Yes, we are still alive and well. We have been docked at our friends Greg & Nancy’s home while boat chores were wrapped up and Anthony fully recovered from surgery. Both Anthony and Magnolia are fit as a fiddle and though little could be done for Anthony’s appearance a great deal has been to make Magnolia look and operate beautifully! As you saw in a previous post we had a water leak in the keel that damaged a bulkhead in the engine room. That was an unusual challenge but thank you to the hard work of our friends Mark and Ray at Grandbanks Yacht the repair was completed and the engine-room is completely dry for the first time in many many years! So happy you have that problem resolved!!!
All of the exterior doors on Magnolia are very well built teak doors. The down side is even well built they were not overly well maintained over the years and it has taken us 3 years to make time to make them right…let me re-phrase…brothers Rabelsi and Pablo are the craftsman that fixed and painted out exterior doors. The exterior appearance of Magnolia has been so brightened up…we are beyond ecstatic of the final outcome! We cannot thank them enough!!
Magnolia’s Engine Room – you can’t expect a mechanic to care more about your boat than you do. We were able to get on Alex Graham scheduled to come out and inspect and repair any short coming. he identified. He recommended that we replace a couple of gaskets on the engine cooling system. and recommended I replace the raw water feed hose which is something we can do.
While things were happening on the outside and in the engine room Annette was busy making out home more beautiful and welcoming. Out friend Jennifer made some shadow boxes for Annette to mount her sea-glass collection in. I am very fond of how the displays came out. Very very nice. My wife also got tired of finding my “readers” glasses scattered around the boat so she made me a pine needle basket in an attempt to keep me organized…so far so good.
Annette had been looking at the Scandinavian made chairs for sometime. Being Annette, she wanted it in red and that was not one of the offerings. God bless she set out and found a used one that was in good shape and she had it recoverd to her specifications. I was a little worried that our Saloon might have too much red but I have to say the outcome is fabulous. Looks great and so very comfortable that I am sitting there now composing this post.
We so much enjoyed out stay in Stuart FL but it was time to get moving. We got underway this last monday and made a stop in Loggerhead Vero so visit with Pegasus (Rod and Mary). Always much fun! We had planned to stop for the space launch right at Cocoa which is only 8 miles from the launch pad.
The launch was delayed a day which put us up Daytona. I had limited expectations for our viewing opportunity since we would be in a Urban well lit environment and well has being 60 miles to the north. Before they even got off the pad we could see the bright light on the horizon. Most amazing was the brightness of the second stage engine. Litlle did i ever imagine we would be able to see that!!!
We arrived in St Augustine on Friday and will visit my “great Aunt” here this afternoon before we head off-shore on Monday for a 150 mile hop to Port Royal and Beaufort SC. If anyone is in the area we will be at Lady’s Island till Saturday!!! Come on by!
