pictures!!

National Geographic Here He Comes! Ben's photos are amazing!

ICW has it’s own beauty.  If we were on the outside sailing we would not see anything except water, a few birds, cargo ships, fishing vessels and a few small boats and possibly a dolphin or two.  The outside would have been too cold for me to enjoy… or so I think.  29 degrees and wind and wet is very cold – the wind chills were in the 15s, so I’m glad we just been motoring on down the ICW.  I have stooped to using hand warmers and they are worth their gold for my fingers! On my off break I put the warmers in my socks to warm my toes!

Today was a day of “warmer” weather, we woke up at  6am (that’s 5am your time just to let you all know)… it was 33 degrees and too cold to want to get out from under the very warm down sleeping bags for sure! 

I pulled up the anchor this time as I watched the sunrise.  Our first bridge we missed by a few minutes so we had to wait 20 minutes for the next one.  Oh well, we’ve been pretty good so far.  I’m getting the hang of bridges… although some bridge masters are super nice and flexible and some are not. Some will wave to you as you go by and some will not. Some will tell you to hurry along and some will not. Some wish you a nice day and some do not. The majority of bridge masters are nice. I could do that job!  I’d wave as they passed and yell out the window, “Have a nice day! Ya’all come back now ya hear!” no they don’t have the southern accent in Florida. That was my impression of Jed Clampet from Beverly Hillbillies…

(here is an out of sequence comment… right now Ben is making supper! I’ve made breakfast and lunch so it is his turn… although he would rather fast than make supper I know he is making it for me!)

Today we motored past beauty all around us and the most that shown was the birds!! Birds of every kind! So many pelicans of different colors! An eagle, osprey, egret, herons, seagulls, king fisher, just to name a few!  The pelicans are so novel to us… how many pelicans do we have in Minnesota? Ben has great footage of them flying. Today we took out the camera cuz our fingers were not so frozen – finally during the day it got up to 50! Warm enough for taking pictures.

We also saw a rocket being launched!  Exciting, right from cape Canaveral! The space center.  The rocket was called the falcon 9 and it was made by a private company SpaceX.  It was like someone was reflecting a mirror in the sky at first, then we could see more details as it raced passed.  The rocket jets were a big flame following the rocket.  Well  you can google it I’m sure… seeing it from our boat in the water was exciting but doesn’t make for a good blog.

We motored by places that looked like a jungle of trees lining the fairway with herd or murders of birds everywhere!

Now there are the dolphins that I almost touched! Ben got a picture.  Then we switched helmsmen and he got to try and touch one too but the camera had a dead battery so just imagine Ben reaching out to touch a dolphin too!  For a while I went to the bow and waved at them as they chattered and squeaked noises.  They would look up at me and I’d wave and they would do cute tricks like one at a time they would go ahead and jump up in the air… it truly was just like being at the zoo! I squealed too with excitement.  We helped each other be more happy for the day! Not that I was not happy mind you. It was just a day-brightener.

Oh here comes supper: clam chowder and brown bread from a can. I better go…. Chomp chomp chomp! I made oatmeal for breakfast and leftover spaghetti, sausage and cheese on crackers, carrots, grapes, clemintine and whatever else had just a few bits left… we ate.

WE did not go aground today! We had plenty of anchorages to pick from (that makes for a happy Pam! Cuz if you can’t stop at night what do you do? Sometimes your gps is correct and sometimes it is as much as 60 feet off, then you would really run aground!) Ben kept all the red markers to our starboard… I know it is hard to see them when the sun is always shining in ones face!

That’s all I hope you enjoy the pictures! I have !  wait till you see some of the movies with dolphins and bridges!

Blessed are we with the abundance all around us! Humbled….Pam