Butler Beach

 Our much needed walk tonight took us to Butler Beach East.  Just minutes south on A1A it was the perfect destination to catch the sunset.


  




We saw only a couple of people in our abbreviated stroll on this pristine beach.  The wind that plagued us all day continues and brings the cold, dry air from the north.

Bad news/good news.  Always bad news first.  Our splash date has been pushed back to Friday.  The electrician came by this morning and gave us possibilities of what are problem could be.  He will be back tomorrow morning with the lift to begin the diagnostics.  If they have the parts in stock - great.  If not, it could be a couple days.  But (good news) the install of the steaming/deck light - no big deal.  And it arrived from Amazon just as the office was closing today.

Paul attempted to extend our stay at our present location.  What had been reasonable, is no longer.  So, we will be moving down the street.  

Today we accomplished:

    1.    I added 3 more blankets/quilts to the bed.  The cold weather shows no sign of warming and since we have no heat on the boat....

    2.    Paul checked and topped off all fluids on the engines.

    3.    Paul switched out the zincs on the sail drives and propellers.  Good thing too since the idiots at Thunderbolt last season did not use the correct length screws (luckily only two were missing/ fell off).  Zincs are the sacrificial metal that protects underwater metal parts from galvanic corrosion by corroding first, saving the more valuable components.

                                           The larger ones on the sail drive (Paul is holding one) 

                                                were able to be scraped clean and reused. 

                                     The smaller ones on the propeller - too corroded to be saved.
 

                                                The old ones are pretty obvious.

    4.     Paul scraped barnacles off the bottom of the boat.  Again, the idiots at Thunderbolt didn't scrape but just painted the bottom.  Idiots.

    5.    Picked up a new ice maker and it works awesome (though we did not need cold drinks today!).

The plan - keep our fingers crossed the fix is fast and our wind instruments are soon working again!

Word of the day - Quiddity.  The essence of a thing.  I believe the above beach photos capture the quiddity of the Florida coast.  


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