Another week of boat projects. This time it was repairing both heads (bathrooms) and the refrigerator. The cars are still full. We found a note on Dan’s car the other morning. It said “marina parking only.” There’s construction going on here and apparently when they saw all the stuff in our car they assumed it was a construction guy living out of his car. Nice. I guess we’re considered transient now.

It is starting to get frustrating and a little depressing. The kids are having fun though. Tristan has become an unofficial dockhand at the marina. Don, on the beautiful trawler Overindulgence, has taken Tristan under his wing and has been teaching him how to handle the lines and different sailing knots. Now every time Tristan sees a boat come into the marina he is on the dock ready to help. He has been earning some tips too. It’s great to see this sometimes shy boy really become outgoing and confident.

We are getting to know more of the people here too. Dottie and Ritchie on the boat Mercedes invited us to a cookout. They have a great dog Buddy which Tessa is crazy about. Aubrey, their daughter has a used bookstore in Flagler Beach. We were able to unload some of our over abundance of reading material to her for her store.

That will free up a few more inches!

Thursday was going to be one of the first good days weather-wise and we needed a change of pace. We decided to take the kids to Cape Canaveral space center. The weather was warm for the first time, although it was still very windy. During our tour we saw a rocket on the launch pad. Our tour guide told us a launch was scheduled for February 15th. The rocket was going to launch Themis, a research project containing 5 different satellites. Its purpose was to study energy releases from the Earth’s magnetosphere. She told us that we could call our Senator and try to get VIP tickets to view the launching from Cape Canaveral. We would love to see a launch but thought surely we would be gone by then.

We drove back to Palm Coast that evening in a torrential downpour and the weather deteriorated. Our area was under a tornado warning until 1 am. On TV we could see the line of severe storms heading right toward us. Being from Illinois originally, when a tornado is coming your way, you head for the basement. On a catamaran there is no basement, (and believe me if there was one it would be full of stuff), so we decided to take the kids into the marina showers.

It wasn’t too hard waking up Tristan and getting him into a raincoat, but Tessa was another story. When we started getting them ready the wind was really blowing and then it started to lessen. This is usually the calm before the tornado. Getting no cooperation from Tessa, (it was like trying to put a cat in bathwater!), I finally wrapped a blanket around her, grabbed her and went out into the cockpit. Now we had to negotiate getting off the boat at low tide, with the rain and the lightning. At this point we realized that this could be more dangerous than simply staying on the boat, but we forged ahead. We made it to the showers where we stayed for about 30 minutes, long enough that the worse should have passed over us.

When we got back on the boat, we heard on the news that the tornado watch was extended for another hour. We were done though. The kids went back to bed and we stayed up until about 3 am until things settled down. That morning when we saw on the news all the damage in the towns around us, we considered ourselves very lucky.

Greetings from Palm Coast Marina! We arrived here in two cars loaded down with more stuff for our already over packed catamaran. Our vision was to come to warm Florida, take a few days to store things on the boat and be on our way. Reality is much different.

First, it is cold here. It is in the low 40’s at night. In addition to the two heaters we have running at night we have layers of blankets. Second, we have boxes and bags everywhere, inside the boat and outside in the cockpit waiting to be stowed. We have good storage under our bed, and under our daughter Tessa’s bed, but to get to it you have to pull the mattress up, which means moving more things around. So far it is a constant Chinese puzzle. You have to rearrange six things to put one thing away.

We are a source of amusement to the folks at the marina. I’m sure there is a betting pool going on with the odds of us getting everything in the boat. We still have our cars to unload. One car holds the 4 solar panels which we will install on top of the boat. We will eventually sell our cars here in Palm Coast but right now they are acting as an extra storage unit.

We have too much stuff.