Preparing for the run up the east coast

April 22

Taking a break in Fort Lauderdale and catching up on some maintenance on WB. Last week Debbie noticed something was amiss with the refrigerator door. The sealing gasket and the magnet that runs through it was hanging down.

Found a Sub Zero retailer/installer in FL at the end of last week. They showed up with the gaskets at 9 this morning. The gasket on the freezer door was fine but since it is 23 years old I figured I oughta replace it as well while the part is still available. All I had to do was cowboy up $400. Ugh.

Our neighbor, a 60 foot Ocean Alexander that is just beautiful.

Next to Whisky Business

I think the GG stands for Gerald Gibson!

Look at these pretty maidens all in a row…and all of these boats are in the 100 ft+ range. Heck, WB could be their dinghy! I did not notice this until much later. See the little yellow boat on the left side of the photo? That is a fuel barge and it carries 40,000 gallons of diesel fuel. More later on the fuel barge.

Not the original nor does it have the character of the original Soggy Dollar on Jost Van Dyke. Will check out the US version of the BVI’s best painkiller.

View at lunch…

We took WB out for a spin yesterday to get a pump out and refuel. A pump out is a special piece of suction equipment at a marina that cleans out the holding tank. The holding tank holds, yeah you guessed right. Not the most pleasant of jobs on a boat. Other end of this hose is inserted into a deck fitting and VIOLA, empty tank.

After that we headed for Peterson’s fuel barge. Pretty ingenious actually, a boat that holds 40,000 gallons of diesel fuel that plies the waterways. They can drive that thing right up to your boat in a marina.

Captain Jerry (the other one) was the driver of the fuel barge. Great guy, he’s done the Great Loop twice.

We took on 277 gallons at $3.11 per. We had topped off the tanks at Burnt Store before leaving for the Keys.

And speaking of expenses, it occured to me that since we have owned the boat we have done no maintenance to our dinghy engine other than changing the oil and lower unit fluid. The following photo is of a new impeller that I purchased for the Mercury outboard motor. This impeller is what sucks cooling water up into the motor. Damn thing is not much bigger than a quarter, but…

25 DAMN DOLLARS! It’s a boat…

Took on 100 gallons of water. We filter the water that goes into the 200 gallon.

We add a few ounces of this stuff to keep the water fresh.

We dropped Half Pint (our dinghy) and took it for a spin. This area is full of mega yachts but here is one of the most interesting boats we have yet seen. We actually saw one of these last year at the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show.

Literally a floating condo! Wish I had pictures of the interior, very spacious and open layout.

Fort Lauderdale is a really cool town with a great beach and restaurants. Heading out tomorrow at first light for a long run up to Melbourne, Florida.