Best-laid plans gang agley

We are anchored in the Charles River, on the Cambridge side just downriver of the historic Longfellow Bridge (map). As of this writing this will be our northernmost terminus for the season, and whence we will depart for points south, whenever Hurricane Erin lets us out. For the time being we are hunkered down here to wait out the inevitable churn in the North Atlantic. It's been over three weeks since I posted here, and I am taking advantage of a rainy day here to catch up. (It's now past 10 pm and I started typing this morning.)

Vector in the Charles River, as seen from Cambridge. Longfellow Bridge at right.

Picking up where I left off, we had a decent cruise in good visibility back to the Weymouth Fore River, where we had to hold short for a departing cargo ship right in front of our old friend the Wessagusset Yacht Club. At Shipyard Point we turned up the Town River for a very short distance to the Bay Pointe Marina, part of MarineMax Boston, where we tied to a face dock (map) after a brief wait while the marina moved a boat out of our spot. We were tied up not a moment too soon, with another brutally hot day having us running all the air conditioners as soon as we were plugged in.

Our marina, just left of center near the tank farm, from my plane window.

The on-site Bay Pointe Waterfront Restaurant is dark Mondays, and so at dinner time we had a very slow walk, in as much shade as we could find, to nearby Bravo Pizzeria for decent pizza and a couple of drafts. It was still pushing 90° when we finished, and we had an equally slow walk back to the boat.

Tonopah, NV, where we've been both by motorcycle and motorhome. I do miss this kind of landscape occasionally.

Tuesday morning before the mercury climbed into the danger zone I offloaded the e-bike and rode up the hill to the Walgreens, where Louise had a script waiting. I retreated to the air conditioning as soon as I returned, and got packed for our early Wednesday departure for our week-long trip to California, the reason for our marina stay in the first place. I did have to step outside in the afternoon to meet with the insurance adjuster for the boat that hit us back in Hampton. On another brutally hot evening we walked to the on-site joint for dinner, which turned out to have a decent but enormous prime rib on the menu, which we split.

We had the boat all buttoned up, with surveillance cameras and the electrical system set for an extended absence, before bedtime. Uber picked us up on the dot of 5:30 Wednesday morning for our 7:30 flight out of Logan. The climb-out took us right over the marina and we got a last look at Vector before winging our way west. Alaska Airlines fed us a nice breakfast, and we were at the gate in San Francisco by 11:30. It's a long slog from there to the car rental, but Thrifty upgraded us to a nice Buick Encore from the Hertz fleet.

Lick Observatory, where we once spent a wonderful night with the 36" refractor.

The purpose and timing of this trip was threefold. Firstly, to attend our niece Jennifer's combined 30th birthday and engagement party. Hers is the wedding I will be officiating next June, so the engagement party was, in my mind, a requisite. Louise's mom also had a birthday coming up, and Louise arranged to meet up with her brother, who traveled from Canada for the occasion, to help celebrate. And, finally, we have a couple dozen friends in the area from our two decades of living there, and we made arrangements to connect with as many as possible.

San Francisco is the capital of gender egalitarianism. This couch is in the men's room at SFO.

I won't bore you with a week's worth of details here, but, to borrow an expression, two out of three ain't bad. Two things conspired to completely derail much of the trip. Louise's mom is dealing with some medical issues that arose shortly before we arrived. It's not my place to detail those here, but suffice it to say that Louise and her brother spent much of the visit assisting with that. I suppose you could say the timing was fortuitous from that standpoint.

An indulgence I allow myself only in hotels.

I spent the first couple of days driving around the old neighborhoods to see what has changed. Long-time readers may remember that when we visited these old haunts in our bus, Odyssey, we spent a lot of time parked on various city streets. With few exceptions we were alone in this endeavor, always looking over our shoulders for the constabulary to ask us to move along, and religiously observing the 72-hour limit. On this visit I was floored by the sheer number of people living in their rigs on city streets, a testament to the stratospheric cost of housing in the Bay Area. A number of our old haunts now sport restrictive signage, but the unrestricted streets are chock-a-block with rigs.

On Saturday we checked out of our Mountain View hotel, drove up to Daly City, and checked in to a hotel there, which was absolutely the closest place I could get to San Francisco using points. I would learn later that the reason was that the Deadheads had taken over the city for a giant 60th anniversary concert in Golden Gate Park. Hotels, and parking, were scarce. After checking in we drove up to the city, had a quick visit with Jennifer and her fiancé Evan in their new apartment, and then drove over to the Marina District for the party.

