Update - October 5th - 8th



Sunset at St. Andrews Marina

Saturday, October 5th

We ended up moving from St. Andrews Marina back to Massalina Bayou due to the threat of tropical storm Karen's arrival.  You just can't predict Mother Nature and therefore she must be respected. 

We had a very busy day preparing for the move. It was the first real day off Carter had since he started Sea School and with storm Karen on the way, we decided to take care of business before heading for cover in Massalina Bayou. 

Before leaving St. Andrews Sound, we stopped off at St. Andrews Marina and filled the water tanks, emptied the holding tank, washed the dirty laundry, and took a couple of on shore, long showers! St. Andrews Marina is a great facility with super clean showers and laundry facility and super nice people!   We highly recommend it.  Karen weakened long before reaching us and turned out to be a non-event but it's better to be safe than sorry and the dead calm bayou was a nice change from the bouncing sound. 

Sunday, October 6th

We packed up Sunday afternoon and headed out by car for Carter to participate in CleanEnergyCongress.org in Tallahassee.  This was an event sponsored by ReThink Energy Florida (ReThinkEnergyFlorida.org) and Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE.org) for the purpose of developing a vision for Florida's Energy Future and policy recommendations to the legislature. Carter was flattered to be invited to participate as a delegate and said the experience was very enlightening. It really is amazing how screwed up and unfair the system is for consumers. Outdated Florida laws that blatantly protect the monopoly of investor owned utilities are stifling innovation and ruining the unique opportunity that the "Sunshine" state has to be a world leader in solar energy development.  

Tuesday, October 8th

Sea School is over and Carter has completed the courses to obtain his 50 ton Masters license. The only detail left is to get his Transportation Workers Identification Card, (TWIC), which he can't do until the Federal government opens up again but he has a year from the time he finished the school so hopefully the government will be open again by then. If not, not getting a captain's license probably won't matter.  We are eager for our return to St. Marks to complete a few more projects on the boat before embarking on the remainder of our solar powered passage around Florida!