TSR031 We Are Back!! After our extended Honeymoon

In this episode, we get back on the air and talk about our extended honeymoon over the last five months.  We have some more adventure sailing news and our featured product is a new marine sealant that will save you money.

Intro Chat

• We are back after getting married and buying a new house.  Life is starting to settle back down so we will be more consistent with the podcast and videos.
• Many people would think that buying a house is the antithesis of the cruiser lifestyle, but it is good to have a home base.
• Love our new home, great to have the boat on the property to work on upgrades and other maintenance.  One exception is the Squirrels, they discovered that the plastic pieces of the boat are tasty.  Had to cover cleats and winches with wire cages to stop the damage.
• Squirrel also built nest in our tow vehicle and Steve had to rescue and relocate the baby squirrel.
• Steve installed our new Standard Horizon VHF GX2200 and Garmin 547xs Chartplotter and integrated them for AIS, it was fairly simple after routing the wires and worked first try! We will talk more about the installation and features in a show soon.
• We served as ground crew as Steve's brother Shawn participated in the 2017 Everglades Challenge adventure race 300 miles from Tampa to Key Largo in small wind and oar powered boats.  Shawn was trying to be the first person to finish the race in a West Write Potter 15.  Unfortunately, high winds pushed him onto the shoals near Cape Haze, FL.   Shawn trailered the boat down to Key Largo and spent a few days sailing Florida Bay.  He made it to the Flamingo check point and back to Key Largo.   Florida Bay has some really shallow water and he sailed through some areas that had less than one foot of depth.  Great use of the shallow draft West Write Potter 15.  Check out the video Shawn produced on his adventure.Our 2017 Sailing & Cruising so far:
• We have cruised on our sailboat eight nights so far in 2017, well below our average.
• We took the boat to the Mount Dora Art Festival - Friday and Saturday, we anchored on Lake Eustis on Friday night, cruised the Dora Canal over to Mount Dora on Saturday, and spent the day buying art under the influence.  It was an expensive day, low cruising cost as we stayed at the town dock for free, but our art purchases added up.  The fish and sheep were worth it!

 

• We also talk about sailing the Cortez bridge, Anna Maria Island, Long boat key area were we  hosted all our boating friends.  We anchored out Thursday-Sun. Thursday/Friday Anchored at Jewfish Key and it was very protected from the strong West winds.  We put out back anchors and had the beautiful Sandbar as our back yard. Saturday we anchored at Cortez bridge. We were harassed by one of the local derelict boaters and had to relocated away from them in the anchorage.  We had a great dinner and drinks at Bridge Tender Inn and the other live music spots.  The anchorage became rolly at 2am as the West wind picked up and we made the call to move back to Jew Fish.   We were rafted up with thre