Yes, we are hanging out in Marathon

Last weekend was the Tradewinds Regatta but with the weather as crazy as it is we only had a chance to drive up and see the gang on Saturday.  They had two days of racing as Sunday it was blowing the dogs off the chain and nobody left the beach. Tom & Herb did really well.  There were plenty of "top shelf" sailors in all fleets so those who finished in the upper echelon deserve an "attaboy".

It has been a while since we have seen this.

Right now we are in the middle of the latest of many cold fronts passing through the Keys.  With the jet stream so far south we are getting lows forming in the Gulf of Mexico and barreling across the Florida peninsula at full speed.  It seems we are getting one every third day and it's getting a little old.  At least the latest one came through in the daylight and we could see who was dragging and who was behaving.  We thought we would be up all night last night but for some reason the winds behaved.  Key West had plenty of wind, Long Key Bight had wind but Boot Key (in the middle) didn't have anything over 18kts.  So......we hung around until midnight and then hit the sack.  Thank you wind gods!

This has been the norm lately!

Today the winds have returned to the upper 20's and we are having an occasional squall but again, its during the day.  No going to shore for us but maybe tomorrow we can catch a playoff game.

If we ever get a sunset again I'll post it...........right now its all clouds, wind and rain....just your average vacation weather......Not!

Anybody want to guess where we are?

I'll give it away in a few days.  All is well but it's blowing the dog-off-the-chain!

Toaster supreme!

Happy New Year!

No, we haven't disappeared!  But we also haven't done a whole lot since the holidays......just move further south in order to find warmer weather.  Now that we made it to the Keys, we have now found some of the coolest weather we have had in a long time.  A sub-tropical low is forming over the Bahamas right now and we are just hanging out in front of Gilbert's, down in Blackwater Sound.  Its raining and blowing but all is just fine on Nati.

After Melbourne we moved south on the ICW, first to our favorite anchorage near Vero and then to W. Palm Beach.  We tested a new anchorage there, close to the Mega-yacht marina, Rybovitch Yacht Yard and they sure do have some biggies hanging out there.  We didn't plan on being in the middle of the activity but you can see..........yep, they were that close going into the marina!

M/v Pioneer 

Note the quantine flag as it just crossed the Atlantic

We call this boat "Ben's brothers boats!

Since Christmas we have done a little sailing, put 60 hours on our engines so now they are broken in and had some good times with little or no agenda.  New Years Eve was in Lake Boca, a beautiful night and some of the best fireworks we have ever seen.  It was close, loud and beautiful!

Then you have Miami Beach.........yuck, yuck, and more yuck!  How can one city have so many weird, arrogant, "its all about me" humans in one place?  Our old anchorage is now infested with day charter mega-yachts full of party animals.  They in turn play the worse, loudest and disgusting music (you can't call it music really) you can ever imagine.  I did find out however that there is a direct relationship with the size of a thong......the smaller it is, the worse a woman dances!  So we got out of there in two days.......

Hope everyone is staying warm up north.......we are trying to stay warm also.