A few hundred feet from where we used to park "stealthily."

The party ran for three hours and we stayed for nearly the entire time. I had made it a goal to meet and chat with as many of their friends as I could, and I mostly succeeded, even in a noisy venue. The next morning I woke up with a bit of a sore throat, which I attributed to talking for nearly three hours straight. We had breakfast, checked out, and drove back to SF, where we picked up our other niece, Lauren, from the train station before a quiet lunch at Jennifer's apartment. I expressed some concerns about my sore throat, and was therefore keeping a respectful distance from everyone, but Jennifer told me she also had one from all the talking she had done.

One of our former spots, now off-limits. I'm not sure what the algorithm is.

After lunch we dropped Lauren off at the airport for her flight back home to LA on our way to San Jose, where we checked in to our third hotel of the trip. In the evening we had dinner with Louise's mom and her partner, along with her brother, before heading back to the hotel. My throat did not improve overnight, and by the morning I was pretty sure I was coming down with something, which I hoped was just routine travel crud. Nevertheless, after breakfast I dropped Louise off at her mom's place, where I also picked up her brother to give him a ride to the airport, just a stone's throw from our hotel. As a precaution, we both masked up.

A different neighborhood, near the Googleplex.

As soon as I got back to the hotel room I broke out a COVID-19 test, and of course it came up positive. I called Louise to let her know, so she could take immediate precautions with her mom, and then spent the rest of the day scrambling to cancel plans and change travel arrangements. Step one was to call the marina back in Quincy and add another week to our two-week reservation (the weekly rate is a lot better). I was relieved to learn the dock was available for the extension.

Crap.

With our return flight rapidly approaching on Wednesday morning, I had to put a stake in the sand and push it out a week, which cost a couple hundred in additional fare, notwithstanding fully changeable tickets. And I had to find lodging for the additional days. We were already committed for Tuesday night, with a nonrefundable reservation at a hotel up by SFO.

Jennifer and Evan's apartment looks out over the Golden Gate. You can see the bridge at left.

The rental car was also due back Tuesday. Louise was able to borrow her mom's car for the duration, and after saying a socially-distanced goodbye she quickly came back to meet me at the hotel. Dinner consisted of a take-out sandwich in the hotel room, picked up alongside some cold meds. Monday evening was supposed to be our big dinner with a large group of friends we'd hoped to see, but naturally that had to be waved off.

Looking towards the bay and Alcatraz.

Tuesday we asked the hotel for a late checkout, and early in the afternoon I took the rental car back to SFO and dropped it off without having any person-to-person interaction. Louise picked me up a few minutes later at the Kiss-and-Fly (really, that's what they call it) and we drove to the hotel that was supposed to be just for a few hours pre-flight. Of course, our plan had always been to return the car on the way to that hotel, so I had not bothered to find one with free parking, just an airport shuttle. Parking the car overnight was another $21.

Before checking into the hotel we drove to urgent care. Louise needed meds -- she only brought enough of her scripts for the planned week and a one-day buffer for flight issues, and only a doctor could fix that. And I wanted to see if I could get a course of Paxlovid. The clinic fixed us both up, and after we checked in to the hotel I ordered take-out from Chico's Pizza in dowtown South San Francisco. It was pre-paid so I spent only 30 seconds masked in the store to pick it up. For reasons unclear to me, they would not deliver to the hotel.

What constitutes happiness during quarantine.

With absolutely nothing we could do except quarantine in a hotel room and get dinner delivered, I scoured the entire bay area for decent rates at an acceptable place, and I ended up booking a few nights in my old stomping grounds of Fremont. No free breakfast, which really we could not partake in good conscience anyway, but they had room service, which was a lifesaver. Wednesday morning, after our originally scheduled flight had departed, we checked out of our airport hotel and drove to Fremont, by way of the pharmacy where my Paxlovid and Louise's meds were waiting.

San Jose, capital of Silicon Valley, and more than half the USB power ports in our room looked like this.

My jaw dropped when the pharmacy told me my co-payment for the Paxlovid would be $1,400. The pharmacist helpfully told me there was an online discount available and handed me the form. We checked into our hotel and I drove back to the pharmacy with the discount code provided by Pfizer, which reduced the co-payment all the way to zero. For the life of me, I will never understand the US pharmaceutical industry.

