Reunited with Benevolence

We arrived to the boat around 3pm on Friday after driving all through the night. The boat is in great shape- Looks exactly like it did when we left. It definitely has that "boat smell" unfortunately from crud in the hoses- It is difficult to get rid of the smell unless you replace the hoses. But all is well. Not a DROP of water anywhere inside the boat. Everything works magificently. The bow did crush into the dock during the hurricanes but the anchor only scraped our hull. One board was pushed up on the dock and a little broken but very minor damage. It was a very cold night last night at about 31 but luckily we were able to plug in and have a small heater running. It was still cold though. All three of us (Benny, Brett and I) were all exhausted from the overnight drive. Benny even let us cover him with Grandma Virgie's wool blanket and he stayed under it most the night. We all feel a ton better this morning.

We ended up bring more stuff home with us than what we took away but a lot of it is boat equipment and we're excited to install our new autopilot, anchor, etc. We have way too many clothes and a TON of computer crap. We'll be spending the next few days organizing. More than likely, we'll be purging many items off the boat to simplify things. Yesterday, I started to clean up and put away everything in the boat. I washed all the dishes and started throwing out a bunch of food and garbage. Brett worked on the auto pilot outside. In the afternoon, we drove to Slidell to check out the haul out yard we'll be using to take the boat out of the water and painting the bottom. We met the manager and feel good about the yard. We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to find the Goodwill to unload a ton of stuff we decided to get rid of but found it closed after an hour of running around. Frustrated by the amount of traffic and people in town, we made our way to Walmart. We found it just as crowded and annoying so we made a mad dash back to the quiet marina to escape to our boat. We were still exhausted and stressed from the drive down and the adjustments of living on the boat again. We ventured out into the busy city for dinner and to do laundry. Everything went better than earlier that day. We met a nice lady in the laundromat who owned a spa in town. It was interesting to talk with her. After she left, we played Pinball against each other as the clothes dried. It was fun.We spent the evening sorting through our mounds of clothes and discussing the next day's projects. It was warmer last night and we slept much better. Our motivation to get going toward Mexico was fueled by the possibility of cold nights with no heat for the next month.