S-10 was still occupied! The boat John Ray who was supposed to leave yesterday and then at 7 a.m. today was still here. We found another unoccupied ball and sat waiting for him to leave. An hour later we called the office and they suggested we stay at U-6 because they were not sure when John Ray might actually leave S-10. Good Plan. He finally left as we ate lunch! Here is our new neighbor.
One day each week a boat comes around to pump the holding tank on a row of boats. Today he told us that there was another PDQ at the other end of the harbor.
At 10 we met with the canvas lady and laid out the spinnaker. She said she could sew it but we asked her to wait for Tom to check the price of a new spinnaker. Debbie went to the laundry and after sitting for an hour waiting for a vacant machine, gave up. There are days like this!
We decided to go hunt for the PDQ. We found Brian from Canada and he gave us a tour of Midori, the 33th one built. Catrina is the 3rd. Structurally, the boats are the same but they have refined many features, changed to a 12v refrigerator and moved all lines inside including halyards and outhaul. Brian told us that Sunrise, a 36 foot PDQ, was also in port.
We travel back and forth by dingy. Here is a picture of a dingy passing our boat.
After a quick lunch and search, we discovered the Cuba talk was at the Episcopal Church but Debbie wasn't sure of the street. We missed connecting with Colin and Pat who told us about it. We walked around for a while stopping at the Senior Citizens Center (not a good place for information) and the hospital where we learned the church was at 53 street not 35 street. Some people just aren't perfect! We headed back to the MCM and ran into Pat and Colin. They were hiking up to the church which was beyond Publix. Tom was happy to volunteer to do the laundry and Debbie joined Pat, Colin and another Canadian couple.
Larry Benvenuti, a photographer from Marathon, showed us his slides of Cuba taken last year on the 50th Anniversary of the Castro Revolution which was also New Years. He has traveled to Cuba 20 times. He then showed us pictures the people, buildings, agriculture and land and discussed their political/socialist structure. Afterwards was a question and answer session. The Cuban people like the Americans but not our government because we are not allowed to trade or visit their country. But they do like Obama and avidly followed our elections.
For dinner we joined fellow loopers Bob and Peggy from Baby Grand at Key Industries.
We all had different fish and they was delicious. Dinners were ordered at a take out window and you were called by a tree to pick up your order! We picked a table and could stay there as long as we wished. We sat there a long time right next to the Gulf and got caught up. We walked and dingy-ed home and they rode bikes with backpacking lights on their heads!