Kincaids on the bay, where I enjoyed many a meal when my office was across the street.

By this time, I was already on the rebound, but Louise, who of course also contracted it, was just entering the worst of it. We had a couple of miserable nights in the hotel, but then we both felt fine and were just stir-crazy. We were able to walk around the neighborhood and go for drives, but otherwise just stayed cooped up in the room.

I was already well past stir-crazy when Louise finally felt well enough to be bored. I had been throwing darts at the calendar to make hotel and travel arrangements, but she was the one, once she was up and about, to figure the quarantine recommendations down to the minute and determine, late Saturday morning, that we were clear to fly on Sunday. I was able to switch our seats to the Sunday flight, at yet again another fare increase.

I snapped this looking NW from the bay trail. SFO is at right, and the fog is starting to spill over the hills of SSF.

We had booked this hotel through Sunday morning, so it was also a mad scramble to check out a day early without penalty, booking another airport hotel with a shuttle for the night. We drove directly back to her mom's place, dropped off the car, and Ubered to the hotel in Burlingame, which fortunately also served a light dinner at their bar. I had a long walk around the neighborhood, passing a building where I worked in the mid-90s.

We got on the 4:30am shuttle for our 7:20 flight, and spent the free time in the Alaska lounge, where we had a nice breakfast. We masked for the whole flight, apart from when we were actually eating or drinking, and we were back at Vector just ahead of dinnertime. We walked over to the Bay Pointe Restaurant, with its expansive outdoor patio, for another dose of prime rib.

No waffles, but the Alaska lounge had this "pancake printer." I did not partake.

Monday morning our original two-week reservation was up. There was no way we were going to make it out of the marina Monday, but we contemplated asking to change our one-week extension down to just one day, for a Tuesday departure. In the end, we decided to stick with the one-week extension, largely because we needed another couple of days to recover from both the trip and the COVID, and our original plan had an extra four days at the marina to run errands and the like, and we still needed to do that stuff.

Quincy City Hall, built in 1844 and still in use, the longest continuously serving city hall in the US.

One of those planned activities was to rent a car and drive out to New Hampshire to see my cousins. When I tested positive I had waved that off, but now we could just move it back a week. We rented the car mid-day Friday, drove up to spend the evening with them, and drove back Saturday after breakfast. It was a great visit, but we missed seeing our nephew (really my first cousin once removed), who had driven out from New York the week before, when we were originally scheduled to visit.

The stacks have mostly been moved to a newer, adjacent building, but the old library is still open.

The extra time in Quincy also gave me a few days to wrap up and clean up projects. I remediated rust stains on both sides of the boat, and touched up a few bare spots with paint. We turned the boat around Tuesday after I did the rust stains on the starboard side so we could offload the scooters for the rest of our stay (we had come in starboard-side-to for the insurance adjuster, but the scooters load on the port side).

The scooters, in addition to running errands, let us get a bit further afield for dinner, and in the course of our stay we enjoyed Evviva Trattoria in Kilroy Square ("Kilroy was here" is said to have originated from an inspector at the Fore River Shipyard named James Kilroy, and the reference can be found all over town), True North in Hingham, just over the Fore River Lift Bridge from the marina, and Drifters across from the Hancock Adams Common. We also made it back to Bravo one more time, before we landed the scooters.

Sarcophagus of President John Adams. Three other sarcophagi in the crypt, which is deeded property of the Adams family, contain the remains of President John Quincy Adams and first ladies Abigail and Louisa Catherine Adams.

I found some time to walk the historic downtown, including the aforementioned commons, and visit the Church of the Presidents, which just happens to be UU, where John Adams and John Quincy Adams  were members and later interred, along with their wives. Quincy, which by the way is pronounced kwin-zee and not kwin-see, is celebrating its 400th anniversary this year, and much of that history is connected to this church, where John Hancock — not of signature fame, but his father — was pastor.

I strolled through the August Moon festival, for which part of downtown was closed off, and one evening in town we stumbled upon a free music festival in the Commons featuring none other than Tavares, who people of our age cohort might remember from some of their hits like Heaven Must be Missing an Angel and It Only Takes a Minute. Several of the Tavares brothers are still alive and the music sounded great.

Best shot I could get of Tavares without going through the dance floor. Lots of happy people.

