Spring is finally arriving and we are in the middle of the 70 degree days followed by frost warning cycles.  Pollen has started arriving so the boat has a lite yellow shade to it.  The pine pollen will give the boat a lime green look shortly.

The big adventure since our last post was my running of the Myrtle Beach Marathon and our becoming Florida citizens.

One of my bucket list items was to run another marathon.  I ran one in 1999 and walked a good portion of it.  This time I will go faster!   I logged over 300 miles in training along with several runs that were longer than a half marathon(13.1 miles).  I don’t think it was enough. I finished in 5:53 which is 25 minutes faster than my first marathon.    We stayed in a very old hotel just off of the beach and actually inside the marathon course.  It was a blessing to see Jan and Scout at the 10 mile mark. The first 13 miles were fun, the next 6 miles were tough and miles 20-25 were awful!!    Next up, Jan is running the Star Wars Dark Side Half Marathon at Disney World in Orlando in April.  She already has her costume for the race.

Because we will be traveling this summer we needed a mail forwarding service.  There is a very good service in Jacksonville Florida.  The next logical step once our mail was transferred was to become Florida residents as that is where we will be spending next winter.  The fact that Florida does not have a state income tax did not hurt.

Projects we have completed recently include,

• a new faucet in the galley sink, saves a lot of water
• new water heater that does not leak!
• finally got the 4th winch mounted on the mast
• replaced a centering disk on the roller furling(this  project started in 2012)
• new hose for the manual bilge pump
• the drain in the cockpit as I ripped the old drain out of the cockpit floor while attaching the new drain hose.    The old drain was not of marine quality!
• Jan made a new cover for the mast when it passes through the cabin, winch covers, covers for 2 hatches and covers for the jars in the pantry so they won’t bump each other when we sail.

Upcoming projects include a new Bimini, a new depth finder and finding all the fuses on board the boat and making sure we have several spare for each fuse.  I’ve found 7 fuses so far and there are another 6 in a fuse block that is very hard to reach.

More to come

Jan, Matt & Scout