Gotta love a fast boat....

Feeling a bit windblown on our arrival into Port Lucaya

We took Kim and Al's boat to Freeport Sunday for dinner, for a bit of fast air on the face for a change! They have a lovely 35' Scarab, Short Circuit, and it barely took us an hour to zip around from West End to Freeport. Beautiful afternoon with sunshine and flying fish, fun to walk around Freeport a bit (Kim and Al had last been here 10 years ago), do a bit of souvenir shopping and eat. We had the best waterside tables...gorgeous views!! It's been a blast being with them again...Ally, Tiara and Berto have grown up together being boating neighbors, and I adore the fact that the three of them still enjoy being together, just hanging out, no matter how long it's been since they last saw one another. Hopefully in FL, we will see them even more often! (Their FL house is closer to our FL condo than their PA house was to our MD house...if that makes any sense!)

Beach sunset before dinner

And...it's been a couple of intensely fast-paced days since then. We've all flown home to various airports; Ally back to school to MD, while we arrived in FL on Monday. We weren't expecting to be back in the States so soon, but our house in MD has a contract on it with a tight closing date, so we are back in order to deal with the last details of clearing out the furniture, do inspection repairs and be with Ally. That's the hardest thing...she's finishing up senior year at OS, (thankfully boarding M-F) but the weekends will be a challenge!! Either Ally will be there in MD with friends, or we will be flying her to be with us where we are, or... some arrangement otherwise! While it's difficult enough being apart (shades of empty nesting yet to come), it helps to know it's not permanent and we are all willing to make it work!

So...Ron and I have spent some high-speed days!! The very afternoon we arrived in the States, Ron helped our friends off Miles Aweigh move their tender, the Miles Behind, from FLL to Stuart, where they are renting a house not too far from us, so he had a very long travel day then. (SO FUN to have them close by!! Yay!) Since then...it's been two full days of the usual hassles of a move dealing with the legal stuff: supplying the necessary documents to gain FL residency and making repetitive visits to the Division of Motor Vehicles -- er, Motor Vehicle Services here -- to get driver's licenses, register the car and pay for the privilege of having FL plates on the car. And don't forget car insurance!!

Plus, we were not only dealing with the car, as we ran down to the Port of West Palm Beach this morning and got our Local Boaters Option registration completed (cheerfully jesting over just who would be registered as captain...there can only be ONE captain per boat per the CBP, despite our parallel licenses!) before running back to play at DMV/MVS one more time. (Cha-ching!) At least the LBO registration was free! And it will save an incredible amount of time when we return to the States with Equinox, as we won't have to drive to the nearest Customs office to report in! So...really CANNOT wait to get back aboard and have nothing to do. Nothing. Nada. Zippo. CANNOT WAIT!