Monday was our new check-out day, but as luck would have it, our mail was delayed en-route, and what was supposed to be a morning delivery morphed into afternoon. We lingered at the dock as long as we could, then shoved off and headed over to the fuel dock for a pump-out. The UPS truck rolled up just as we were getting ready to cast off, saving us from having to drop a lunch hook and come back in the tender. We cast off and headed directly back to Boston Harbor, where we dropped the hook in our usual spot (map).

The August Moon festival, which stretched as far down the road as I could see.

Our local friends Chris and Erin, meanwhile, had a little California trip of their own, but Chris was back in time to receive the FlopStopper we had shipped to their address. He left it in the lobby for us, and Monday evening we landed ashore, had a nice dinner at the Sail Loft, and picked up the package on our way back to the tender. We spent about 20 minutes assembling it and deploying it off a midships cleat to see if it would help at all with this sometimes miserable harbor.

Main entrance to Quincy Shipyard. Yes, that's a real, though small, tug.

By morning the verdict was in: even just hanging from the cleat, the FlopStopper helped quite a bit. In the morning we transferred it to the davit crane, to see if moving it further out would be better. Chris was available for lunch, and we headed right back to the Sail Loft with him. After we returned home we spent some time fiddling with getting the contraption back on board and stowed on the boat deck before we could deck the tender.

Our new FlopStopper hanging from our crane.

Our plan had been to move here to the river yesterday afternoon, but by the time we finally got both the FlopStopper and the tender stowed, we missed the window to make it to the Craigie drawbridge before their 3:15 lockdown. We reversed all the steps, re-deploying both the tender and the FlopStopper for another night in the harbor, where having it out on the crane helped quite a bit. I did manage to jam the hoist line in the sheave in the process, necessitating some crane surgery. We tendered over to East Boston for dinner at Democracy Brewing, which has been open just a month and is still getting in the groove. We remembered the space from when it had been Mavericks Tavern.

FlopStopper submerged under the crane arrangement. The guy lines on the crane are to keep it from swinging fore and aft.

Today it has been raining most of the day. This morning we got everything ready to go, but we needed to wait until 1pm to weigh anchor so we could squeeze under the Bill Russel Charles River Bridge, which we need to do at 1/3 tide or lower. We left the FlopStopper, and thus the tender, in the water until the last minute.

USS Salem museum ship, permanently moored at Quincy Shipyard. I did not go aboard.

Getting here from the harbor is something of a gantlet of obstacles. After squeezing under the bridge we immediately had to enter the Gridley Lock. They put us in chamber 1, which is just 23' wide, giving me just 3' on either side to maneuver. We learned only at the last instant that there are floats on either side of the chamber, so we had to lower the fenders to the waterline.

German midget submarine Seehund, located with the Salem as part of the same museum.

Once out of the lock it is a tight turn to starboard to clear the Bunker Hill Memorial (I-93) bridge and then call "Tower A" to open the MBTA rail bridge. Between the lock and the bridge, while station-keeping for the rail bridge, we heard the unmistakable sound of the thruster drive leg failing, and that is the end of our thruster now until we can get a replacement leg and a haul-out. I will have to make the return trip without it.

One of the projects I tackled in Quincy was to try to clean these stains off our relatively new fender. Nothing worked, and I broke one of the soap dispensers on our sink in the process, thus creating another project.

After the rail bridge comes the Craigie drawbridge, part of the old dam upon which sits the Boston Museum of Science. The bridge marks the entrance to a 550' long canal, just 45' wide, that was the old lock, and I had to make a radio call to ensure no oncoming vessels would enter the canal before we could make it through. We had the hook down here by 2pm, an hour after we started, in light rain.

Last night's sunset in Boston Harbor.

We ruminated about going ashore in the rain, but there is a dock just a hundred yards off our stern, and we decided we could make a standing tender ride and a five-minute walk to the Locke Bar, which was quite good. By the time we got back home the only things wet, really, were our shoes.

Dinner at the Locke Bar.

We'll be hunkered down right here until Erin (the storm, not our friend) has passed, the weekend is over, and low tide on the harbor side falls between the 9:30 am and 3:15 pm lockdowns for the bridges. I'm looking forward to exploring a little bit of Cambridge and more of this side of Boston.

Sanford to Stanford and back

Happy New Year, everyone, from the crew of Vector, still nestled in the municipal marina in Sanford, Florida. We are at the six-week mark in this spot, an unusually long stay for us, and we are beginning to feel restless; it won't be long before we drop lines to head back downriver, perhaps early next week, although we have not yet set an actual date.

