Failure to Launch

It sounds cute when it's a fun filled movie complete with quirky characters and popular actors, but for cruisers the term Failure to Launch isn't fun at all.

Today was the day we were supposed to put the Knotty Cat in the water and make our great escape.

It didn't happen.

I'm probably partially to blame for this as last night I bemoaned the fact that unlimited hot baths, comfortable king size beds, and being able to jump into a car at a moments notice was soon to be history. Be careful what you wish for.

Yesterday when we initially visited the Knotty Cat I was relieved to have overcast skies and cool temperatures since we would be working outside for most of the time. I have to admit though that even with these conditions we were still sweating at the end of the day (that damn Florida humidity just never goes away) and I hoped today would be just as cool.

At 9 AM this morning, just as I was drying my hair (when will I learn that any attempt at taming my hair in Florida is a direct invitation to trouble?), the marina called to inform us that all launches for the day were being cancelled due to the weather. We looked out the window and, Holy Crap! We could barely see the whipping palm trees through the slashing rain. And just to make things more interesting there was a tornado warning until 5 PM. You can imagine what Wilbur thought when Hans took him out for his morning constitutional. So then another decision had to be made. We'd used up the last of our credit card points for this hotel room which meant we'd have to come up with cash for tonight. Or we could try for a room at a hotel where we still had some credit. The hotel with the credit had just one room remaining and would only accept pets under 25 pounds. And while Wilbur has been on an odd kind of hunger strike lately, no way could we diet him down to that weight in one day.

This doesn't even do justice. Outside our hotel window. It just dumped rain.

My jeans were soaked nearly to my knees after trekking through Walmart's parking lot. It rained so hard a frog leaped into our car when Hans opened the door. We don't pick up hitchhikers so out he went!

So we ponied up the money for one more night here and then went on a provisioning run.

Provisioning. It kills me. I don't like shopping to begin with but starting from scratch yet once again...it drives me nuts! Salt, pepper, garlic and onion powder, coffee, do I need sugar? flour? Not really so I'll skip those for now. Lunch meat, bread (Hans and I never agree about bread, but since I was the one shopping... he had to sit in the car with Wilbur), condiments? I bought mustard, laundry detergent (there went a chunk of change), back to the spice section for cumin and chili powder (no way can I make chile without those), TV dinners for tonight (yay for hotel room microwaves), and on and on. A couple of hundred dollars later I was done and I've barely scratched the surface, but it's a start.

We've been told to arrive at the boat yard as early as possible tomorrow as they will now have two days worth of boats going in the water. It's a long drive and arising before the crack of noon isn't my thing.

Why do I have a feeling there will be a long line ahead of us and it won't make a bit of difference when we get there.

Oh, one more thing. I've lost count of how many posts I've written about our (completely outdated yet thank god we have them or we'd be totally screwed) solar panels. If I've said it once, I've said it a bazillion times; we've nearly lost them too many times and we need to be more careful with them yada, yada, yada.

Did we learn any lessons? Apparently not, because after putting up all our canvas (dodger and bimini, and aren't they just wonderful 'wind catchers'? I'm glad we didn't remove our hurricane straps) before we departed the boat yard yesterday, we also decided to leave the solar panels out in order to 'juice up' the batteries. Sure!! Because one day of solar power is really gonna make a big difference after not being used for nearly seven months! Duh!

So once again I'm not looking forward to what we may find tomorrow.

 

Wilbur loves his new nest and would prefer to stay

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