December 3, 2011

I got back to the boat yesterday.  I'm glad to be back home with Jerry.  He had the hull cleaned while it was out of the water.  What a difference it made.

It looks really good!

So it's been over a week and we are still out of the water.  The plan, as we saw it, was that the boat would be worked on while we were in Atlanta and we'd be back in the water shortly after we returned.  They didn't pull the props until sometime Monday and they were sent off to Panama City, FL.  Oh well.  Fortunately, we can stay on the boat while it's out.  We have power and water, it's just a chore getting in and out.  The marina provided a 5 step ladder which gets us to the swim platform.  We climb our ladder into the sun deck. 

We went to the USS Alabama this morning. 

We walked through this massive ship.  I can't imagine the life these men had.  It had to have been hot and crowded.  But they served our country well in spite of their hardships.  We thank them for that.

Lunch was next on the agenda.  We started down the parkway avoiding the I-10 causeway.  There are several fish type restaurants along here.  Tacky Jacks was first, then came Felix's Fish Camp.  We stopped here.  We started with a selection of 3 soups, crab bisque, seafood gumbo and turtle soup.  Neither of us had ever had turtle soup.  I was somewhat reluctant to try it, but did.  It was really pretty good.  Actually, all three were excellent.  This was followed by a house salad which included hearts of palm and artichoke hearts, also really good.  Our entree was a white fish with cheese grits cakes.  This was topped with a shrimp cream sauce.  It was delicious.  We were really glad we stopped here.

Back to the boat.  Jerry had asked about having the stripping replaced.  The quote was over $400.  No way.  We opted for doing it ourselves, scrapping it off, taping and painting with a paint specific for stripping.  I tackled this while Jerry worked on the radar.  He is so glad to have this new equipment.

While I was outside, Glenda from Goldleaf stopped by to invite us to their boat for shrimp and cocktails later.  She also told us about the boat parade happening later tonight.

The shrimp was fresh and tasted really good.  Come to find out it came from Capt Sid's boat docked across from them.  We walked over to the dock around dark to watch the parade.  It took longer than we had expected but was really fun to watch. 

Our pictures aren't the greatest but you get the idea.  There were probably 15 boats of various sizes and shapes all decorated for the holidays.  Pretty unique idea.  I hear they do this every year.