It’s Wednesday afternoon and I am cooling my heels at the Jacksonville airport, waiting for my 6:00 flight tonight. I have hours to wait as my crew Jim had a flight at 2:00 and I had to get there in time for his flight. Actually, it was plenty hot in St Mary’s today, up in the 90s, and it always seems to be hotter in boat yards than just about anywhere else, in my experience. Here in the airport, nice and cool. Such are life’s simple pleasures.
While I am not happy to be away from Pandora for the next three months, I am anxious to be home and to see Brenda again. Besides, in less than a week, we are heading to Portugal for an extended visit. I don’t want to miss that flight. Portugal should be great as it has a strong nautical heritage. It will be fun to write about what we see there. Stay tuned for more on all of that.
Today’s sunrise was “worth writing home about” as are so many sunrises afloat. I have to say that I never get tired of enjoying a cup of coffee with such spectacular displays. You, however, might have a difference of opinion about the number of posts about sunrises. I hope that you don’t think that “sunrise problem or worse, a “sunset problem”. Oh well, something to think about.
Here’s an idea! How about a picture of today’s sunrise? 
“Bob, Bob, this looks JUST LIKE THE OTHER DOZEN THAT YOU HAVE POSTED IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS!!! ENOUGH ALREADY!!!”
Perhaps, but just this one more, for consistency.
Alas, I digress…
The yard that Pandora’s now in is one that clearly caters to “snowbirds” who take their boats from the north in the summer to south in the winter. The boats stored there display all sorts of home ports from up north including Pandora’s Newport RI and a few from Canada. Actually, I saw a boat “Bear” that is home ported in RI and I am pretty sure that I have seen that boat in the past.
I asked one of the guys in the yard when most of the owners would be returning to leave St Mary’s with their boats. His answer: November 1st, as that’s when most insurance companies allow boats into Florida waters. November 1st is the official end of the hurricane season. Interestingly, St Mary’s River marks the border between Georgia and Florida. From an insurance perspective, the GA side of the ST Mary’s River is OK, while two hundred yards away, across the river, it’s a big NO-NO, as it’s Florida. Well, I guess that you have to draw a line somewhere and the FL-GA border is where everyone draws that line.
When Brenda and I head to GA and Pandora in early January, we’ll likely be one of the last to leave the yard. I’ll bet that it will be chilly. However, to be completely truthful, cold is a relative term. Compared to New England in January, temps in the 50s are the “new hot”.
The St Mary’s Boat Yard is much like any other do-it-yourself yard in that there is, what might be charitably described as an “eclectic” selection of boats. Some are very nice but many have, shall we say, “seen better days”, and that’s putting it gently. Some of these boats look like their best days were when fiberglass was a new building technique and some are surely older than their owners. I’ll bet that Rocky, the owner of the yard, has become the owner of more than a few boats over the years that were abandoned by folks that decided not to pay their storage bills. That would be quite annoying. Anyway, Rocky runs a nice operation.
Here’s the view from the lift dock. Pretty spot if you can ignore the millions of “no-see-ums” that invade at dusk. 
His crane can pick up a boat that weighs in at a hefty 50 tons. Pandora seems pretty heavy to me but she only weighs in at a paltry 30,000 lbs or so. That’s a feather weight 15 tons. Not too hard for Rocky’s lift that can lift something that’s three times as heavy as Pandora. 
So, after a bottom wash, off she moves over to her new “home” for a few months. 
Now I am siting in the comfort of air conditioning and just like all activities related to boating, it’s going to take me a LONG time to get home. Actually, as my flight is so late today combined with the fact that I have to fly into JFK means that I won’t get home until Thursday. My friend Craig is picking me up at the airport tonight and I’ll spend the night at his new place. However, you already knew that from my last post, if you saw it, and that’s a BIG “if”.
Tomorrow, my friend Rodney will pick me up at the train in Old Saybrook as Brenda’s out at a weaving conference for a few days.
Anyone who has spent time aboard boats knows that everything about boating is complicated and as is so often the case in life, “it takes a village”. In the case of Pandora, it seems to takes several villages or perhaps a small city of friends to keep her moving.
Good thing that I am so likable. Well, my mother says I am, so don’t break my bubble.
All this writing has made me hungry for an ice cream. I do have to keep my strength up. That’s all for now.