We left North Palm Beach Marina yesterday and are currently anchored in Lake Worth waiting for our weather window to cross to the Bahamas!

The water maker installation by Greg at VillageMarine went well. It took about two days and the water from it tastes great. We thought we would be leaving here Thursday, but engine problems held us up. The port engine wasn’t putting out water and Dan realized the water pump was broke. Not that big a deal, but when Dan tried to remove it, it was impossible.

Apparently, the water pump had been leaking salt water in the engine for some time. This caused rust and corrosion to build up on the engine. Dan didn’t have the tools to work on it so he called a Yanmar mechanic. When the mechanic tried to remove the water maker, the crankcase cracked. Now, in addition to getting a new water pump, we had to replace the crankcase. If this had happened at the Palm Coast Marina it wouldn’t have been too bad, but this marina was expensive. A very large mechanic bill and 20 days of marina fees later, it was fixed.

We put the time to good use though. We went to the Palm Beach boat show, rented movies from Blockbuster, and went swimming. Tristan put his new docking skills to work and helped out as a dockhand. Here though the tips went from a few bucks to $5 and $10?s. Glad someone was bringing in some money. He also impressed the captain of the nine million dollar mega yacht, Maverick, which docked behind us. Later while Dan and I were sweating in the sun waxing the boat, we looked up to see Tristan waving at us from the deck of Maverick. The captain was giving him a private tour.

We went to the beach a few times but there were rip currents and Man O War jellyfish warnings, so the kids had to be careful when they went into the water. Tessa celebrated her 7th birthday while we were here. That was fun. Normally her birthday would consist of a lot of kids at some party place, where it was usually too loud and too much money. This time, while we couldn’t give her a lot of friends, we could give her our time. So for the whole day she called the shots and we spent all of our attention on her. She loved it. Even though we are frustrated we aren’t in the Bahamas and the Bahamas have now taken on an almost mystical feel, we are beginning to enjoy where we are. We finally have almost all the stuff stored so we aren’t fighting that every day and now we can start to enjoy the boat and each other.

We have more boat projects. Our refrigerator has a mind of its own. About every 2 weeks it stops working. When it stops I have to move everything out of the refrigerator to our freezer. Dan shuts the refrigerator down for a few days and then it starts working again. I move everything back from the freezer to the refrigerator. This lasts about 2 weeks until the refrigerator stops again. Again we move everything to the freezer. A few days later, all is right in refrigerator world and it works again. After the last time, we bought a new compressor and of course before we could install it the refrigerator began working again. Such is the glamorous boat life.

Vero Beach Florida.  Our first taste of warm weather.  We are on a mooring ball at the Vero Beach Marina.  This is a cute little marina with a really nice set up for sailors.  There are nice showers, a TV lounge with computers, microwave and a great book selection.  It also has a free bus service to town, which was lucky for us as we needed to get more oil for our saildrive. 

We met another family with 2 children a little younger than ours.  They were from Washington DC, had bought their “fixer upper” boat in North Carolina and had lived on it in Charleston SC.  The cold forced them to move to Vero Beach.  They didn’t have refrigeration, nor water on the boat, so everyday they had to get ice and water.  Because they were fixing it up, there was no storage, and everything was in disarray on the boat.  But Michele, the wife, had a great attitude and their kids were having a blast.  We continue to be amazed at the spirit and friendliness of the people we meet.

We could stay here longer but we have an appointment in North Palm Beach to have our water maker installed.