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This adventure will be very different than our previous years’
adventures. We decided that instead of taking
Salty Old Dog” (the 47’ Carver) to the Bahamas, we would
rent a place in the Keys for the month of June. The other big
difference is that Salty now has a female First Mate “Mali” who
we adopted from a Wheaten Rescue group four months ago. She is a
3 year old Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier and a perfect soul mate
for Salty (he just doesn’t know that yet). The thought of having
two crazy dogs on a boat for a month, just didn't cut it, so we ended up renting a
cute little stilt home on Cudjoe Key in the Florida Keys for the
month of June and trailored our "little boat" “Salty Too” down with
us; a 21’ Pro-Line. We packed up the truck and the boat with our
files, laptops, printer, and big comfy chairs from our lanai and
everything else imaginable to make our month as comfortable as
if we were on the Carver “Salty Old Dog”. We plan on dunk-holing
around the Keys and finding new places to explore, but we will
also make this a working vacation in that we both have to study
for various courses we are taking and tend to our Sellers and
Buyers’ needs back home. So, off we go on the first little
“Mali and Me” Adventure in the Keys!
We probably should have packed all this stuff over the last
couple of days but obviously that didn’t happen and we were up
around 6:00am loading what seemed to be our entire house into a
21’ Pro-Line and some space in the Navigator. Fortunately,
everything fit into the boat and truck quite nicely and we were
all ready to head off at 9:30am. It was a very pleasant trip and
once past Miami, we could really get the sense that we were in a
“different world”. The roads start to narrow, there’s aqua blue
water on both sides of the road and of course the turquoise
guard rails really give it away – “we’re in the Keys”! It was
very easy to find the house (of course GPS on land works just as
well as on the boat) and we were thrilled to finally be here.
Just as in our other adventures by water in previous years, this
adventure would prove to have a problem as soon as we landed –
how typical. After being up early, packing up the car and boat
and traveling for six hours, we were really not in the mood to
walk up the stairs of our cut little cottage to have no
electricity and no A/C – geez, this sounds familiar….of course
with no electricity, there is no refrigerator and no ice for
cocktails! I put in a call to the owner immediately and of
course my call went right into her voice mail. This was so not
good – it was 100° in here and it’s amazing how impatient one
can get when you are tired and HOT! After looking everywhere in
the cottage and on the lower level, we decided the panel must be
in the locked room downstairs. Again, I went to the phone and
decided to call everyone on the list inside the cupboard –
bonus, I lucked out on the very first call and Romayne (yes that
was her name) told me that the panel was “hidden” underneath a
wall hanging (whatever). YAY, with the flick of a switch we had
electricity and most important, Air Conditioning! Fortunately,
this was so much easier than when the A/C wasn’t working on the
47’ Carver – when that happened, we could count on several hours
of being uncomfortable, miserable, cranky and with Barry trying
to figure out what was wrong with it this time. We thought we
were up and running but oh no, the refrigerator decided to not
cool – not even a little bit! The freezer is humming along and
at least we have a great cooler with ice to tide us over until
the fridge kicks in….well, that took about a week but hey, we
are on vacation in a cottage, right? Never mind, we got over it
and Barry started to set up the laptops, complete with
printer/fax, wireless connection and hard-wired internet
connection. It was really rather nice to hook into a neighbor’s
wireless until we made our way into Key West to pick up our own
modem from Comcast but the next morning, we were all unpacked,
hooked up and ready to go….well sort of. The internet kept going
in and out; we didn’t have a long-distance calling card yet, and
so on. I won’t go into the crazy, dirty details, but after a
number of days, all the bugs were worked out with the computer
equipment, phone cards and well, the fridge will never be cold
enough for a nice cold beer but you can’t have everything.
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