The thing that has taken us aback here in Northern Florida is how cold it gets at night. We need to get south quick, it's supposed to go down to -1 Celsius tonight or tomorrow night. We're slowly figuring out the boat learning things like which batteries are 1 and 2, and where the fridge switch is. Boats are always a learning experience no matter how experienced you might be. Luckily Cypraea has been well taken care of, so for the most part the electrical is pretty straight forward, and the mechanics are simple; no spiderwebs of greasy ambiguous colored wires.


Yesterday we drove around to do some errands. I was pretty sure after painting half the bottom of the boat we would run out of paint before the other side was covered. So we did a last minute trip to the local west marine and dive shop. West marine didn't carry the paint I needed in quarts only gallons. I was so close to having enough I just bought some thinner, it ended up working wonderfully and saved us $270. So we bought a fishing rod and reel, which ended up costing us half of what the sticker price said, I don't know why but I'm glad it happened. We went into a divers supply store where we got really nice snorkeling gear for probably the same price as we would have paid at wal-mart. Shopping has been good.

Cypraea is slowly swallowing up all our gear. The storage in her is amazing. We had a Catalina 30 before, and you can really tell the difference. I recomend to anyone who wants to get into cruising to buy a small sailboat (under 30ft) first, sail on it a bunch then go looking for your big cruising boat. You will find that size isn't everything, usable storage is!

This morning I got up and went for a walk to practice with our new camera (Pentax K-5). Here are some shots around the piers.