Category: North America

On The Hard in The Yard

Since our return to Florida post-Christmas, we’ve been living in a boat yard. Sava has been out of the water, “on the hard” in Fort Lauderdale for 8 days. And counting.

Why We’re On The Hard

Bottom of our Bavaria 46 foot sailboat before the work is done
The before photo of Sava’s bottom. She needs work!

We’re on the hard because Sava needs her bottom painted. Salt water, layers of paint, some heat blisters, all of it had to come off. Layers of paint were removed and then new layers will be painted on just like new. We knew we needed to get this done since the survey. This is good news.

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Take a Trip to The Everglades

Sava is out of the water or “on the hard” in boat jargon. We’re living on her while she is on land getting her hull painted. So while we are on dry land, we’ve rented cars and explored southern Florida. The latest was a trip to the Everglades.

About The Everglades

Wow. I can’t believe we waited to visit this amazing park. The Everglades is a national park, which is fortunately still open despite the government shutdown. It is a huge park, covering 1.5 million acres of the tip of southern mainland Florida. The Everglades’ marshes, mangroves, and flatlands are home to many different species, common and endangered. If you want to see crocs and gators, turtles and birds in Florida, this is a good place to go! It’s possible to see manatees but better to go to the best places to see wild manatees in Florida.

lily pad water, Florida Everglades
What’s lurking beneath the lily pads?
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Christmastime in Florida

Hope everyone had a great holiday! In between getting accustomed to our new home, we enjoyed spending the holiday season in Florida this year. In this post, I share some of the holiday decorations for Christmastime in Florida.

Holiday Decorations

People really get into the Christmas decorations: houses, cars, even boats are decorated for the holidays. They even host a few boat parades along the Inter Coastal Waterway (ICW): one had Huey Lewis as the Grand Marshal. We missed the boat on that one (sorry!) but got some photos anyway.

See how Christmas is celebrated in Curaçao and Martinique!


Here is a snapshot of some of the stylish, funny, interesting and just plain weird holiday decorations in our travels on land and water in Southern Florida.

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