Sad day

Pierre and I have some good friends, David Dykes and his wife Rosemary, they have a 70ft schooner "Nina". They asked us to sail with them a few years ago, but I told Pierre, if they can do it we can too, so we told them no. They set sail a few years ago with their son. I heard they were in New Zealand not to long ago and they were going to sail to Austrailia. They have been lost at sea now for three weeks, I am hoping they will be found. They ran into a bad storm and they have not been heard from since. Every cruisers nightmare.
We are still here in Carrabelle, get things ready for the crossing, we had about 12 things on the board and now we down to 7. Sweet!

Partay

John at the grill

This is John @ the BBQ pit cooking the chicken, we borrowed this from James, he works here at C-Quarters. The party was fun for all, at first the fishermen that hang here stayed at the other end of the dock, but as Keith sang his songs, they wandered over to us. By the end of the night they were singing and hanging out.

Sleeping Inn

We have been so lazy...I slept in till 9am the other morning, we are in fresh water here in Carrabelle so I have not been as worried.

  We are still working on the boat... getting the list smaller and smaller. We walked to the store yesterday and then we went to the "The Fisherman Wife" restaurant for lunch, as we were eating the rain started...and it was a deluge, the lady that works there, her husband works here at the marina, George..she told me she would drive use back, but the rain had let up and we headed back to the boat. When we got back..the cockpit was a awash. So today we took up the teak deck and we found a bunch of rust spots, they were bad! This was not on the list....we fiberglassed them and tomorrow we are going to paint them and replace the teak deck. 

John..he is a couple of boats down from us, invited us to go to dinner with him. He has a car..sweet...he is from Kentucky. He and his wife have a Hans Christian, Cristina, they only made 14 of these boats, they are not double Enders, that was a change for them. But anyway..he took us to a really sweet restaurant, over the bridge.

 Tomorrow we have the BBQ going on the dock and John bought 5lbs of chicken and he is marinating them as we speak..will let you know how it goes!!

What fun!!

We are having a blast here at C-Quarters Marina, our neighbors here are the coolest, they have a 1981 36ft Hunter, and have come all the way from Port Isabelle, Tx. He has a Kareoke Machine on board..yes they do..did i spell that right? Well.. He sings..love it..so we have talked to Kim, and we are going to have a sing-a-long here Saturday night. Ok..Tip jar..Keith...we went to the Doc today and Pierre has some sort of weird sport injury on his knee..yes a sport injury..go figure.. We are going to treat it with Methylpredniolone tablets...Codi is that right? We have to go back tomorrow, and we have to walk there..hmmm..he has a knee problems...but ok...they are going to show us on the x-ray they took today...hey Codi...Tillys are still alive..there was a huge 75ft houseboat that came in yesterday, they are on the way to Tampa to get that houseboat on a ship for a trip to Russia..4 guys...they had NO idea what they were doing...we hope they make it...they had no plan..no live raft..no dingy..and they were drinking!! Sweet..I so love this life...We slept in till 8:30 this morning..I told Pierre, I may never return to land life. When you stop the clock..life just gets sweeter!!

Carrabelle History

Carrabelle's  first post office was founded in 1878. This new federal facility served the fifty families living around the mouth of the Crooked River.
  Lumbering and the timber harvesting industry soon came to be the mainstay of this struggling but optimistic settlement. Vast quantities of logs and loads of turpentine were floated down the river and dispatched aboard sailing vessels, which anchored in the secure coves of Dog Island, hence the name Shipping Cove. The captains of these vessels also left their crew on the Island. Most of their crew were men that had been shanghaied, so they did not want them to run away!
  A severe hurricane in 1898 destroyed much of the town. The lumbering business fell off and the local economy was depressed for a time as the residents strove to rebuild their community a bit farther upstream. The new version of Carrabelle rose on the shores of St James Island, sandwiched between the Crooked and New rivers. The town continues to occupy this site today.
  During WWII, Carrabelle experienced a short lived boom. Camp Gordon Johnston was established five miles out of town and new recruits trained for amphibious landings on the shores of Dog Island.
  Following the war, Carrabelle lapsed more and more into the role of an isolated but charming fishing village. Shrimp, crab and freshwater fish are harvested for sale locally and they are shipped out. Grouper, snapper and other deep water fish are fished offshore. There is also a lot of commercial, charter and recreation fishing.
 This weekend they hosted the Big Bend Saltwater Classic Fishing Tournament.  So we walked down yesterday to see the weighins, they caught some really big fish...today they auctioned them off. It was cool. See ya on the water!

Squirrels in the trees

Pierre and I walked about five miles today, looking for the local doctor, but no luck, we did see a white squirrel in a tree and I got some pictures. I need a better camera! But after we got back to marina, I talked to Kim, she is the local expert here, she told me there is a story about the white squirrels. There was a lady here and she and her son raised white squirrels and sold them as pets, when her son died, she had about 30 of them and she just let them go. Kim has three of them in her back yard. She did help us find the local doctor and loaned us her car to get there, but they do not have a doctor till Monday, so we will go back then...

Hello Carrabelle

After bobbing on the hook for a day in Shipping Cove off Dog Island, we got up yesterday and decided to check out Carrabelle, after fighting the davit that holds the engine, and getting the engine started..we have to fix that...we headed out..the channel here in the river is well marked and very deep. We passed several marinas, one of them had a wonderful porch where there were people sitting in rocking chairs, drinking beer, we waved and motored on. Before you reached the bridge, there is a marina called The Moorings at Carrabelle, we docked the dingy and went inside to talk to the girl in the ships store, we asked her if we could leave the dingy there while we had some lunch, she said no..they where to busy..Hello..we where the only ones there.
So when we got back to the dingy and moved on..I told Pierre, lets go the marina that had the porch...super great place, it is  called C-Quarters Marina. This is large and friendly marina, they have lots of transient dockage and they let us leave our dingy there to go and have lunch. The Fisherman Wife is good restaurant.
 We talked to Kim..who runs this marina..and she told us we could come in and dock and do our repairs, so off we went, back to the boat in the dingy. What a rough ride back, but when we got back, we motored to over to Dog Island and checked it out...neat Island.
This morning we motored up the river to C-Quarters and docked up. After talking to Kim she told us about a marina store downtown and the man ..Jerry..who runs it. So we walked to his shop and he told us he would have our part the next day..cool..we found a museum not to far...it tells the history of Carrabelle so we stopped in, the lady that runs it is very nice and we had a wonderful time talking with her, there is a nice ice cream shop downtowm too so stopped there and had a scoop of cotton candy ice cream...yum...
Back to the boat..we walked to the grocery store to get the stuff I needed for a great dinner...thank you Budget Bites..and we were we stopped by Jerry...he had stopped by the marina to find us and was told where we were are by our neighbors...they are fellow Texans...they are from Port Isabelle Texas...Pierre always says this about... me....you can always tell a Texan..but you can't tell them anything..He not get the part...but he will do everything in his power to find something that will

work...I love this town already...