We’re still here in west palm beach. Mostly only because we have people to meet and errands to run here. Overall, while this place is loaded with exotic cars, trendy eateries, and is super pedestrian friendly, it’s not actually friendly to boaters unless you’re 100’ long or more. The public dock doesn’t have any water or a pump out and there’s nowhere to get it. The marina up the river has a $50 minimum charge for anything, even to pump out your holding tank. There are also no real trash cans by the dock even with all of the boats around. They just try as hard as they can to be as inhospitable as possible and you can just tell they don’t want you there. Unfortunately it’s the only real convenient public dock so we’re stuck here for a few more days while we finish paperwork to go to the Bahamas and get our last load of groceries.

We had a few very exciting times on the boat so far. Last night we were sleeping peacefully when a huge thud shook the boat and shook us awake. We were certain that another boat had run into us but when we peered out we found nothing but glassy calm water. After a few minutes of very confused searching we noticed a small 4’ square of someone’s floating dock being pulled by the current away from us. So, unlike the usual method of hitting the dock, the dock actually hit us!!

The other night the boat made another random loud noise. Nothing in sight again so we went back to sleep. The next morning we woke up and started to pull the anchor to head to the dock when I realized that the anchor was stuck. We had caught the chain on some sort of crap on the bottom. I tied off the chain and had jason back up. Luckily that freed it and we were able to pull the anchor up. It could have easily turned into a few hour ordeal getting the anchor free. We got lucky and we’re not going to anchor there anymore!

After safely arriving at the dock thanking our lucky starts the rep from the water maker company arrived to commission the water maker for the first time. I only missed a few small things on the installation but he was otherwise very impressed with it. Go me! And now we can make our own fresh water out of salt water! The only downside is that he used the boats freshwater tank to flush the water maker so now we’re down to like 30 gallons and that’s not enough!

Jason and I have been taking the dinghy out fishing a little bit to see if I can get a fish for the cats to eat! Still no luck… but while we were out the reel just jammed up and stopped spinning. So I took it apart. The balancer disks inside the come unglued and jammed it. Pretty easy fix after that.

The cats are also really adapting to the boat  I mostly find them being adorable in different places.

I’ve also been trying to organize the boat a little more and hung this thing in the spare bathroom for all of our hats and a few headlamps! The cats don’t miss the headroom.

I’ve also been trying to do some more art at night while we’re just sitting around. Here’s a pen drawing of my journal!