I love Alexander Fleming for the discovery of penicillin, blue cheese is my favourite cheese, but mould on a boat is not so good!

I love Alexander Fleming for the discovery of penicillin, blue cheese is my favourite cheese, but mould on a boat is not so good!

We have been happily back two days now, and wow did we ever come back to a lot of work. In Little Current when we winterised DevOcean we would tuck her in for a cold winter, then when spring came shake off the snow, thaw her out, fill the cupboards and move back in.  Coming back to DevOcean in Florida was just not the same, we had never summerised a boat in a warm climate so we were extra diligent, we cleaned her, removed most food stuff, bagged clothes and linens and buttoned up hatches. 

We have been pretty lucky that DevOcean has always been a fairly dry boat, right now “dry” wouldn’t be a way I would describe her.  Somehow, we are not sure how, our port and starboard  windows cracked in exactly the same spot,along with the cracks the seals around the windows broke also. Maybe a good jolt, what do you think? Other than having a big job to replace the windows nothing has been completely ruined but their has been a lot of elbow grease. Thankfully the cabins are dry, but the salon didn’t escape unscathed.  The bilge was full of lets call it guck, cushions wet, lockers dark and damp, dampness and salt air corroded anything that it could. Thank goodness we caught everything so quick. I love Madame Curry for the discovery of penicillin, blue cheese is my favourite cheese but mould on a boat is not so good!

Road Trip

The push has been on for the past two days to get to Jacksonville Florida, and our floating home DevOcean. We had to be in Ontario for 153 to stay legal with OHIP, so on day 154 Marc and I looked like a bad Ikea commercial, “Start the car, start the car.” The drive, though cloudy has been pleasant other than my captains constant spelling corrections, while I completed crosswords and to my dismay his correctness. Last year the trip from Manitoulin Ontario to Mobile Alabama took us about two months, we enjoyed sight seeing, visiting locals, and exploring.  This trip down took us about 36 hours. I missed wandering around and would have loved to have spent some time as we drove through Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, but the pull of the boat and sunshine won out. 

Caveat: I cheated and copied this picture as my Captain better known as the pee break Nazi would not stop for pictures. 

After checking boarder regulations we found out that the meat we canned may have been prohibited from entering the states, so we strategically packed it in our weighted down beast of a car and had  countless conversations on the merits of telling the truth to the boarder guard when declaring versus little white omissions, Marc of course demanded I tell the truth. When we did get to the guard the poor guy never even asked what we had with us, but was extremely concerned that we may stay in the US past six months. No chance of that when grand baby Olive lives in Northern Ontario. Whew, we now have beef for the Bahamas.