Valentine eve....and we have a new black Bimini ....Steve thinks that he'll have us finished up on Friday or Monday....I'm thinking Tuesday or Wednesday....but the Captain is getting excited about getting outta here. Not that it is not a delightful place...we are just ready to move on....south!! To warmer weather.

We've spent most of this week looking for items...at Sears, West Marine, hardware store etc! The saga of the coffee carafe continues.... We loaded up the under counter model and took it to Sears with us...tested several and bought a coffee maker just because we thought that carafe would work! Yep, you guessed it...a few minor imperfections that resulted in disaster! In desperation, I began looking at the Black and decker web page...contact us!! And you are not going to believe this.....$8.95 they seem to have thousands!! I spent a lovely hour on the phone with customer representative Patty....because shipping to where was an issue....but I think maybe when we get to Ft Myers we'll have a coffee carafe!! Cause for celebration!

Kelli and crew made it to Florida...and the day we chose to meet at the beach was anything but pleasant! In fact, I'm sure no one who lives in Florida would have said, "Hey, let's go to the beach!" Cloudy, windy....cool to say the least...but Ryne didn't care...and we managed to have great fun for a couple of hours. Then the clouds turned stormy...and we headed back to the boat...yep, we'd left the windows open. Bumper to bumper traffic...very slow going...but we managed to get back before the rain started. Kelli and crew, not so much. By the time they arrived it was pouring. No one really wanted to get that wet....so after Ryne made a brief visit to the TUMBLEWEED...they exited stage left. Later we discovered that Kelli had picked up our rental car key, thinking it was theirs. But...great problem solving ( esp since it was our ONLY key)... She overnight FedEx' d it....we had it before 11 the next morning!! And, you know I try to not go anywhere before 11!!!!

We had several conversations with Susan and Carolyn...visited their new boat, Dakota encounters, they've been to the TUMBLEWEED...we had a delightful meal with them at the marina restaurant (FISH TALES). We are going to play musical cars with them tomorrow, as they need to move their boat into the Bay Area for some repairs...and it is kinda difficult to tug that car along behind you. So we'll help.

We are hoping to get with the Neer's again...they've moved over to the Pass-aGrill area...so we'll see how that works. But we are counting on being outta here by this time next week.