A hiatus from the water ...

We took a hiatus from the water around June, putting Alizee in "summer storage" (the opposite of what folks do up north).  It's just too hot for us to sail, the winds are usually not much more than an occasional zephyr, and when it is windy it's because of afternoon thunder and lightning storms.  So we spent the summer biking, swimming at home, etc.

We took a trip to Porto, Portugal for ten days, and had a great time there sampling wines, exploring the city and its environs.  We planned the trip to tag on to the last couple of days of the annual history of technology meeting that James used to attend regularly, which meant we got to see some old friends and participate in the traditional jazz night that comes at the end of the conference.



Meantime, James's has been playing as always with his jazz quintet, All That Jazz, every Sunday night at Cassariano Italian Eatery in Venice, about 45 minutes north of Punta Gorda. 

But, our hiatus from the water ended with four days on the boat over Thanksgiving, joined by Penelope's sister Patricia.  We just stayed in Charlotte Harbor (it really is a large bay, the second largest in Florida), sailing up to Gilchrist Park in Punta Gorda for the first night, and then back to Pelican Bay near the entrance to Charlotte Harbor from the Gulf of Mexico.  We spent two days there, visited Cabbage Key the day after Thanksgiving (a big mistake because of the crowds of boaters that Friday), and sailed home to Burnt Store on Saturday (managing to go aground twice, proving we've not been sailing enough lately).  We also tried out our replacement dinghy, a less expensive Walker Bay replacing the expensive Walker Bay Genesis.  It worked fine.

Of course, once Alizee was out of summer storage, that meant we found deferred maintenance to do, so I direct readers of this to Alizee's maintenance log for December 2016.