The phrase is supposed to be “Sunday in the Park with George.” It’s not Sunday. It’s not the park but rather Boca Lake. However, there has to be a George on one of the boats out here. And Karin & Sandy & Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.  Maybe upwards of a hundred boats. We have little girl outings, birthday parties and good heavens the Goodyear blimp. Gorgeous weather. Swim call for one and all.

What it is not is the Bahamas. By now we should have checked in somewhere over there. But here we sit thanks to a corroded collar on our starboard engine exhaust manifold. Serious business requiring a replacement manifold which, so far, hasn’t appeared in the supply chain anywhere. So we sit in Boca Lake (which is sorta a lake) for at least a bit while we gather our thoughts and figure out alternatives.

It’s all part of the great adventure called life. That’s what we say when the crisis of the moment has passed and we are left picking up the pieces and figuring out what to do next. Haven’t given up on the Bahamas.

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No rain, no snow, no gloom of long winter nights make us beyond antsy. Florida’s winter has been particularly cold – but only for Florida. Compared to up north we are sitting pretty. It’s just that are so ready to be moving. And yet we sit and wait.

No new generator. That’s why we are still here. Allegedly it is has arrived from Europe and is being bench tested by the import distributor today so we get it mid week next week. We’ll see.

In the meantime, the urge to move is bubbling over. Frustrating in that we can only travel in a nostalgic world, hence the image of us hanging with a windjammer from last summer, and a dream world. Lacking any ability move this puppy, I got so itchy this morning that I started looking on line at RV’s.

We could keep it simple and think about what we will do in the Bahamas when we finally get there. Simple is no fun. Our plans for the Bahamas are set and ready. The Bahamas’ National Family Island Regatta is still on the agenda. Rethinking current plans doesn’t get us off the dock today or tomorrow so we agitate ourselves and dream. Gotta go places. Gotta see things.

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Our Sunday morning patrol produced few birds but we did come upon a family of raccoons clamming and fishing. Certainly they were clamming as we could see them working their feet in the sand and getting something. Dee was able to get a raccoon with a fish. Another good day along the Mangroves.

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We are out early in the Mangrove back water of Vero Beach on patrol for birds. The birds are on patrol for fish. Life is good for everybody but the fishes.

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Ah, it’s great to finally, finally be back underway. Back out with pellies and gulls. Pellies chase watermen tending pots. Gulls chase us, looking for fish churned up in our wake. They have a regular patrol pattern starting well aft of the boat above the horizon swooping low over the water then up and across the stern quite close. The gulls can then stall a second looking for fish before they fly away from the boat and dive back to us. All this happens in a couple seconds so we get back in practice with cameras by tracking them hoping for decent images.

We feel a little strange heading south when the ooze of cruising boats has already started north – strange but not the least bit guilty. The boats headed north haven’t had much of an exotic tropical winter. Neither have we but we intend to make up for lost time if ever so briefly.

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