Catching Up

This  is such a busy year, that the blog is being neglected. So here is a quick attempt to catch up.
We did make it back to Dataw, SC, where we kept our boat for the third summer. And, we returned once again in October to take Wind Dancer back to her winter home in Key West. This time we had a little twist to the cruising. We decided to buy an house in Dataw, so we put in a bid, but not in the usual way. We chose to write a contract on a house one hour before leaving on an overnight to Florida.  As we were motoring down the Morgan River, headed to open sea, we received a counter offer. Several hours later, off the coast of Hilton Head, we made a counter to their counter offer.

Now we are out of phone range and don't find out until  noon the next day when we pull into St. Augustine to check....we just bought a house in South Carolina.

This cuts into our winter  boating time in Boca Chica, but will benefit us in the long run as we will now live near our boat all year round and Rick can take care of his beloved projects in the summer.
We continued south with Sand Castle, motoring on a second and third overnight at sea around Cape Canaveral and on to the Miami area. Just inside the entrance, we stopped for fuel...huge convenient Marina. After fueling, we traveled on to Dinner Key, at Cocoanut Grove. Lots of mooring balls available, free pick up and delivery from boat to shore all day until 5:30. This was our first stop there and one we really enjoyed. We spent a day on a mooring ball, ate at the Jaguar Cerviche Spoon Bar, Wonderful food. After a lunch, we stopped by an interesting state park, hidden away off a downtown Cocoanut Grove street, the Barnacle State Historic Park, has interesting early history of boating on Biscayne Bay, and beautiful views.

On toward Boca Chica, with a lovely sunset during our anchor at Rodriguez Key. Motoring again, we stopped overnight at Marathon before a final day.....with a great sail, home again to Boca Chica.