July 2019
We are settled into our slip at Palafox Yacht Harbor in
downtown Pensacola. We plan to be here
all month and look forward to spending time with friends, also here.
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| Baylen Slips at Palafox Harbor, Pensacola FL |
We enjoy fireworks on July 3rd from a nearby
stadium while eating dinner on Unwinding
in the slip next door. Fireworks are
planned for the 4th on Pensacola Beach, on the barrier island some
distance away. We opt to not take the
boat there due to expected crowds; ditto for driving there.
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| Independence Day Fireworks, Pensacola FL |
Downtown Pensacola is very walkable with a good selection of
shops and restaurants very close to our boat slip. With
Joe Patti’s seafood market also nearby, we are getting our fill of Royal Red
shrimp, a local delicacy new to us. These
large shrimp with a sweet flavor are the best ever - yum!
We’ve enjoyed riding our bikes around the downtown area,
viewing numerous restored buildings in the historic district. Imagine our surprise when we get up one
morning to find both bikes gone! Stolen! We are on a dock with a locked gate and
thought nothing of leaving our bikes unlocked.
Obviously our bad. And this seems
like such a quiet, safe area! We are
amazed when we get immediate assistance from neighborhood office buildings, who
are happy to share their security camera footage and assist with filing a
police report. Three days later, my bike
is found at a local pawn shop; $30 later and it is back on board. We are not so fortunate in recovering
Robert’s bike, at least so far. I must
say the Pensacola Police have been (and continue to be) very helpful and
continue to search the homeless communities in search of the bike, where they
expect it has found a new home. We are
astounded to learn that almost 90% of stolen bikes are eventually recovered
when the owner can provide the serial number!
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| Carolyn's folding bike, a Downtube Nova |
Robert’s niece, Alexandra (Alex), and her husband, Alexander
(yes, really), live near Birmingham, about 4 hours away) and have accepted our
invitation to visit while we are in Pensacola. We are thrilled they are coming and looking
forward to a chance to get to know Alexander better, our first chance to spend
time with him since their marriage almost 3 years ago.
We plan a busy weekend, checking out area restaurants,
serving fresh Royal Reds from Joe Patti’s, and making a quick trip to the
National Naval Aviation Museum. We visited
this museum last year with Paul & Allison, but didn’t see nearly
everything. So we were happy to go again
and to snap another family photo at the entrance.
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| Alexander, Alex, Carolyn, Robert at National Naval Aviation Museum, Pensacola |
We recently learned that Alex & Alexander are expecting
in December (their 1st). En
route to Pensacola, they asked if they could do their “gender reveal” on
board Sauvy B. Since we don’t have kids, we don’t have a
clue what they are talking about! A
quick visit to Mr. Google and we are on board (pun intended) and looking
forward to participating in whatever they have planned. Since Alexander loves to fish, they decide to
“reel in” a lure, appropriately pink or blue, as part of the ceremony. We pick a suitably calm afternoon and cast
off for a bay cruise. After some early
technology challenges linking family and friends via Facetime, they manage to
coordinate the fishing reel cast and retrieve with a balloon burst and … it’s
a BOY!
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| Alexander & Alex - It's a Boy! |
Our time in Pensacola goes quickly. Our friends on Unwinding have left to cruise the inland rivers during
hurricane season. All Talk II plans to leave soon, following Unwinding north to escape the hurricane zone. We must go back to Gulf Shores for our
appointment at Saunders Yachtworks.
Steve & Susie on All Talk II
have graciously offered to help us move our car to Saunders, so we make the
trek on Sunday, 7/28, stopping for Sunday brunch at the Wharf in Orange Beach
on the way back to Pensacola. We will miss our
friends but hope to see them again this winter, either back in Pensacola or
somewhere in Florida or the Bahamas.
None of us have definite cruising plans – still plenty of time to plan.
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
We are leaving for Gulf Shores today as we have been asked
to get to Saunders a few days early.
After an easy 34 miles, we pull into our slip for a couple of nights. Plans are to spend tomorrow reviewing work to
be done and have a minor adjustment to our generator.
August 2019
August 1 and we are on schedule, being hauled out of the
water and put on blocks for the paint work.
This boat yard works on huge yachts; we are dwarfed by their lift.
