We were gone for about an hour. We just went into the St. Lucie River and looked at houses, boats, marinas, etc. It was a little choppy, but a very comfortable ride.
Last Thursday our Captain came and went over some systems in the engine room with us, showed us how to clean strainers on the air conditioners, helped us stow the steps we were using for boarding and helped us hook up our new ladder. Then we went out. Matt took us out of the slip and into the river. I drove some. It was fun -- I think I will like driving. I practiced with the gears, throttle, thrusters, etc. I even kept the boat in place while Jeff and Matt put down the anchor and brought it back up. We have a very good 80 lb. plow anchor and lots of heavy chain. Jeff was very impressed and said we couldn't drag anchor with that much weight -- famous last words.
We then decided to practice some more docking. Well, the wind was gusting up to 23 mph. It was awful. Matt did a very good job docking several times. It was very difficult because of the wind and because we weren't really tying up so had no help with lines. He was trying to keep it centered in the slip while the wind had other things in mind.
We have progressed enough that we are going to start taking Monkey Business out by ourselves. If it is not too windy tomorrow we are going out for a few hours. Next week we may go on a little trip and stay some place for a night or two. We need all the practice we can get.
These postings may be boring until we really start traveling, but stick with us. We hope to leave here by the end of December. We are going to have some varnish work done starting Monday, so if it is finished we may leave a little earlier. Our plans are to travel to the west coast of Florida. We'll keep you posted.
We want to wish each of you a wonderful Thanksgiving. We all have so much to be thankful for!
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