Same City, Different Address

Monday December 3, 2012

Yesterday we had my grandparents out to visit and could not have asked for a more beautiful day here in St. Augustine.  The sun was out and it was even warm enough for me to wear shorts.  Shorts!!  I haven’t done that since…..Manhattan.  With their visit we were able to spend the day relaxing and forget all about our pending boat problems.  There was only window shopping down cobblestone streets, lunch on an outside patio, and even ended the day with a nice ice cream treat.  We may have also used them to cart us around while we ran the errands that were too hard to do on foot, but hey, what are grandparents for?  There was also an invite extended to stay with them should we need to while repairs are being done on Serendipity, they only live three and a half hours away, but we’re both hoping it won’t come down to that.  Just a day or two (or an hour) out of the water and we’ll be good to go again.

Waking up to clouds and rain today we weren’t worried about missing out on sightseeing the town again since our ever awesome Tow Boat US Captain, Justin, was swinging by to pick us up and deposit us at the St. Augustine Marine Center.  Coming in on Thursday night not under our own power we figured Matt would jump in the water at some point to cut loose the line that was wrapped around the prop and make it so we could move ourselves again, but since we’re now Tow Boat US members and our membership entitles us to free tows we decided to take advantage of that and save Matt the dive into the water.  I wonder if that was wise though, it probably would have forced him to finally get our snorkel gear that we still haven’t bought yet.  Still high on the list of priorities?  I think it counts.

When Justin arrived he was fully prepared for the rain sporting his foul weather gear while I foolishly thought my thin jacket would do the job.  Getting my glasses fogged and covered in rain drops I started cleating the lines Justin threw me until I realized I’d have to undo the line for the mooring to get the tow line underneath it.  This led to a game of tug of war between myself and the mooring line and since it was becoming such a close battle I let Matt tie on the rest of the lines from Justine while I slowly inched my way up to the ball where we were tied on.  I felt like I was winning the battle until it was time to untie ourselves from the mooring and cold and tired I handed the line to Matt while I took refuge under the bimini.  Floating off into the bay Justin put a call into the draw bridge and for once I was happy to not have a care in the world of when it opened because it was neither of us trying to fight the current to keep our boat in place.

The ride was a fairly short one, just over a mile down the Matanzas River and then up a little side creek where we were parallel parked between a couple of catamarans.  The first order of business was to get ourselves checked in and luckily the rain had stopped while we blindly wandered the yard through huge  puddles to find the office.  The yard was huge and there were a variety of buildings and boats sheds and so many boats on the hard with work being done to them.  Spotting what happened to be the back of the office building we snuck in and aimlessly wandered through the halls and to the reception desk where we were helped immediately and with a smile.  Filling out some necessary paperwork we were directed to the service manager that I had been speaking to on the phone Friday and we got to relive our sob story once more as we went over what happened and what we thought the damage might be.  Then with a promise to be hauled out first thing the next morning we were left with the rest of the day to spend at a boat yard.

And what do boatyards have to offer?  HOT SHOWERS!!  Which felt so good on a cold rainy day like this.    And the best part is we don’t even have to dinghy over to them.  We can just step off our boat to hard ground and be on our way.  Pretty nice perk.  After the showers once we were clean and changed into dry clothes the sun made it’s way out again and we took a late afternoon stroll through the yard to check out all the other hundreds of boats sitting there as well.  Hopefully this will only be home for a few days, but we may as well start spying on the neighbors.

Now if only we had that kind of power.

At least some people know how to dress for foul weather.

Sorry kitty, you’ll never wear the pants in this family.

Should the world flood on December 21st, at least we will have this.