Sunset Bay Marina, Stuart

We are on a mooring ball in Stuart!  Great marina with wonderful facilities.  Good wi-fi, a marina lounge, a restaurant and a shuttle service with quick access to businesses in Stuart.  We've been able to move to their great Courtesy Dock each morning to deal with the sails and canvas.  There are loads of group activities like meet-and-greets, potluck dinners and pub-crawls.  We haven't taken part in many of the activities - too much to do on the boat.  We will join the Thanksgiving celebration, considering what a big deal Thanksgiving is in the US.

There seems to be a crowd of regulars - people who use their boats as Florida condominiums for much or all of their time.  It is very comfortable and if you just wanted a Florida winter there are places like this in Vero Beach, Miami and up the west coast in Sarasota and Bradenton.

We had our first visitor - cousin Duane was in Florida on vacation and was in the neighbourhood so he came for the evening and left the next morning.

Cousin Duane's Florida vacation

We are expecting Al and Maria Cohen - great friends from Abbotsford - later in the week.  We are hoping that we can cross to the Bahamas with them.

The new sails were installed on Monday - and they look great!!  We haven't had a chance to try them out yet.  We'll do that with Maria and Al.

New sails and sail cover going on.

Last year we picked up school books gathered by the South Seas Cruisers Association for the Georgetown elementary school.  They have been delivering books to Out Island schools for years.  This year our books are destined for Farmers Cay.  We had a good time at their school fair last year.

Books for Farmers Cay All Ages School

We had the new canvas installed - looks just like the old but newer!

No canvas

Santa working on the dodger

We've got shade!

Solar panels back on - Yay!

Sid from Quest gave us a lift to Total Wines - good thing he had a pickup!  We've managed to hide away lots of beer and wine in the various lockers.  Blue Pearl is floating a little lower today.

We are finally in retirement mode - the chores are mostly done and we are enjoying idle time reading, planning, chatting and visiting.  We listened to Cruiseheimers (nyuck, nyuck) this morning and heard from many familiar voices in Florida and favorite places in the Bahamas.  The weather has been great - sunny, hot days and we seek out shade and cool breezes.  Quite a contrast to Vancouver.  We've been hearing from friends and family that it has been unusually cold.

So, we will enjoy Thanksgiving with the crowd - the marina supplies the turkey and ham, we bring the side dishes.  Al and Maria will be here Friday and we will do our final provisioning and chores.  Then we move to the Lake Worth inlet so we can race out into the Stream when the weather allows.