Plan "B"

Plan "B" is pretty much the story of our life, so when I saw this sign at the Botanical Gardens in Naples today, it pretty much made me smile.

The story begins with the decision to help drive my parents to their winter home in Arizona.  Plan "A", of course, would be - dry roads and no winter storms.  Plan "B" would be confronting a winter snowstorm across the top of Texas (my Dad is an amazing driver so he handled this portion) only to to find out in Dalhart, TX that the road down to Tucumcari was closed due to a jackknifed semi on the bridge - closure expected to be 4 hours.  Reroute to highway 385 to Amarillo -white out conditions, but Dad handled like a true seasoned Minnesotan. - our estimated rerouting delay would be 1 1/2 hours - no problem.  Back on I-40 and seems like roads are improving, stopping for lunch in Tucumcari, bathroom breaks and fill with fuel, Deb now at the wheel.  Just past Santa Rosa we encountered vehicles at a standstill.  "Must be an accident?"  We sat for three more hours without moving, Mom in the backseat checking on her IPad with NMDot to see what was the problem.  Still claiming an accident - really, three hours to clear.  By this time, both West bound and East bound at a standstill.  Soon after we approached the four hour point - cell phones were overloaded and no one could get out.  I was finally able to get a text out to Rick to see if he could find out what was wrong.  Again, they were claiming a car accident was causing the problem - really four hours to clear?  Texted Rick to get us a room in Albuquerque - if we ever got out of there - we could maybe make that.  Long story short - seven hours stuck on I-40, arriving at Hotel at 10:30, wine and potatoe chips for dinner - that's how you deal with "Plan B".  Come to find out the next morning that accidents on I-40 had started at 5:30 in the morning and continued all day - there was at least a 25 mile back up of vehicles -  I have never seen so many semi's in one place in my life.

Leaving Liberal, KS - no idea that we would be part of the storm that rocked Buffalo, NY and a great bonding experience with my parents.

Fun to get to their winter home and hugs from all of our friends.  Good to be settled in and now time for Deb to fly back to Minnesota to prepare for trip back to Broulee.

Wrapping up wine production - finding a bottle of 180 proof distilled from plum wine - circa 1975 - product of the past generation - Dick Smith and Bunny Rautenberg (Rick & Bob's Dads) -(in Yugolslavia its called Slivovich, in this country we call it moonshine!) dare we try it - Damn straight!

Open water is freezing north of us - the white swans have landed on Bald Eagle - sign of the times - we are next -it is head south time.

We should just stay here, enjoying a fire in our fireplace  - but, bags are packed and will let the kids enjoy the house.  Thanks for taking care of our love.  Time to move to Broulee.

So Izzy's bag is packed - we are all bringing less - but we know we always return with more - looking forward to our new toys and things.

Again, Plan "A" would be to return to Broulee, splash and provision for our trip to our planned destination.  DETOUR!!!  Upon arrival - What?! Diesel fuel in the Bilge? OMG! Yup, that's a storage tank to offload the fuel from the port tank. Filling the tank before we hauled her sounded like a good idea, but apparently a small leak likely from the tank soured that action.  Store the port tank fuel and start on Plan "B"!

Ok, port tank empty, starboard tank nearly full with 300 gallons, not too hard to guess what was going to happen. Felt like sailing days on a hard tack! Plan of action: fill port water tank, move dock boxes, storage containers, tools, suitcases, wine and what ever we can to the port side.
Now 300 gallons of fuel at 7 pounds per gallon in the starboard tank and 150 gallons of water at 8.6 pound per gallon in the port, even with moving some "stuff", couldn't level Broulee. So, next day a trip to ACE Hardware returning with 5 bags of concrete mix, six bags of washed playbox sand (once again, Trawler Trash) and pumping another 150 gallons of port tank fuel into the "storage" tank, brought her level. Then a tall glass of wine and start thinking of Plan "B" actions. 

Despite all of this, Matt, Ben and John at River Forest were great in jumping to action and getting us launched on schedule. We were going in, damn it!

Stay tuned.

Nice quiet Thanksgiving in Izzy's big yard - not anybody here as usual, so time to re-provision and enjoy being back on Broulee despite our new revelations.  We are hardy people, we will survive, its all about "Plan B and how you handle it".

Motoring west on the ICW, truly difficult for Broulee and it's crew to not stop at Legacy Harbour  - this would be our comfort zone.  Our Plan "A" is outside the box.  Our new destination is Marco Island Marina.  Friends and family have lured us to this Island destination, will let you know how this works out.

 We anchored at Glover Bight before heading out to the gulf and the run down to Marco - some sights in the AM.

Izzy prefers, just wake me when we get there.  I will be right here in my kennel until engine is quiet.

Sorry for more dolphin pics, but still amazing!!   You just want to jump in and play.

Broulee tucked into her slip and happy to be here.

Izzy jumping for joy for her new play yard.

Deb jumping for joy over her new play yard!  I think we will all be ok.
More to follow.