OtherGoose: February 12 in Palm City

February 12, 2015

Today is a glorious day! It is bordering on HOT! The sun is shining and it’s definitely time to bring out the sunscreen.

This Marina is fantastic! They usually charge $1.75 / day for transients but they don’t really want to advertise. They are expanding into a monstrous marina with services and sales and new docks and the plans look fabulous. They also don’t want a lot of crappy boats in here, so they are careful about how they advertise. If people pay, they have to be allowed to stay, but if they seem reasonable, responsible... so we are going to be very quiet and clean and unobtrusive.

The place is beautiful, immaculate washrooms and the setting is glorious. We are going to walk up to the downtown area and see what is around. I have a feeling this is the high end area of Stuart Fl.

The staff are very polite and accommodating. Everyone here is from somewhere else! Not surprising!

So all the windows are open and the whole boat is airing out. The inside temp is 22C and it’s supposed to get warmer as the week goes on. I can’t tell you how bad I feel for all of you up there, to the point where I feel really guilty sitting out in the sunshine with a cold drink getting a tan. Okay, not funny, but I do feel guilty!

Everything is so clean down here. We’ve seen very little garbage floating...the odd water bottle probably blown off a boat or shore. I just wish they would recycle. So far no marinas have introduced recycling because the state doesn’t insist. It’s no wonder they can’t meet Kyoto Accord standards. If the fed’s have no power to compel the states to comply... ok, off the soapbox now.

So Rick lost his sunglasses overboard at Canaveral. Unfortunately they were his good prescription ones and he didn’t have a string on them. We only have 42 strings for glasses on board...go figure. So we are going to have to find him a regular pair of sunglasses that work on the glare.

We walked out to the road past the pond If you go to Google maps and enter Palm City Florida, check the satellite image and you will see between SW Ibis an SW Chapman a long building. That is the marina storage. Hans, this would make you want to move here! They stack the boats 3 high in this building and there probably 50 of them. The forklift picks them out of the water and deposits them in their “slip”. There are only 4 docks: for transients and the Sheriff and anyone who is going fishing early, otherwise boats get put in storage every night!

It’s very comforting to have the Sheriff parked beside us! The place is very secure!

We walked to the “downtown strip” this afternoon, about 2.5 miles and discovered that it is not very much of a downtown... more like the strip on top of the West Hill or Memorial Ave. Rick found some sunglasses at the hardware store that will do for now and there were no restaurants. [Ok, a Thai food place and Domino’s Pizza, but you took your life in your hands crossing the 4-lane highway to get to it.] We got to the main corner as they were cleaning up an accident – fire trucks, ambulances and cops. Lots of glass and tow trucks too!

We walked to the bridge and part way over then decided to come back. We sat in the cockpit, had a drink and read in the sun for awhile. I cooked tacos for dinner. Rick ate the rest of the mac-&-cheese from last night.

Tonight we will have another shower, and in the morning talk to Tim about leaving the boat here for a few days while we go to the boat show. If we can’t get there easily from here, we will sail south for another day and see then what happens. Hoping C-Soul catches up soon!

So here are some pics from Around Town!