It is raining cats and dogs here, I mean we are having a squall (that there is sailor talk for raining cats and dogs) so I thought I’d update the blog.  We have still been exploring Orange Beach and the surrounding area.  3 of our new boat friends here at the marina have left for their homes in Tennessee.  They have run into severe weather and frost and ice on their boats while they travel north.  We are hoping it will warm up by the time we leave around the middle of April.

We were invited to visit our friends Chuck and Rae at their home in Cape Coral.  We visited them for about a week and had a great time.  We went to visit a rum distillery close to their home.  It was free and we even got to taste the rum they made, hic!

Wicked Dolphin Rum Distillery

Where they bottle the Rum

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Friday……taste!

They do their own testing for new flavors

Home Distillery

The next day the seas calmed down so Chuck and Rae took us for a boat ride where we anchored by a beach and watched the boats go by.  So relaxing and much warmer than Orange Beach

Here is the beach we anchored next to. Not quite warm enough to swim to

This person lives on his boat right here off the channel, you can get bait from him any time of the day or night

This boat is kept in a canel right in front of their home.  Guess what their home looks like 🙂

View from the back of their boat

Look at this boat, the garage in the back of the boat is bigger than some peoples garage on land!

See the large Toy Shed?

This island is owned by someone.  They use it to have weddings on.  Anyone interested?

Gilligan’s Island

We went out a few days later, down by Fort Myers Beach.  Beautiful area.  They have mooring balls you can tie to and while you are tied to them, someone will come out and give you water and a pump out, for a small fee.

Mooring balls at Fort Myers Beach

OMG, what is that I see?  It’s our old boat!

The Pearson

Pearson

Funny that two of the boats we owned have ended up down south.  We also learned this summer that our 1969 46′ Chris Craft Aqua Home was suppose to be heading down south too.  Maybe we’ll run into it someday.

We also ran into another Navigator down here.

Navigator

We really enjoyed our visit, we are home now.  Smokie didn’t seem to worse for the wear.  He got right back into the normal schedule of nap time

Smokie and Gary, Nap Time!

Now we have to get ready for visitors of our own.

There seems to be a break in the rain

See the rain come off the roof

Wow

So now looks like a good time to make a dash for the heads.  TMI?  Sorry 🙂