Fri, March 12, 2010 - Stuart, FL

It rained hard much of the night and we awoke to a steady, but warm, rain. We were waiting for a break in the weather to walk over to the marina office to settle up, but it soon became apparent that it was going be a very long wait. We donned our raingear, took care of our business, and left the slip at 11:30 am to make our way back under the bridges and over to Harborage Yacht Club and Marina where we were planning to rent a slip – not only to be closer to our friends, but to treat ourselves to some luxurious amenities at a reasonable cost.

When we arrived at the Harborage’s fuel dock, we tied up and went in to speak to Ronda, the person in charge of doing the paperwork for new arrivals. Ronda gave us a few different choices for slips on the floating docks that we could check out. Before visiting the floating docks, we found Adventure and knocked on the hull to see if Di was home. She welcomed us in for a nice reunion and a short visit and we soon left with an invitation to come back for dinner tonight. After leaving Diane, we walked to the floating docks (at least 1/3 mile away), decided on a slip and made the trek back to the marina office. We spent about an hour filling out forms and signing contracts, all the while watching out the window where it looked like some nasty weather would be arriving at any moment. Finally finished with the paperwork, we headed for our slip assignment, secured Blue Heron for the night, plugged into shore power and got out of our wet clothes. By then, it was close to 2:30 pm.

While Gale warmed up and took a nap, Maureen puttered around the boat a bit and spent a good deal of time trying to connect to the marina’s WiFi. It turned out she had been given invalid passwords so once that was straightened out, everything seemed to be working fine. Just after 5 pm, we put on our walking shoes and headed over to Adventure. Wouldn’t you know, it started raining again as we stepped on the dock!

Diane had invited a few friends over for a good “old-fashioned” Iowa dinner of meatloaf, escalloped corn, mashed potatoes and fresh asparagus. Kate, Phillip and Tom were already enjoying happy hour when we arrived. Kate and her husband, Bruce, are on a Nordhavn in a nearby slip, Tom is currently on a large sport fishing boat, and Phillip has his Beneteau sailboat at the Sunset Bay marina where we stayed last night. In fact, Phillip was the first to welcome us to Stuart as we were pulling in and securing our lines yesterday.

The dinner was fantastic, the company was delightful and the entertainment was superb! Turns out Phillip is a very accomplished singer who has opened for many famous artists throughout his career, not the least of which included Gordon Lightfoot, The Beach Boys and Muddy Waters. Phillip has written many songs over the years and he shared some of his favorites with us this evening.