The tree and walk-through gingerbread house at the Fairmont Hotel, with Louise in her festive Santa hat.

When last I posted here I was seated on an airplane headed for California, where we spent a full week catching up with friends and family. I picked up some kind of crud on the flight back (not COVID -- I've tested five times in the past week with negative results) and have been mostly out of commission since Christmas, getting almost nothing done around the boat. Some of my list will still need to be tackled before we can drop lines.

The view from one of our five different hotels, overlooking a mini-golf course I played decades ago, somehow still hanging on in the insane Silicon Valley real estate market. The hotel's property was a landscaping materials business back then.

We arrived to San Francisco Airport late enough that we headed directly to an airport hotel for the night, returning in the morning to collect our pre-paid rental car. That did not go to plan, as the car the consolidator had booked turned out to be electric. Normally that would be fine with me, but we had a planned round-trip to Monterey, and no guarantee we could charge it while we were there. After some back and forth at the counter, I ended up paying another 2x what I had already paid to upgrade to the cheapest gas car they had. This turned out to be a high-zoot Nissan Rogue which could basically drive itself on the freeway, a first for us.

This electric car hangs in one of the newer buildings on the Stanford campus.

We had left plenty of extra time in case things went sideways at the rental counter, as they did, and with a couple of hours before our first appointment, we took a trip down memory lane. Instead of the freeway, we cruised the whole way from the airport down El Camino Real, ending up with a drive around the Stanford University campus, where I worked for several years. A lot has changed since we left the area two decades ago. We also took a quick tour through the old Varian campus, where Louise worked, some of which is now home to electric-vehicle maker Rivian.

One of my old haunts, Castro Street in Mountain View, has been closed to vehicles. Fall comes to this part of California in December.

The rest of the week was a whirlwind of visits. Many of our motorcycling colleagues were kind enough to switch their regular Tuesday evening dinner meetup to Wednesday to accommodate us, and our good friends Kevin and Angela graciously hosted the whole affair at their beautiful home. We're sorry to have missed the few folks who could not make it, but we had a great time catching up with those who did.

Evan summons our Waymo self-driving ride.

In addition to our round trip to Monterey and gallivanting all over the peninsula and south bay, we spent an afternoon and evening in San Francisco, where our niece now lives in a shared apartment. We enjoyed visiting one of her favorite neighborhood bars with her boyfriend Evan and taking in the view from the roof of her building before heading across town to North Beach for dinner at Acquolina. That involved our first-ever ride in a fully self-driving car; unlike our freeway-driving Rogue, which complains if you take your hands off the wheel, this car had an empty driver's seat.

My view from the back seat of the Waymo. We needed two of them to transport all six of us.

A huge storm, which had not been in the forecast when we departed Florida, hit while we were away. We're very grateful to our good friends here who checked our lines, set out more fenders, and taped up our flybridge hatch just before the storm hit, at great personal cost. Vector came through unscathed, as did the boats of our friends nearby.

The view from our niece's roof. Golden Gate Bridge is at left, Sausalito center. The Nob Hill neighborhood is to the right.

We returned to Florida absolutely exhausted, but we were able to enjoy a lovely Christmas Eve dinner at the home of Liz and Gary along with their adult children, mutual friends Dave and Stacey, and recent acquaintance Imelda. Dave fixed a nice ham along with all the trimmings for Christmas dinner aboard Stinkpot, and we generally had a peaceful and relaxing holiday all the way around. We were very fortunate to have good friends nearby for the holidays.

Cocktails at Harper & Rye, San Francisco.

I think we've hit all the other restaurants in Sanford since returning, including La Famiglia Italiana (don't bother), Christo's (hearty Mediterranean-American fare with draft beer), and Sanford Brewing (house brewed drafts and a limited casual menu). We also hit local bar Tuffy's on the evening we rented a golf cart nearby to tour all the holiday lights in the historic district. I got driver duty and somehow missed getting any photos.

We found the holiday tree and decorations right where we left them in downtown Sanford.

Dave performed at The Sullivan pub for New Years Eve, so of course that's where we were to ring in the new year, after a casual dinner at Buster's. Our marina neighbors were thus spared the mighty Kahlenbergs, which I otherwise test each year as the clock strikes midnight.

Falcon Heavy launch as seen from our deck. The photo does not do it justice; for comparison that is the nearly full moon at lower left. A Falcon-9 launched just a few hours later.

