Making ready for the Bahamas

 Here we are in Stuart Florida backed into slip C38. We had no idea how long we were going to be here and that made it rough on the dock master and his team with regard to scheduling of transient occupancy. Let's face it they want to accommodate everyone they can, but we were clueless. We knew we had work to get done on Freedom, as well as quite a bit of provisioning, but we had no idea how long this would take. What we did know was that the Gulf Stream was a mess and it was not going to lay down anytime soon. So we settled on "about a week".
 With that the first several days here blew by in a whirlwind of maintenance and shopping. The freezer was loaded as well as the refrigerator and pantry. And then it dawned on us that we needed a new laptop, the radar had to go back to Furuno, and several other areas needed substantial amounts of attention.
 After some agitated dialogue with Furuno the radar went back to the West coast for a second pass by the Furuno service team and came back in time given the evict order we originally had from the dock master. As it turned out it required a reworked CPU board because the connector that facilitated communication with the navigation chip card reader had failed during the rework we originally requested, in a couple of ways. We'll leave that item open for discussion in another forum. After getting it back a second time we were very pleased to see that the National service manager had dug in to find out what was going on and get it resolved. So while they may have lost a buck on it, the unit appears to be working now and perhaps everyone is happy.
 But before the radar/plotter was returned to us, I was working on the dink in the water in between Freedom's transom and the dock. I hear all this screaming and yelling up front, Deb comes running aft waving her arms and yelling at me like I should be doing something and it happened. The owner of the restaurant here had his boat resting against our bow pulpit crunching away at the paint and fiberglass. Swell I thought. Well, not really. That certainly isn't what came out of my mouth. The dock hand greeting the man covered her face and pulled her hat down over her face it was that bad. Settling down I went forward and directed him off our bow because he was obviously clueless given the tidal current and wind. Having helped him get off the bow of Freedom I then directed him into his new slip and it went smoothly enough. So we worked out a deal, and to their credit the staff here at the marina ran point for us and made it happen. Freedom had her face fixed and the bow pulpit scars are gone.
 These two prior items took their toll but then the battery issue cropped up again. With a new battery installed for the starboard engine it spins up very well thank you, and the list of concerns is  reduced.   
 That is until we were asked to move to another slip. This is all part of not knowing how long you are going to be staying at a popular marina. If this was a no-name marina we probably would have been good to go for a month but the notion of foul weather slowing everyone up combined with the fact that this is a desirable place to be, made for competition of boat slips. And we moved so we could stay here winding up in C44. Mind you, we moved but the projected new slip owners have yet to arrive. Fast forward we are now in D15 and the new owners for both of the slips we left have yet to arrive. At least we did it in good form without hitting other boats. This in spite of having a mega yacht about 60 or so feet off the bow when we pulled out of C44. A little planning help us get this done easily. All one has to do is review the wind and tide before moving. Just sayin'.
 It's all good because at this point we have a great view in a quiet area of the marina. Works for us. And more work is getting done. Not all of it by me. In fact, the collapsible stair system we have has casters on it that squeak. They squeaked so much a neighboring boat owner snuck up on them and oiled them. Twice. But he was ok with that because he saw how I was coming out of Freedom's bilge on a regular basis and did not have the heart to push the issue.
 After a number of days that combined to reduce my bulk by about 5 pounds we had the good fortune to be invited aboard some friends boat to commiserate and imbibe while watching the Giants win with scant seconds left on the clock.
 Then it was Sunday and the Farmer's Market was active in Old Stuart. It's a small quaint section of Stuart Florida that is on the shore of the St. Lucie River on the East side of the U.S. route 1 bridge to Jensen Beach. It wasn't as large as what we had in Kingston N.Y. but we found some great vegetables and fruit at reasonable prices. White eggplant, peppers, oranges, and various other selections filled up our bags before we left to return to Freedom where Deb went to work on a grilled eggplant, tomato and mozzarella cheese stack for lunch.
 Life is good. Freedom is approaching stability and so are we.