Nov 20 - routine

Yes, routine, but a good routine.

With a nice day ahead of us, we headed to the marina at 10 a.m. I installed the second battery in the boat as we were put-putting out towards the inlet -- I take the two batteries out of the boat when we're away, leaving them on a charger in the garage. For our last trip out I got lazy and only brought one battery. I really don't even need two, but they came with the boat so what the heck. The second battery is really in case you're using devices without the motor running while you are fishing.

We made it out to the ocean but not without taking a few inches of water over the bow. Sandy and Abby got soaked. The nice thing about this boat is that the water runs right out the scuppers. I'd warned Sandy about sitting in the front; she wanted to turn around, worried about Abby sliding around on the floor. On the way back, Abby stayed at my feet, safe there because she cannot slide around in any chop.

Once through the inlet it was rough but not too bad. The tide moving through the inlet almost creates standing waves so it's always worse there. Had Sandy not been soaked, we might have stayed around and bounced for a while ... but we headed back to the island.

This time we parked on the south side of the island. It seems that tides between now and our last time there have really dredged out that channel because it was 8' deep even at low tide. We cruised through and parked with the bow at the sand, the stern in 4' of water -- perfect ! Sandy placed the bow anchor and I threw the other anchor out the stern to counter the tide that was rising, creating a westward flow.

We stayed there for a good hour plus, walking with Abby and then just sitting eating our lunch. It was moderately busy, people-wise and very busy, dog-wise. All the dogs got along and Abby had a good time. It's the most exercise that she's had in a while. There were 6-8 dogs constantly roaming of a variety of sizes and breeds.

After that, we headed home. Home, in this case was to Keely ... I wanted to see if the tide was high enough that we could bring the boat into our place. Not quite, we would have to wait another couple of hours and I didn't feel like that. We did stop at the SYC, however, and have a glass of wine / corona -- our standard order with Rose.

Rose, who runs the Tiki, had a car accident a few weeks ago, rear-ended as she was going home from work. She's wearing one of those neck spongy support braces. She told us the night before when we were there with Kirby and Sharon that she's had an MRI and is waiting for results. She says that it's quite painful, even now weeks later. That's not good.

I rinsed the boat as usual up on the forklift. Al was back -- it was his day off the last time we were in. He told us that the marina will be closed for Thanksgiving -- Thursday and Friday -- so we are forewarned.

After getting home and cleaning up, I went over to Publix beachside, the one close to our Saxon house. I'd been to the Publix on SR44 after Mass in the morning but they don't have an olive bar there and I was planning on refreshing my now-finished tapenade. I just looked up that word, not knowing whether it was tapEnade or tapAnade and it does have an E. I see that it comes from the word for capers, which we don't even put in our versions. Whatever ... I refer to "versions" because Sandy's is different from mine. We both use olives, of course, but I use a spicy mix along with some habanero peppers and feta cheese.

We started watching a couple of dumb, really dumb, Netflix movies and stopped them both. We then watched the opening episode of Stargate Universe ... hard to say if we'll get into that one but we'll try.

Dinner -- our weekly shrimp feed along with rice and pole beans. The beans were kind of tough, the rice was predictable, the shrimp good. The only trouble with the shrimp this time is that they had heads ... Sandy bought them that way. I looked up and found a recipe for tempura shrimp heads, because I'd had them before, but Sandy didn't really take me seriously and threw them out (the heads). Perhaps next time ...

Today ... perhaps ... I'll get out for a bike ride. It's looking promising. 81F -- I can take that !

Onward !