Around Town and Around Here

First, let me tell you a story of trial, error and more trial but a happy ending.  When we came back from Key West last Thursday, we thought we had until the morning before a front was to blow through.  All things go kablooey at 1 am and this was no exception.  The wind blew strong and straight out of the north which made a real problem for us in that it blew the water out of our anchorage and blew us onto the mud.  We scrambled up immediately and tried to drive the boat back into deeper water, no go.  Then came the untried by us method of kedging off.  This involved a lot of tricky boat/anchor handling to make it work. David went in the dingy up forward while I set the boat on autopilot for going forward into the wind.  Then we had to raise anchor quickly then carefully lower it back down into the dingy along with about 100 feet of chain.  Then while David took the anchor and chain to a spot in deeper water I had to run back to the helm to try and keep us from turning sideways to the wind and driving ourselves deeper onto the hard.  Next came dropping the anchor and chain then getting back aboard so I could drive forward while he winched the boat up to the anchor.  YEAH, it worked for us the first time then the hunt for a new spot started.  Three more times we tried to set anchor only to pull it up for being too close to other boats or shallows when the rode was fully extended in the gale.  Finally after about an hour of trial and error we found a temporary spot for the next few days.  We knew that when the wind shifted we'd be too close to a rocky shore but it was good enough for the time being.  A few days later  we moved to our third location that seemed to suit us but it made our dingy ride much longer.  We were ok with the spot until last night when 3 boats came in with questionable anchoring skills and equipment.  A spot is only as good as the boats around you.  You do not want someone to drag down on you due to poorly set ground tackle so we moved again.  Hopefully this will be our last spot unless we get a mooring ball but that is still highly unlikely but one can always hope.

Sunrise in the anchorage.  We had to be up early in order to get to church on time.

Lots and lots of boats everywhere.

Sign for restrooms where we had breakfast.  

This name reminds us of David's sisters.  Bear is Mary's nickname and Libby's given name is Elizabeth.

This boat, about 30 feet long is home to a young family of 5.
Nice folks out on an adventure.

This boat was not able to get off the hard the night of the "big blow".  They were fully
broadside on the flats.  Good to see them afloat.

One views of the shore side of our harbor.

Not sure what this is but it has FL registration numbers.  Looks like a workshop
but we never see at the vessel.

Our newest neighbor.  She has a crew and we suspect she's available for hire.

This sign is for our daughter Angela who raises chickens and for all philosophers.
This was one of many funny signs at the same place as the restroom sign.