It Was Stressful, But In The End All Is Good

Dania Beach   

I didn't get much sleep last night with all the unknown "What Ifs" of today running through my mind. At 2:00 am I was searching for hotels that could house us over the holiday weekend, without costing a fortune -- identifying a property 75 miles away. I even found a small freezer at Best Buy that we could pick up to accommodate our frozen food during that time. We had to have contingencies in place, but we were still trusting/hoping that our service would be wrapped up by the end of the work day. The knowns were that we had to check out of our hotel by 11:00 and return the rental car by noon. By 6:30 we were up and each enjoying one last long, wonderful shower. Our bags were packed before heading to the lobby for our final "free" breakfast. We may have taken an extra helping of scrambled eggs just because we could. Our clothes and refrigerated items were taken to the boat before the service techs arrived. The starboard fin had been installed yesterday afternoon. The port fin would go in today. We then returned to the hotel. I read by the pool for an hour before packing up the frozen food in the cold bag. The key cards were returned and we followed our well-traveled route from the hotel back to the marina once more, still looking for The Big Orange as the landmark to turn left onto NE 2nd Street. The rental was returned and the young man from Iowa who was the next recipient of the car kindly dropped us back at Crossroads. All that was left to do was wait. I finished another book in the process. At 4:00 we were loaded into the Travelift slings, moved to the basin, and lowered back into the water. We exited, spun around, and tied up to the face dock. The thorough Hurricane Marine techs then made their final checks, calibrations, and clean up. By 6:00 pm were pronounced "good to go." On this Valentine's Day, our heartfelt thanks go to Mike and Brian at Hurricane Marine and Tim and Morgan at Royale Palm Yacht Basin for all their assistance this week. We're ready to get moving again tomorrow morning.