Westons Go South

Sunday, April 10

Bradenton Yacht Club

Since the Tyes will be stuck in TI for quite awhile waiting for an engine, we decided to move on down the road. We’re hoping they’ll get fixed and can catch up with us soon.

We motored down the ICW. It is really interesting to look at all the houses, mansions, and boats along the way. Boy, the money just piles up higher and deeper the further south we go. It’s really amazing. Where does all that money come from?

We got to the Bradenton Club fairly early, and Linda and Denis were there to meet us. It was wonderful to see them! They helped us tie up, and then we all went to the Tiki bar. It was a really hot afternoon, so the Tiki stop was very refreshing. After awhile, we had dinner over on Victoria (their boat). It was really fun. We each told stories of our various adventures, and L&D gave us tons of tips, advice, and materials to help with the rest of our trip.

Monday, April 11

Victoria pulled out the next morning. They’re headed for Treasure Island, where they’ll hook up with Pat and David. We’ll miss them!

Ray Marine came over (finally) and got to work on our boat. He spent all day with us, first replacing the depth finder transducer, and then replacing our autopilot with an updated, beefier one. He moved the fluxgate compass from its bad spot by the binnacle to a good spot inside the head cabinet. He did such a good job! He found big piles of old wiring all “spaghettied” around inside the panels, so he cleaned them all up. He bundled all the new wiring up nice and tidy. He set all the settings so things would work better for us. He answered millions of questions. He was great!

Tuesday, April 12

Since the Ray Marine guy ran out of time the day before, he had to come back to do the sea trial and compass calibration. We did that, and everything went great. Yeah, two things fixed!

After the RM guy left, the refrigerator guy came. He checked everything out, and found out the module was bad, just as Sam suspected. The guy plugged in a new module, then off he went. The refrigerator came on and worked great. A third thing fixed!

We had been planning to ride bikes out along the island to explore the nature preserve, but we were two hot and tired. So, we spent an hour in the pool and then went to the club for a nice dinner.