currently still in: Fort Myers, damn it.

Yesterday I was going to write a gleeful post about how we'd wrapped up all our work and were ready to go, but decided that I'd better not as I might jinx things. I guess just thinking about it was enough to activate the jinx!

We finished all our Really Important Boat Stuff on Wednesday, including getting the RV stored, since nobody wanted to buy it - until we were just about to drive to the RV storage place!  And by that time we were committed to keeping it and had already gathered up all the things that we wouldn't need on Windom but wanted to bring back to Colorado.

We'd been sort of planning to leave on Thursday, but Britt commented that we hadn't had a chance to see the Edison-Ford Winter Estates which are just down the road from the marina, and the weather was supposed to be sort of yucky on Friday as a cold front was blowing in, so we took Thursday morning and played tourist at the winter homes of Edison and Ford (and as it turned out they were offering free admission that one day, to celebrate something or the other) and then did a few minor boat projects in the afternoon (some of which turned out to be less than minor, so we didn't actually finish until nearly 8 pm...)

So, we figured we might leave on Friday. But listening to NOAA weather radio wasn't encouraging:  the 90% chance of rain forecast wasn't appealing, nor was the possibility of 20-25 knots, nor was the possibility of tornadoes. It was howling and pouring when we got up in the morning, and neither of us were too excited about the prospect of leaving...so we didn't. In fact we didn't leave the boat all day; I read, and wrote, and baked brownies, and Britt figured out how to make the new digital camera take movies, and ate brownies.

But right now the sky is clearing and the wind is more consistently out of the north, indicating that the front has passed. This is the weather we want for going to Key Largo. Northeast winds, as are forecast for the next several days, will put the wind just aft of the beam, our favorite point of sail. Even though relatively strong winds are forecast, they'll be coming over land and we'll be close to shore, so the waves won't be big. And for our first task, getting out of the river, the north winds will aid us as they "blow the water out" and make the tides lower, which should help us squeeze under the remaining bridges.

I don't want to jinx us again, though. So I'll just say that I hope our next update is from somewhere else. But if it's howling and pouring again, we'll just sit tight.