5 January - 27 February 2015... We Had No Idea!

Puttered down the ICW to the boatyard, in the slings and up. All good. On the schedule, bottom paint, watermaker check and investigating a fuel leak. Thought we'd be on the hard a week. Found out we had a hole in one of the fuel tanks and had to have it replaced. In order to remove and replace the tank, we had to remove the floor and fabricate a new tank since it was a custom fit to the hull. Huge operation. We also thought we should try to refresh the topside. We agreed to a new paint job. Supposed to be 3 weeks - with weather delays it became 6 weeks. Meantime we also got a new fuel pump for the engine room, and some other assorted goodies. We imposed on Irv & Renee and Eileen & Marvin for places to stay while the work progressed.

Happy with our experience, we splashed on 27 Feb and motored back up to WPB. Thanks to the team at Palm Beach Yacht Center -- Brett, Barry, Edwin and their crews for taking care of us and doing fabulous work. Thanks too to Water Works (Earl) for a beautiful topside job. And to Dick at Murray Marine for giving us back our lifeline -- a working watermaker.

While waiting for work to be completed we spent time walking around Delray at Gleneagles and Green Cay. John took lots of photos and even entered a wildlife photography contest. One of the entries was a roseate spoonbill we had seen at Green Cay. We had traveled all the way to the Mexican Yucatan to see spoonbills and didn't see any. Who knew we only needed to go a couple of miles away! Other nice shots were of herons, limpkins, and cormorants -- here are some of them.