Finishing touches

Posted by Scot

Just sitting here on the boat, waiting for the rigging guys to come and install the hardware to lead our main back to our new electric winch.  The Saturday rush down our canal to the ICW has already started, and the boat is rocking a bit more than usual.  Sara has taken the kids off to the laundromat to give me room to tear the boat apart so we have the necessary access to bolt down the deck hardware.

The last few days have been about putting the finishing touches on the bigger projects (i.e. ones we need help with) prior to getting ourselves moving.  We are scheduled to head out on Monday, assuming all goes well today.  We aren't planning to go too far to start with.  Just a few short hops down the Florida coast to test out the boat, and make sure we are still not too far away if we find any of our recent changes need fine tuning.

We're excited to actually get moving, though.  The last month has been a bit of a grind, with a lot of work getting done, but not a ton of play time.  We will be leaving with mixed feelings about this part of Florida.  Tom and Betty have been extremely hospitable, allowing our family of five to live in their backyard, and use their pool and bathroom for a whole month, and we are forever grateful.

Pretty nice backyard to hang out in, but after a month, we're ready to move along.

But neither Sara or I are really enamoured with this area around Fort Lauderdale.  The other night, as we were making our umpteenth trip to Home Depot for some random piece of hardware, Sara said "This is just like driving around Surrey."  That totally clicked for me, and for those that know Surrey (B.C., not England), it is a truly apt description of what this place is like.  Lots of highways, traffic, shopping malls, and bedroom communities for the bigger cities further south.  Not that there is anything wrong with Surrey, mind you.  I know lots of people live there happily.  But it is not really our scene, which is why we chose to move out of Vancouver to the wilds of the Monashee mountains several years ago.

Surrey has some big houses, too, although I don't think any sit on the ocean like this one on the ICW.

I guess the one thing that Florida has that Surrey doesn't is the ocean and the beaches, although probably not surprisingly, it seems most people don't take advantage of them during their day to day lives.  I guess they are all at work, school, etc.  In fact, we've noticed that the heat and humidity seem to keep people largely in doors.  In the suburb where we are docked, streets in the day time seem to be full of gardeners, painters, pest control people, etc., but there is an almost eerie lack of actual inhabitants around.  I think this is mostly climate related, but seems strange to us.

Finally got the whole family out for a dinghy ride all at the same time last night.  In this picture is Sara, a relaxing Katie, and Alexander's thumb.