SolMates Christmas

As Christmas is approaching, the first of December we find ourselves tucked into a great marina in Marathon, Bonefish Marina.  The slips here are owned and we were able to be connected to Michelle who hooked us up with a slip and a great place for us to provision, prepare for our Bahamas crossing, and leave Journey for Christmas.  Dee practiced flying the drone and got these great shots of the Marina.  Of course, my favorite part of the marina were the daily Pelican visitors.  Coco Plum Drive and the Pelicans will be something I will miss.  Pelicans are such interesting birds.  Check the one checking us out!  The other visitors at the marina are the manatees.  These two found us one night.  Yes, you are not suppose to give them water but what do you do when they come out of the water after it.  Such gentle giants.

Dan and Karen, Friends from Port of the Islands were taking a trip through the Florida Keys and we could not wait to catch up with them.  We joined them in Islamorada for some Happy Hour at Zane Grey and Islamorada Brewing.  The next night they anchored at Coco Plum and joined us for dinner on Journey before heading off to Key West. Safe Travels friends.

​After installing our new Lithium Batteries, were still felt something was off on the boat, so while in Marathon we had SALT (Sea Air Land Technology) have a look at our solar panels.  Diagnosis our panels were taking on moisture.  So we made the big decision to replace four 110 watts panels for two 370 watts panels.  This should give us not only more solar production but better technology onboard Journey.  To save some money Dee got started taking the old ones off so we did not have to pay for that labor, and we got to give her a good top cleaning before the installation began.  Stu was busy on top of Journey getting the panels installed and wired.  Jamie was below installing our new solar controller from Victron  We are ready to go!

Time to fly home for Christmas and catch up with Family and Friends.  We will not discuss the flight home or back as both were challenging but we survived.  Bill and Angie our friends from the Summer Cruising Video opened their home and invited some friends over for a little Christmas party so we could catch up and have some fun with everyone before Christmas.

Next stop Kinston to see our girls, so we filled up a rental car and headed east to our daughters Hannah’s home for Christmas.  First up We enjoyed building gingerbread houses and drinking wine, matching PJs for the week, Jesus Birthday Cake - but we couldn’t wait until Christmas Day to have Jesses’ famous pound cake.  Christmas meal brought Dee’s grandmothers sweet potato pudding to the table, And my grandmother’s  apple cake and cookies.  Oh how I remember those cookies on the back porch as a child just waiting for me to grab one.

Dee brought the drone and now it was time to fly it.   He got some great shots of Hannah and Aldo’s home and  the surrounding Kinston area.  Before heading home we caught up with our friends Eddie and Joan from February Crusing video.  It was great to get to spend some time with them before we headed back to Journey.  Finally, Back in the Keys and headed to Key West to bring in 2020!