First picture a bit blurry, but it shows a part of our community opening the Christmas season last Friday, 1 December as we enjoyed food, libations and camaraderie to officially turn on the lights at the Clubside Villas common area. It’s proving to be a very good location with great people.
Today is a milestone. We are changing our boating style. House closed last month and today title and money changed hands and Apolonia, our boat of 20 years, is now sold. The boat now has a new name, Invictus! I will drive it for the last time tomorrow as I deliver it to its new slip in the Marriott Marina on Hutchison Island, near Stuart, FL.
This Saturday we’ll purchase and drive away our “new to us” Florida run around boat, a 37′ express cruiser. We’ll name it Apolonia … just because.
This Maxum was a good buy. It has two cabins, one with walk around queen bed, a nice saloon, galley and spacious back deck with good electronics and two 330 hp diesel Cummings engines. She’ll be fine for travel around the area and to the Bahamas. It may even make a trip back to Virginia.
Enjoyed a stop-by visit from Diane Burton and Peggy Saylor Saturday the 18th. On their way to Diane’s family in south Florida for Thanksgiving, they stopped by to say hi! Great to visit with them for part of the day. We went to the Pelican Café, a funky little café in Stuart on the St Lucie River. We ate a late lunch after giving them the tour of our new Villa.
A short update. We are in the Condo/Villa in Port St. Lucie, FL but still have some boxes to unpack and a bookcase to paint, but we are getting there at our retired pace. The final work is being done on Apolonia and she should be “sold” on the 27th of this month; there was a delay of new risers due to several issues, but mainly hurricane Irma. We have found a “new to us” boat we want as an Apolonia replacement. We surveyed her last week and are working to close on that boat, a 37′ express cruiser Maxum, by the end of the month. Paget went in for a timing belt replacement but it turned our the old 4 cylinder Volvo passed away. We are having a new 4.3 litter V-6 Volvo-Pinta (Chevy block) put in her and we’re hopeful she will be running soon. All is well here and we should be settled soon with the home and boats all in order. It has been an experience moving to Florida as a hurricane passed through, but we had no damage from the hurricane … just a slow down in activity we wanted to complete. Now most is back on track and we’re still smiling.
We wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!
No pictures, but we are getting close to finalizing our move to Florida. Furniture from Virginia arrived at our new condo (also called a Villa) today … closed last week on the place. We’ve cleaned and painted and Carey is excited about making the Condo our home. And she will. We’ll probably stay at our friend Bonnie Scanlin’s home for a few more days until we’re set then move into our new home. We can’t thank Bonnie enough for giving us use of her condo in PGA Village to help with our move. Our major effort for the next couple of weeks is to get the Villa settled for our living.
Apolonia appears on track for a sale at the end of the month. Carey and I agreed to make a few repairs and sell her for full price. She’ll move to a boatyard mid October for those repairs. The Buyers have become friends and we’re on an adventure to get Apolonia sold to her new owners. We think every thing is in order.
We’re looking seriously at an express cruiser in the mid 30 foot range to replace Apolonia for us to enjoy in our last few years of boating. Paget, our run about is “in the shop” for a timing belt replacement. So for now we are almost boat-less. We’ll survive but just barely … anxious to get Paget underway for a lunch cruise.