Sept was fun... Not!! So instead of being able to go to Sarasota as planned we are forced to stay at the dock again but this time it's not because we aren't ready to go. There is another hurricane coming and his name is Milton. So after putting everything back together from Helene, we have to do it all over again. There goes our vacation. But let me back up a little bit...
Oct 3rd ~ We think we may have some water in the fuel tank, possibly from Helene with all of the boucing and such so we need to remove the water, we make a DIY fuel polisher to clean the tanks. That was easy and took a a few hours but we managed to get all of the water and disel bugs out.
Oct 4th ~ So we are supposed to be on vacation, friends around us are still cleaning up from Helene and we need out of town. So off to we go on a little road trip. We make to down to West Palm only to come back the next day. Well apparently we aren't supposed to be able to have fun right now, because Hurricane #2 is now upon us. So we haul buns back to Clearwater without really getitng anywhere or doing anything. Time to get the boat/RV ready for Hurricane #2
Oct 9th - Milton has made landfall litterally less than an hour from us in Bradenton. Because this one was so close and expected to be worse as it really was going to Tampa at landfall, Nancy and the dogs evucated to stay with friends at their house. Again Andy stayed behind and prvided support for work and checked on the boat when he could. The flooding here again was terrible but not as bad at the marina as Helene was with the storm surge. Now don't get me wrong, there was plenty of flooding and damage around from both storms.
Oct 12th ~ We make it back to the boat for hurricane damage inspections and our typical weekends. Unpacked the boat and get her all settled back again.
Somewhere between Helene and Miton we suffered our most expensive loss..... Frankenstien is now dead! After trying to get him stared and getting the fuel tanks cleaned we discovered that there was water in the engine that has now seized to engine and it's no longer able to start, run or anything. So much for trying to leave in Nov... I mean April... So as much as this hurts, now we being the process all over again doing a full inspection of the boat (minus th sails and rigging) find some more damge that either happened during Helene or Milton or whene we don't know. All we know is that while we were planning to start crusing we can't do that any longer until we can get a working engine again and start the process all over again.
In the meantime, we can reassess what things we want done before we leave and what we need done and move ito overdrive to get this boat ready so all we are doing is waiting for engine to get completed.
Oct 26th ~ We take the dinghy out to do some exploring and get a lttle time on the water to play while we still can but when did this water get to be so cold. The temp dropped drasticly from the past 2 hurricances, not to mention the beaches are destroyed right now....
