There were also kayak races and downwind dinghy sailing races (homemade sails only).

In the afternoon, we, along with our friends on Hello Texas, had entered into the Coconut Challenge. This involves four people in a dinghy with no outboard, rowing out to collect as many coconuts as you can from the 1000 coconuts that they dump into this little inlet. The kicker is, you can only use snorkel fins as paddles and there are over 30 other boats in this tiny area with you, all trying to collect coconuts. Every team member must wear a life jacket in some way. Sinking other boats and soaking other players is encouraged. Unfortunately, we got stuck in a bottleneck and couldn't get out fast enough. We did not get anywhere near enough coconuts, but we had a blast anyway. And I think it is just as funny to watch this event from shore as to participate, if not more so. Watching adults paddle with fins, flailing around in the dinghies and acting like 10 year olds has to be an amusing sight for all.

All in all a fantastic day and when we got back to the boat, we had a flag raising ceremony and hoisted our first Regatta Flags up. Tomorrow Holly comes and more regatta events commence!

New Dinghy!!

On a side note, I forgot to mention that we have finally acquired a new dinghy. Since we didn't know better when we first started sailing, we bought an inflatable dinghy, with an inflatable bottom. Although she held up well in the long daily trek to and from the dock in Key West, after seeing all the bigger and better dinghies around the dinghy dock we were finally ready for an upgrade.
So, in Naples, we happened across a guy who was selling his used dinghy. It is an Avon (one of the better known dinghy brands) and is 11'3", hard bottom (fiberglass). We took it for a test drive and it seemed to work well, so we bought it the following day. Although we were super excited about having the new dinghy, we quickly realized our little 5hp motor is just not going to cut it - so now we are on the hunt for a larger motor.
Unfortunately, craigslist (where the dinghy was listed) is a buyer beware type market. As we were towing our dinghy from Naples up to Ft. Meyers Beach (a 30mile trek) we quickly realized she had a few leaks. And by few I mean that by the time we got to Ft. Meyers the dinghy had acquired about 10-15gallons of water. Unfortunately, there is really never any good way to detect these things when you only look at one for such a short time.
But, we are in love with her anyway and will just have to patch up the holes once we get to Tampa. During short-term usage, there is little to no water intake - s we have finally found a way to stay dry on our dinghy rides! We can actually wear regular clothes in and not have to change when we get to the docks! Hurray!!