No end-of-year post would be complete without a by-the-numbers look at the past year. 2023 saw us cover no new cruising ground, came in as our shortest-mileage year ever at 3,130 nautical miles in 524 engine hours, the fewest states transited (9) apart from our very first year, and our longest-ever stay in one singe place -- the 5.5 months we spent at the shipyard in Mamaroneck, NY -- in two full decades of nomadic life.

On the flip-flop

We are under way southbound across Tampa Bay, bound for an anchorage near where we stopped on the northbound leg, after wrapping up our month-long stay in the St Petersburg-Clearwater area. It's been a great stay and a great visit, but we once again have a schedule, wherein we need to be in Long Island Sound by May 1st to have the boat painted.

Gratuitous selfie in front of Cinderella's Castle, decked out for the 50th anniversary of Disney World.

Last year we lingered here a bit too long, mostly on account of medical appointments, and we ended up having a mad scramble to make LIS in a month and a half, and this year we wanted the journey to be a bit more relaxed. We're early enough now that we can go around the Keys rather than through the lake if we so choose; that decision will depend on what the Gulf of Mexico forecast is like next week.

Vector at the yacht club docks, as seen from a condo across Beach Drive. Photo: Diane Fowler.

Shortly after my last post we tendered ashore to head up to Clearwater for one final dinner with Karen and Ben, and to make arrangements to return their car after they left for their cruise. The original plan had been for them to meet us in St. Pete, but their time got short, and instead we took an Uber up to where we had left the Mini and drove over to their house for take-out.

Extra towels on the bed.

After our tearful goodbyes we drove back down to St. Pete where we promptly discovered that the overnight parking option I had carefully researched ahead of time was a no-go. Despite the description on the official city parking web site saying the lot was "open 24 hours," signs in the lot itself forbid overnight parking and claim any vehicle in the lot at 4am will be towed. We had to regroup and ended up parking at the Sundial Garage, only slightly more expensive and two blocks further away.

We took the launch from our hotel to Disney Springs for dinner.

Monday morning we weighed anchor and headed to the yacht club docks (map). After getting the boat secured and everything squared away, we headed back to the garage, rolling suitcase in tow, and headed off to Disney. Other than checking in with the gatehouse at the entrance to the resort, we went all the way to our room without interacting with any staff, our room number and access code having been sent to us en route.

This letter from Tiana on the table in our room is actually just part of the tabletop graphic. I kept wanting to move it while I was using the table.

The room was over-the-top Princess Tiana, and the resort itself, the Port Orleans Riverside, was just OK. In hindsight we should have either saved half again the rate and stayed in the lowest-end property, which ironically now has better access to the parks, or else bit the bullet and spent over twice as much to be at the highest-end property. Live and learn; heretofore we have only ever stayed at the campground.

This montage of princesses adorned one of our walls. No surprise that we had to call maintenance because our shower drain was clogged with princess hair.

I won't bore you with the full Disney report, but rather just hit the new and different aspects, starting with the Star Wars attractions at Hollywood Studios. While they did the usual good job on set decorating, overall it did not live up to the extensive hype. The Millennium Falcon ride attraction, a motion simulator, suffered from trying too hard to look and feel interactive; the button-pushing tasks detracted from the ability to actually enjoy the sim, and I would simply ignore the flashing buttons altogether if I did it again.

A relentless sun beats down upon the outpost of Batuu and the Millennium Falcon. 

The Rise of the Resistance attraction required an extra fee, or else a two-hour line that Louise simply can not do, so we skipped it. The only character appearances on our visit were a wookie and someone I assume was supposed to be Rey. We burned up our early Lightning Lane selection on Star Wars, which aced us out of the Tower of Terror ride altogether -- a bad trade. Star Tours, with a new program, remains the best Star Wars ride in the park, ironically not located in the Star Wars area.

Entering the Millennium Falcon I am struck by the code-compliant illuminated Exit signs that I do not recall from the original trilogy. Also, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the supposedly otherworldly utility cables are secured to the wall with conduit clamps from Lowes.

Lightning Lanes are what used to be the Fast Pass lanes. But while Fast Pass was no extra charge, access to Lightning Lanes requires an upcharge that varies by day. We paid an extra $18 apiece each day for the access. It was more effective for us in the Magic Kingdom than it was at Hollywood Studios.

