Gary discovered a leak in our port (left) upper cabinet in our VIP room.  That is the last thing you want on your boat is a leak, we are none to happy :(.

We first discovered it because water was coming in and getting the carpet wet.  Gary went down and removed all the staples holding the vinyl on, and there were a lot of them.   He found out that the water was running in behind the vinyl wall covering but he didn’t know the source of it.  Was it the cleat?  Was it the rub rail?  Was it the stanchion?  So many things with screws, what is a boater to do?  He was able to dry everything out and locate the source of the water.    It appears that the compartment that housed the anchor was where the water was seeping in.  By drilling a hole thru the wall, he was able to suck quite a bit of water out using my turkey baster.  He sucked the water out every time it rained, and man, it sure seemed to rain a lot, what the heck?  I was still waiting for those sunny warm days I was suppose to get once I moved further south.  Doesn’t look like that is happening this year.  We feel like a jinx.  Everywhere we go we drag cold air with us.  Maybe when we go visit our friends in southern Florida they will pay us not to come 🙂

Well back to the leak…..when we were settled in at Orange Beach, Gary decided to do some more investigation

Gary, getting ready to investigate

I tell you what, the head lamps we got from Ron and Diane have come in handy.  It is surprising how many time you need to stick you head in some dark spot and these little lights work really well.  I use them all the time to check out my nooks and crannys :).  So with the help of the head lamps and some poking around

Gary Fixing Leak

Gary was able to fix the leak.  YAH!  No more water coming in.  I am sooooo thankful that he is such handy guy.

Now that that crisis was diverted, we are able to go for another nice walk.  We have many nice places to walk around here.  The fact that is is flat around here, makes it even better.  Although the hills of Aqua got our heart pumping, we have more interesting places to walk here which keep the interest alive.  Here are some things we saw on one of our walks

Road in front of marina

On this road in front of the maria, if you go to the left for about 1/2 mile you’ll come to a boat ramp. You can come here on the weekends and see quite a bit of activity with boats coming and going and watching boats coming and going is always fun :).

If you go to the right when you leave the marina, for about a mile and 1/2, there is a park across the street that has a bunch of walking an biking trails.  I have heard it is wonderful and we still need to check that out.

Once to get to the end of this road, if you go to the left for 1/4 mile, you’ll find the beach

Gary on the Beach

I know he has a coat and hat on but it does get cold down here too :).  There are also 2 grocery stores, a CVS Pharmacy, a Wal-Mart with groceries plus a bunch of other stuff all relatively close.   That is why we like this place so much.  And did I tell you about the great sidewalks and bike trials they have?  Very nice.  I guess that is why the sales tax is 10% on everything here.  They have to get the money from somewhere, might as well charge the people that are using the amenities.

What kind of vegetation do they have here do you ask?  Along with the many types of palm trees and plant here, there are also quite a few pine trees here.  The pine trees drop pine cones and their big needles, I am talking 6 or 7 inches, all over the place.  So if anyone is interested in pine cones for some artsy crafty thing, they have a ton of them here

Bunch of Pine Cones

Big Pine Cones

And they are big so if you decide you want some, let me know and I’ll bring a bag home for you next time we visit Minnesota.

Now we are hunkering down for the biggest snow/ice storm they have had here in years.  Sounds like they will be closing schools, business and government.  We’ll be trapped on our boat until it is over.  So stay tuned to see if we survive the big storm of 2014……..