Saturday, April 17, 2010

Steve & Alice

Punta Gorda - Ocean Star arrived as I biked backed from IYC.  After a slight mis-manuvering Ocean Star floated snugly at our little dock. With a 6' 3" draft, I had really worried about them running aground in the canal. Since visitors are rare and visitors by water are well - Steve & Alice are our first, we were really excited.  First order of business - a ride to Iles Hardware for boat parts!

Photos

Tween Waters Cruise April 13 - 16

With an East wind and  flat water Eagle's Wings flew down Charlotee Harbor at hull speed momentarily hitting eight knots on our way to Tween Waters, an old time Florida resort on Captiva Island.  Swimming and laying about the pool, walking the beach and riding our foldup bike occupied our days.  We dined at the Bubble Room and at the Green Flash restaurants in Captiva's quaint village. 

Docking turned out to be very easy at Tween Waters on their auxillary dock located a short way away from the main marina.  On Thursday, we moved to the Captiva Yacht Club for one free night of dockage.

We actually sailed most of the way back again sometimes at hull speed in Charlotee Harbor although repeated gusts sometimes overpowered us.

We unloaded our boat at our house and moved the boat over to the Isles Yacht Club so Steve & Alice could park Ocean Star at our dock for a few days.

Tween Waters Photos      Tween Waters     PG Islanders Cruise Report    PG Islanders Pictures

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Crescent Street Boat Yard

Rumble, Rumble, Rumble.  How does one describe the heavy low beat of a big diesel engine idealing just outside your door on an early Saturday morning?  The big crane driver was looking an empty lot from which he was to lift a mast.  No mastless boat was in site and his customer wasn't answering his phone.  After a while Travis from whom we rent stepped out to clue us in.  A friend of his (Travis has a zillon friends.) would use the empty lot between our rental house and Travis's house for the lift.  So the crane setup, the boat arrived and we had us a portable boatyard.  Marie & Joanne watched while eating breakfast on the lanai.  I had a closer look and loaned my boson's chair  when a shroud apparently hung up on the top of the mast.  See photos at

Stepping A Mast on Crescent Street

We had picked up Marie for the Easter weekend when we dropped off Michele at the Tampa airport.  Marie, Joanne & I saw the very well done Living Stations of the Cross at Sacred Heart on Friday night and Father Jerry's performance to a more than full house at mass on Easter Sunday.

Marie bought her first computer a few weeks ago. We have been helping her setup her Favorites and email contacts, struggle with the mouse and basically get launched back into the sometimes confusing web world. She had WEbTV for years but wanted more Internet content than WEbTV could provide.  She just signed up for a computer course!  

To follow the construction of our house here in Punta Gorda click on the Building a House link on the left of the page that transports you to a Picasa web album. You can view a slideshow here and even switch to a full screen view.  The Pisca website and Blogger are all part of the same Google virtual world so it's pretty easy to get pictures on the web and linked to the blog.  And it is easy and FREE!!!

Also, if you click on a slide show in one of the blogs, you will be transported to the linked album in Picasa where you can also see pictures in full screen mode.