Welcome 2011

We had a very quiet Christmas Eve at Legacy Harbour Marina.  At sunset we walked past the Edison and Ford museums on McGregor Blvd to view the luminaries in the Edison Estates development.  In many areas of the development, homeowners put out paper bags weighted with sand and lit with candles.  It is much prettier than our photo shows.

We then enjoyed a nice dinner aboard and listened to music on my ipod.

Christmas day we went for our first sail of the winter.  There was a nice breeze on the river, so we beat down to the next bridge and then sailed back downwind.  Everything on the boat worked great!

My daughter Kim and son in law Jeff gave us a Spot GPS Messenger for Christmas.  It is a nifty little GPS device that sends signals through satellites to show our position or call for help, if necessary.  We put a link on this blog so that anyone can see where we are each evening as we travel.  Just click on the Spot GPS link on the right side of the blog.  You can zoom in and out, and switch to satellite or Hybrid mode to see a Google Earth photo of our actual location when the device is activated. 

Between Christmas and New Year's Eve we enjoyed another record cold front, with night time temperatures in the low 30s at the marina. We did drive down to Fort Myers Beach to have lunch at Bonita Bills.  We each enjoyed a pound of peel and eat shrimp for under ten dollars each.  This is up a bit from the eight bucks they charged last year.  It was a great lunch, though, and the waterfront atmosphere is excellent.

It warmed up nicely for the New Year's Eve celebration in downtown Ft. Myers, where we watched the ball drop at midnight just like people do at Times Square in New York City.  Well, maybe it is on a somewhat smaller scale.

Anyway, you can see the lighted ball in the background.  It was an interesting night for two sober people.  People watching was very entertaining.

Right now we are enjoying temperatures in the upper 70s.  We are still waxing Passage, but hope to be done this week.

Finally, we are very pleased to say that our longtime friends Del and Becky Gladrow contacted us after our last blog entry.  They are flying down to visit on January 19th, and they will drive our car and dingy trailer home for us on about the 24th.  It will be great fun visiting with them.  We both enjoy their sense of humor, especially Del's.  Their visit will spell the demise of many pink gulf shrimp, too!  We cannot express how grateful we are that they will be helping us out with our vehicle.