It is time for another boat trip with the Shore Leave group.  We are going to South Seas Resort.  I know, we’ve been to this place before but every trip is just a little different.

First of all, this trip was different because there were 20 mile an hour sustained winds with gusts to 30!  If your boat is not heading just right, you feel like someone is trying to rock you in your chair, but in a very violent way!  And these winds were predicted to last for the next 5 days!  Oh Joy, oh Joy!  Well, not much we can do, we’re committed, besides, there’ll still be drinking, lots and lots of drinking 

Second of all, and most important, Gary installed a new aerial for the marine ban.  We had a little whimpy whimpy whimpy aerial,  see, I’ve circled it.

Now we have a MANLY aerial.

Circled aerial

See those two aerials slanting back?  Those are for fishing….see that real tall one? The one I circled?  Now that is a MANLY aerial.  We start off with a 8 foot extension and then add a 8 foot regular aerial for a total of 16 feet!  Wowzer!  That will make any man jealous.  We decided to try it out on our way to South Seas.  At first, all we could hear were people taking in Spanish.  Great arerial, I told Gary, we’re picking up Cuba!  Gary was impressed and happy with his installation.

When we arrived at the marina, there were two guys there to help us tie up.  That was good because we were on the side of the dock where the wind was pushing us away from the dock.  We tipped them good ;).  The marinas down here are good for the first mate, you only have to toss them lines and they do all the tieing off.  Keeps me from having to jump off the boat, always a good thing in my book :).

This resort came with all the amenities, pool, beach, plenty of places to walk.  Too bad it was too cold to use them but we were still able to sit in the sun and enjoy each others company.

There we a couple of boats there called Palm Beach Motor Yachts.  http://palmbeachmotoryachts.com/   here is a picture of one

Palm Beach Motor Yacht

We figure it was a 55 foot, a mere 5 feet bigger than the Navigator, and the price…..$2,450,000.00.  Don’t let anyone tell you boating isn’t affordable.

As the weekend progressed more and more of those boats showed up, a total of 8 all together.  Woozer! That’s $19,600,000 worth of boats, all in one marina.  I guess they were having a little get together like we were.  Do you think they tip the dock hands more than we do?

You can see by these flags how windy it was while we were at South Seas

Baton down the hatches

While we were sitting around enjoying the sunshine and sucking down some drinks, the marina had a cherry picker truck come in to take down the resorts Christmas lights that they put up on their palm trees every year.  The owner of this truck did this for a living.  Decorating and un-decorating tall things.  What they did first was they had a guy on the ground that started to unravel the lights from the bottom up, as he unraveled them, he cut them off in 6 foot strips and dropped them on the ground.  Then another guy in the cherry picker started from the top of the palm tree and unwound the lights from the top down and cut them off at 6 foot intervals then let the lights drop to the ground.  There were 4 or 5 other people that were picking up the lights and rolling them into little balls.  I’m not really sure why they bothered to roll them into little balls because they certainly weren’t going to use them again but they seemed to enjoy themselves.  We figured it was cheaper and easier to just buy new lights every year than to take them down, store them and make sure they worked again next Christmas Season.  I guess that is where my dockage money goes  

We did go out to eat at a nice restaurant on Friday night while we were at the resort called Doc Fords.  We took a trolley down to the end of the resort.  There was a little strip mall there and the restaurant.  Doc Fords had pretty swanky meals and drinks.  Gary ordered a brandy Manhattan on the rocks (for those of you that don’t drink, that means brandy with sweet vermouth over ice cubes ).  The drink came in a martini glass with no ice and it tasted funny.  When the waitress came back, Gary told her he wanted it on the rocks, so she took it back and brought it back in a short glass with ice in it.  He also told her he had never had a brandy Manhattan that tasted that way.  Apparently they didn’t have any brandy so they made it with blackberry brandy.  Hmmmm, kind of an interesting flavor and one he won’t repeat anytime soon.  The dinner I ordered was a salmon with sautéed mushrooms and spinach.  I was trying to get a fork full into my mouth when I dropped it.  It didn’t fall on my shirt thank God (cause that is usually where my food falls when I can’t seem to hit my mouth), I couldn’t see where it went so I figured it just fell on the floor and I wasn’t going to pick up that slimy mess so I just forgot about it……till I got back to the boat

Euuuu!

What is that disgusting thing on my shoe!  Looks like a clam with seaweed stuck to it!  Oh….it’s my mushroom.  I guess I’ll have to pick up that slimy mess after all  

When we woke on the final morning, the winds hadn’t died down but it looked like a beautiful day

Pink sky at night, sailors delight, pink sky in the morning, sailors take warning

According to that saying, looks like it is going to be a little rough going home and it was.

Before we left though, we helped our friends on the other dock untie and push off.  They were parked across from those VERY expense boats and the owners of those boats didn’t leave much room between the last boat and the gas dock for our friends to get out.  The owner of the last VERY expense boat was on the back of his boat, trying to look busy.  I know why he was there, he was there to make sure none of the boats leaving hit his.  Been there, done that.  So when we helped our friends leave, we made dang sure they didn’t hit any of those boats.  A small scratch would probably cost several hundred thousand to fix.  Ouch!

After all the people on the other dock were on their way, we shoved off for home.  The wind wasn’t going to get any better so we figured we might as well see what’s out there.  Yup, it was pretty windy and wavy.  We found a couple of our windows had some leaks in them when the water splashed over our bow.  Looks like another project for the Captain.  Oh well, that’s boating for you.  Keeps the Captain busy and out of trouble.