Adventures in West Palm Beach

After we left Ormond Beach where our condo was located, we drove the coast down to West Palm Beach to visit a friend of mine Kristl that owns the "West Palm Beach Food Tour".  Of course we went on her tour and it was absoluetly fabulous!  I will attach the Trip Advisor review I did to tell you more about her tour.  Anyway after the tour she invited us to stay in her guest house, which was a cute little beach cottage attached to her home.  Kristl was great to hand out with and talk shop, we accomplished a lot just sitting down talking to each other, it was great.  Hated to leave we had so much fun and it was such a beautiful place to visit.  Kristl and her husband plan to come to dinner on the boat when we are in Miami.

Today we said goodbye to Kristle, Ashley Kate and Jack the dog and we drove 3 hours back to the boat then 4 hours from the Shipyard to our home port at the PYPC Yacht club in St Petersburg, FL.  well at least it was our home port.  At the end of this next season we plan to move the boat to St. Augustine and put it on the hard for the winter, it is cheaper and probably safer during the season.  Then maybe next year we may leave it in Key Largo, we are planning to check them out on our way to Miami.

Hopefully we are going to start having fun on our boat trip soon.  A couple more days of getting ready then off we go.  Right after leaving the shipyard today we noticed that the electricity on the starboard side of the boat was not working right, so Brad ran around trying to fix that for an hour, while I drove the boat, which was also not without excitement.  While going along on the charted course I noticed that we were getting ready to cross an area marked as the "Anchorage for explosions", WTF is that all about, I don't know but I was for sure not comfortable crossing those waters.  So I decided to turn the boat away from that area and proceded to set a couse right in the path of a huge ship, so it was not exactly a calm and relaxing trip.  So we are moving along and I am now competing with the big ship to see who can make it to the bridge first, and yes we did get there faster. The charted courses around here are sometimes very narrow pathway, so later on in the ride we got to an area where you had about a ten foot wide path to stay within or you would be on land, well obviously we made it but still it was a bit hectic.

We did make it to the dock before dark so that was great but after having spent $$$ money to get the  boat fixed up, first the electricity was messed up but Brad did fix it and then when we got settled in the slip we went to turn on the heater because it is freezing here on our tropical adventure and now the heater is not working right.  The air conditioning specialist is coming over tomorrow so hopefully he can just flip a switch and Voila it is working!!  So if you think we are over here just sipping Pina Colodas think again.  Boating is a lot of working and it is very costly,, but we love the boat so I am hoping to soon have the tropical vacation we had envisioned.  In 2 days we will set off to Egmont for our first stop on our trip down the Florida coast to the Keys. Then on to Miami for the boat show, Brad is going to work the show and I will probably go on another Food Tour.  And hopefully Kristl and her husband Eric will come for a visit on the boat.

I will attached photos from our West Palm Beach visit and Flagler's mansion.  Flagler was Rockerfeller partner in the Standard Oil business and he created about 10 large resort hotels in different cities in Florida, as well as the mansions that he and his wifes lived in.