Coleen and I headed over to Twin Dolphin Marina on Friday afternoon even though the weather was very threatening. It only takes an hour to motor there and I needed to travel on my lunch break. Thankfully the storm held off until shortly after we arrived.
We went across the street to spend the afternoon in the library. Coleen had a wonderful time as they had an entire shelf of her favorite Junie B. Jones books. I enjoyed working at a nice table in the air conditioning :-)
After work we took a long walk to the Italian place we'd found a couple of weeks earlier. We both had our heads in books as we enjoyed dinner. After walking back to the marina, we gathered up our laundry and went to the pool. Coleen enjoyed the company of lots of children and I finally managed to drag her out of there at 10 p.m.
On Saturday I actually dug out the cable cord and let her watch cartoons while I gave the boat a good cleaning inside and out. Then we headed back to the pool with even more laundry. Once again there were lots of children and I met lots of people too. There was a group of trawler friends called Turtles. They get together every couple of weeks and travel to a marina, have a cookout/party - and travel back home. They were very friendly and even invited me to join in one of their trivia games.
A big wind/storm blew through about 3:30 p.m. and we decided to head for the showers and get cleaned up for the slip renters party. It was at Mattisons, the marina restaurant/bar. We got a coupon for a free drink, a raffle ticket and they had delicious gourmet pizzas, too It put my own pizza to shame. Best of all we met a lot of very nice people and soon were having offers for a grocery store run - or even just to borrow a car whenever we'd like.
We stayed for a couple of hours and then headed back to our dock. Coleen wanted to meet a family on a huge catamaran that reportedly had 4 children. Just as we got down there they were pulling out. She was so disappointed and then a nice gentlemen on a trawler offered to let her meet his puppies. Steve and Karen invited us aboard Christmas and we had a wonderful time visiting with them and another couple who had traveled extensively. They had great stories to tell about the Bahamas. Their boat was absolutely lovely and so spacious. Steve makes beautiful jewelry from things he finds on the beach - amazing pieces. Karen is a retired kindergarten teacher and she showed Coleen how to make necklaces with tiny glass bottles and gave her a special book too.
We spent Sunday morning relaxing at the pool, took a long walk to a 7-eleven for bread and milk, stopping for breakfast along the way. Just as we were heading into the diner we heard calls "Mary, Coleen" and there were a couple of our new friends in their car offering us a ride.
By the time we got back another little storm was brewing so we decided to head over to the library and wait it out, plus Coleen was dying to read another book before we left - and you've got to like a library that has Cruising World! I caught up on several back issues.
We ended up leaving the dock around 3:30. Coleen did a great job handling the bow lines and we managed to get out of there very nicely even though it was a bit windy. I untied the starboard lines and put just a loop around the port bow line giving the end to Coleen. She held it tight while I slowly pulled on the port aft line that was wrapped around a piling. She'd let out just a bit as I pulled and then once I got my line off and had the engine in reverse, she dropped it and pulled quickly on the other end to retrieve the rest of the line. That girl is a good first mate! People watching were quite amazed.
We had a lovely but slow sail back to our anchorage at Desoto Point. I was just glad to be sailing although the wind was on the nose and I had to tack about a hundred times and it took 2 1/2 hours. Still it was fun to have the sails up.