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| Haulout at Saunders Yachtworks, Gulf Shores AL |
We move to a rental cottage while the boat is in the
yard. We expect the work to take at
least 3 weeks and have reserved a place for the month, just in case there are
delays (as there always are). We had to
change our reservation about 6 weeks ago when the place we had rented was
sold. So our selection of affordable
places to stay, this being high season, landed us in Point Clear.
We are in a lovely area, close to the trendy
towns of Fairhope, Daphne and Magnolia Springs and a mile from the bay-front Grand Hotel Marriott Golf Resort, but a tedious 45-minute drive
to Saunders. And, of course, Robert will
be making the drive every day to “supervise”.
I’m sure the boat yard is thrilled!
But our cottage in the woods is quiet, private and roomy. We are ½ block from Mobile Bay and next to a
hike & bike trail that runs for miles; should work fine. We enjoy our woodland views and a land dwelling after 3 years on the water.
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| Point Clear rental cottage |
Meanwhile work progresses to prepare the boat for painting
the hull. She has developed numerous
cracks on the areas with dark green paint and those need to be repaired before
new paint can be applied. The old layers
of paint and primer must be stripped off first.
Work is underway, but taking longer than planned, so we are already
running behind schedule.
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| Work underway at Saunders Yachtworks |
In discussions with the yard personnel, we learn the dark
paint is the likely cause of the cracks.
The dark color gets much hotter than the white superstructure in our
southern sun. The bad news is that the
cracks will recur if we paint dark green again.
Bummer! We love the color and get
many compliments on it. We hadn’t
planned to change the color, but now we must seriously consider doing so.
After days of collecting paint samples and
looking at boat colors in area marinas and boat yards with no consensus in sight, we
opt to get a decorator involved.
Saunders uses Karen for yacht interiors (we are NOT a yacht) and she is
available to stop by for a consult (read “marriage counselor” – ha!). So after reviewing our options, we settle on
a light gray. It will coordinate well
with the off-white of the superstructure and will be a safe choice when we get
ready to sell her and transition to our next boat in a few years. Stay tuned for more photos …
To complicate matters, I managed to twist my ankle in mid-August, necessitating a trip to an emergency clinic for x-rays. A diagnosis of 2 fractured bones results in 4
weeks in a boot. Yuk! I am seeing an area orthopedic doctor and
hope to have this behind me soon.
Meanwhile, Robert is having to be my chauffeur as my right foot is
incapacitated. He’s REALLY NOT a
shopper so an added aggravation for both of us.
On a lighter note, you know you’re in Cajun country when the
local Home Depot carries Crawfish Tables!
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| Crawfish Table, Home Depot, Foley AL |
Sunday, September 1, 2019
Here we are in a different rental for a few more weeks. Saunders hopes to be finished in two weeks,
but they were less than positive with the estimate, so we are booked here for 3. At least we found a place much
closer to the boat yard. And we have a
nice view of the adjacent golf course from our patio.
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| Gulf Shores condo view |
Monday, September 2, 2019
We are closely following the track of Hurricane Dorian as it
wreaks havoc on the Abacos and Grand Bahama.
We are planning to cruise the Bahamas in 2020. Our house has just
leased again for a year, so we are free to head that way. Yea!
However, our preliminary plan was to arrive in Freeport, Grand Bahama
sometime in January to visit friends, Frank & Sherrie, who retired
there. Then we would move on to the
Abacos for a couple of months, staying in protected harbors until the cold
fronts become less frequent before moving south to more exposed areas. Now that plan is totally off.
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
We have just learned that our friend who stayed with his
house in Freeport is safe and their house, cat and boats are okay! At this time, it appears damage to the Abacos, especially
the Marsh Harbour area where most cruisers go, is too extensive and it will not
be possible to visit there at all in 2020.
So it is back to the drawing board.
Lots of weather and route issues to consider in planning a months-long cruise through
the 700+ islands scattered over 100,000 square miles of ocean that make up the
Bahamas. And peak hurricane season is
just getting started with additional storm damage possible!
We will stay near Gulf Shores / Orange Beach until
the end of October, where we are a days’ run to good hurricane “holes” if we
have to flee a storm. By November we
should have a plan and can head east again.
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