Troy Reports In From Florida.

He is over 21….physically.

After much back and forth dealing with locked picture files, we have a late live-ish report in from Troy. And I am not sure why I expected anything other than this. The best part of this image is how it cracked me up during a stressful day. Really? You travel the entire East coast to go boating. Bask in the warmth of it all.. And Click.. Enjoy this little moment of 12 year old humor. I am giggling just hitting PUBLISH!

I see your epidermis!

 

Here is the report in from Troy.

Let’s start with a fun fact. After making it to Port Charlotte, Florida Sandi and I had the pleasure of joining some of our Maine friends at a Down East Yacht Club cocktail party where we met some of your neighbors from Virginia. Our new friends let me in on the little known fact that Reedville, VA was actually named after a fellow Mainiac! Capt. Eliajh Reed from Brooklin, Maine. (In case that name is tickling your memory, Brooklin Boatyard is where Pardon Me was restored. https://brooklinboatyard.com)

The Book

Now on to the Ill Wind part of this story.
Sandi and I safely arrived at our Air BNB in Port Charlotte, Florida on Monday March 7th
.
Since we are renting a house on a canal we pictured having Gottago tied up out on the pier in the front yard and skipping around Charlotte Harbor like we did back in 2017. After spending a couple of days cleaning and prepping Gottago for launch I discovered that she had a frozen steering cable. Obviously this has delayed our fun out on the water.
During that same time I had been watching the tide and the water depth at the pier in front of our rental. All seemed well with about four feet of water even during the relatively mild low tides. Well the thing that I am not used to is how the wind effects the tides in these shallow bays. All the time that I had been observing the water levels we had been having
light and variable winds out of the South West pushing water into the bay and canals.

The warmth of a Florida street

Well on Saturday it got a little Dark & Stormy with a nasty squall and the winds shifted so that they were coming out of the North East and blowing the water out of the bay and canals. Had we been able to launch as we had expected Gottago would have been sitting in the mud (or in this case on top of a lawn chair that had blown into the water off the pier some time ago) or worse yet hanging from her lines as we probably would not have left her tied loose enough to make it to the muddy bottom.

Dead grass and a pontoon boat. This is not a romantic photo of babes basking in the heat while frolicking in the wakes of boats

On a side note after the squall came through the temperature dropped dramatically and we
had our own Mr. Bee hanging out on the water pipe.

Is it MrDodge or Don?

Also out of the blue last Friday I got a random text from non other than Don Ploetner (The Man, The Myth, The Legend) asking if we were in Port Charlotte, because he lives about
two blocks away.

You go Troy! We all love ya.

It is hard to hide when you have been featured on WoodyBoater.

11 replies
  1. Troy in FLA
    Troy in FLA says:

    And here is the lawn chair at the end of the pier that Gottago would have been sitting on. Does not look comfortable.

  2. Scott K
    Scott K says:

    So, how does Beavers compare to Pirats Oasis?

    Too bad you don’t know anyone with any quality tools to fix Gotta Go. There has to be a Harbor Freight nearby that’ll fix you right up 🙂

    See ya soon.

  3. MO Whaler
    MO Whaler says:

    Man is it fun to watch ‘things’ getting a little crazy in Florida –

    What could possibly be next?

    Gonna just hide and watch –

  4. Mark in Ohio (sometimes da U P)
    Mark in Ohio (sometimes da U P) says:

    Troy, enjoy Florida. Here are some helpers for your next boat problem. You probably know them, they use Snap-On tools!

Comments are closed.