I was just reading over our last entry to see where we left off and I noticed I was wearing pants and my wind breaker in a lot of those pictures. That has not been the case lately. Paul said it was hot in the last update. Now it's sweltering.
Back in late May we flew up to NC for the week at Ocean Isle. It was a week full of babies.




I've been working full-time at the Boys & Girls Club this summer. We spend about half the day in the AC playing games like Connect Four and Checkers in the cafeteria and the other half outside or in the un-airconditioned gym playing capture the flag or building and learning to walk on stilts (my idea) or going to the beach or the pool. A few of the other things we've done are going to the aquarium, and the Eco-Discovery Center, snorkeling on the reef, fishing, archery at a boy scout camp, and movies every Tuesday. I enjoy it for the most part. A few of the kids give us problems daily. I've about had my fill of hotdogs.



Since I've been working 9-5 we don't go out much anymore. When Paul works we often don't get home until 11:00 or so and still haven't had dinner. It's too hot to cook on the boat so we bought a blender and lately we've mostly been eating smoothies, cucumber yogurt soup, and gazpacho.

Business for Paul has been really slow for the past few weeks. Fortunately his construction boss from Chapel Hill, John, called and offered Paul work and a vacation all rolled into one. John is moving to Boston and was trying to finish the roof on his new home in Boston before starting a job in Chapel Hill. He called Paul as a last resort and the timing just happened to be perfect. Paul got to see Boston for the first time and make some money to get him through this slow season.

With all this free time during the day, Paul has been trying to catch up on refinishing our teak. It's going to look fabulous when he's done.

Mark and Jessica came down to visit back in June. It was nice to finally have some visitors. Unfortunately Jessica gets seasick so they saw the boat but couldn't stay for dinner. Mark made up for it by taking us out to dinner (a lot).


Tioga also came down for a week in July. We thought we might sail up the Keys all the way to John Pennekamp State Park, stopping to snorkel the reef along the way, but it turned out there's plenty of good reef right here off Key West.

So we had the best of both worlds, snorkeling all day and always getting back to Key West in time to go out for a nice dinner. The first night we stayed out at the reef seven miles offshore and pitched and rolled all night. It was one of the worst nights of sleep any of us had ever had. We didn't make that mistake again.
So, so far on the visitors to Key West tally it's brothers 2, everybody else 0 (except Jessica). In case you didn't realize, you are all invited to come stay with us. It's way cheaper to fly into Miami and rent a car or take the bus. Winter is great down here. It's also the busy season. We will be here until late March.