New Year's Eve

We took advantage of a nice day to reorganize and clean the boat. Well not the whole boat just some of it. It was a nice day in St. Augustine. We had dinner last night, and lunch today at the Conch House Restaurant. The food is pretty decent. So far the best item is the blackened fresh grouper with the parmesan red potatoes. I would stay away from the “award winning” conch chowder. It is supposed to be spicy and was forewarned by our waitress. It was not spicy, and really did not have a lot of flavor. There were more green bell peppers than conch in it. The baked mahi-mahi was good, but the shrimps and scallops that accompanied it were way overcooked. It took me three tries to get a bottle of wine, as apparently we were operating off an old list.

The boat listed heavily to starboard and is leaning to the aft pretty steep. We tried to get more organized than we readjusted our heavy items in the process to counterbalance the list we had. I have to make a point that Searay did not really design the storage lockers in the boat very well. All of the big lockers are on the starboard side, along with the refrigerator and freezer. We filled the freezer with at least 30 lbs. of meat in Charleston. BJ and Bill spent several hours with the vacuum sealer that Terry had given us. All in all, we balanced it a little better, but it is still not perfect. I am even considering adding artificial ballast to offset the lists, but I really do not want to ADD weight to the boat.

I took the sunny warmish opportunity in the afternoon to wash the boat. It was obvious that that has not happened in a while. I did not do an excellent job, but I got a pretty thick layer of grime off of it.

I then went to West Marine to try to get parts to repair different systems. They did not have much, in the way of supplies so I basically came back with a hose and some snaps. We discovered the snap-in canvas floor runners before we left, and I am going to install the snaps in an attempt to save the carpet. I feel obligated because on the initial name changing ceremony, our neighbor Jennifer offered to clean the extremely stained carpet in the salon. Not only did she keep to her word, but she cleaned the carpet in the entire boat. A big thanks goes out to Jennifer from the ‘hood.

We ate a nice Filet Mignon with beef and mushroom risotto next to fresh broccoli florets dinner at Café ESweet before we went out to party at the marina bar to ring in the new year. BJ was a big hit (imagine that) with the band and the other partiers. We danced the night away to some funky sounds from the Brian Turner and Rip Tide Band. As we got to know the band members, we learned that the guitar player Brian Turner’s son and was just visiting from California. He left us his contact information and when we went to hi myspace page, he is really a very talented blues guitarist. If you are interested check out http://myspace.com/thebenrobinsonband. I am sure he would appreciate it and I think his music is great.