Fort Pierce, FL

I forgot to mention yesterday that we got a text from John & Kris from Imagine inviting us over at 5pm - and I quickly scanned the text and thought it said chillin'.  You know, like 5pm for sundowner drinks and tales of the high seas.  But when we dinghied over to their boat, they had prepared CHILI !!!  Nice!  I need to read my texts better......Kris & Dean from Charm threw in a yummy spinach salad.  (And they kindly gave me a great pasta/mushroom dish because I couldn't eat the beef chili!)  Great unexpected evening!

 

In the morning, off to shore for one final long hot unlimited water shower....when we were finished it was a deluge outside so we sat under the eaves waiting for it to abate.  Chatted with the crew from Hi-Flite - oops, can't recall her name....will have to ask Jerry and Donna as they are friends.  

Another oops - we got a phone call from the Vero Beach marina at about 10:20AM asking if we were going to stay another day..... checkout time was supposed to be 10AM.  

So we dropped the lines attaching us to our rafted boat and headed south into the dreary rain.

 

 

It was only 15 miles to Ft. Pierce but it rained the entire way.  We had the radar going and running lights on.  Not a relaxing experience!

 

I guess today's post is just meant for long stories.....so I had ordered a brand new IPad to replace a Samsung tablet that doesn't run my navigation program perfectly.  (I believe the apps are made more for IPads and there are just some quirks on the different platform).  Regardless, I wanted a new IPad so I ordered one about a week ago.  I spent a day setting it up, downloading all the data for the Navionics and AquaMaps apps....but the first time actually using it was on the rainy run mentioned above.  Unfortunately, the GPS kept losing it's signal.  We spent the 3 hours of that run troubleshooting, got on the phone with Apple helpdesk (they were very friendly and helpful but only had us do the resets that we had already googled and accomplished) and searched the Interweb for  answers.  It's apparently a common problem and the end result was that we decided that we just needed to quickly send this Ipad back and try again for a better one in the spring.   So.....now I needed to ship the IPad back to Amazon.  And unfortunately Amazon has some rules about returning high-dollar items.  You can't just drop it off in a drop box - they have to bring you a return label and  they want you to actually hand it to a UPS driver.  The only way I could figure out how to accomplish that from an anchored boat was to send the box to Buddy & Sharon and have them return it for me!  (Thanks B&S!!)   

Life does get complicated....luckily we have Manta friends (Jason & Monica on Breathe) that are in the marina here at  Ft. Pierce and they kindly volunteered to drive us the couple of miles to the post office!  Two Mantas - Breathe and Tiki Hej are side-by-side at the marina.

 

 

After about 20 minutes waiting in line, the package is on it's way to Buddy & Sharon and I'm quite relieved that is mostly over with and soon I'll have my $$ for refunded for the faulty Ipad....again, thanks to Jason & Monica - that would have been a very long walk to the PO!  

Thought I'd include a photo of the hallway of the PO - cool old school boxes - smelled just like grade school....

 

Back to the boat - looking at weather for the Bahamas crossing.  It's a bit unsettled still.  Will likely move further south today.