Nautical flags strung over a fake ship in a fake lagoon. It says "d7o8c2k5s6i2d8e9d6i3n5e4r," which is "Dockside Diner" if you ignore the numbers.

We sampled all the transportation options from buses to monorails to boats, including the latest, a high-speed gondola system called the Skyliner. That was underused and thus uncrowded; we always got a ten-seat cabin to ourselves, and it will whisk you to a couple of the resorts including the lowest-end options. We did not break any new ground in the dining department, and were thankful we could just swipe our wristbands at all the snack venues and not be exposed to just how much a pretzel or ice cream bar costs in the parks.

We scored a nice bench in the shade to take in the parade at Magic Kingdom, and so this is the best shot you get of the first float - I was not moving.

It was a whirlwind trip, and on this sort of fast pace we were exhausted at the end of two days in the parks. We left Thursday morning for the drive back to St. Pete, bearing in mind that we had crammed this in ahead of a scheduled dentist appointment at 8:30 Friday morning. It was also a surgical strike, bookended by firm commitments that precluded a leisurely pace or any side trips, such as a two-hour round trip up to Sanford, where several friends are hanging out for the season. Fortunately we'll come closer to them as we transit up the east coast.

Just as we finished anchoring off Spa Beach, Kristina was walking by on the pier and snapped this photo (yes, we are that close to the pier). Louise is in the process of putting the sun cover up on the forward windows. Photo: Kristina Thyrre

We arrived back in St. Pete in time to vacate the docks by checkout time, as planned, and we also just caught Joshua from Poseidon Diving wrapping up cleaning our hull and inspecting the running gear. After careful consideration, however, we opted to extend a day, mostly so that I could just walk to the car at zero-dark-thirty for the drive out to the dentist in Pinellas Park, rather than first having to tender ashore. That also made for a very easy walk to our scheduled dinner right there at the club with local friends Kristina and Atle. 

One morning while I was still asleep Louise turned a space heater on with the generator running, and all the outlets in the boat went out. Apparently some idiot managed to get this spade terminal installed with the spade inserted between the plastic and the terminal, instead of seated in the terminal. It worked this way for 7 years. I like how the plastic melted through in the exact shape of the lug. I bypassed this system until I had a cup of coffee.

Friday after I returned from my dental appointment we moved the boat back to the anchorage off Spa Beach (map). In the evening we tendered ashore to meet Martin and Steph for a nice dinner at Bella Brava. Afterward we joined them for an evening concert at the Mahaffey Theater, where they had some extra tickets.  After the show they took our car home and stashed it in their driveway to save us on downtown parking.

Vector off Spa Beach, breakwater astern, as seen from across Beach Drive. Photo: Diane Fowler

Wind and rain trapped us on the boat for the next two days, postponing dinner plans with local friends Diane and JP. The downtime gave me the chance to get a few projects done, including wiring up a loud bell to our AIS to serve as a Man Overboard alarm that will wake the off-watch, and replacing the main engine thermostats. We were quite comfortable in our anchorage, it was just too rough and wet to want to tender ashore.

The same winds that pinned us on the boat exacted a toll in town as well.

Sunday evening things had calmed enough for us to get ashore and use up the rest of our gift certificate at Birch & Vine, and Monday we finally connected with JP and Diane at Sea Salt. Yesterday we retrieved the car, did some last-minute provisioning, and then drove up to Dunedin to connect with good friends Erin and Chris, who have been working their way around the Great Loop and have been inching ever closer to us. Despite the chaos that is dining out on Valentine's Day, we had a very nice meal together at Casa Tina and spent a couple of hours catching up.

I replaced the main engine thermostats, and Louise tested the take-outs. Alas, the old ones tested fine, and the new ones did not solve our domestic hot water problem.

The trip to Dunedin presented the perfect timing to drop the car back off at Karen and Ben's place in Clearwater, where we also watered the plants before catching an Uber back home. We are very grateful to have had use of the car for the entire month. With that taken care of, we could easily have left this morning, but we wanted to have one last Wednesday Lunch with the gang and we lingered until then.

As we were decking the tender in preparation for departure this afternoon, our friend Alex snapped this photo as he was walking by on the pier. Photo: Alex Ertz

Update: We are anchored just north of the Cortez Bridge, east of the channel (map), not far from where we anchored on the northbound leg. Lunch at the club was our big meal for the day and we had our usual lunch items at dinner time, right after we dropped the hook around 6pm. In the morning we will weigh anchor and continue south.