The new boat arrives

After an early wakeup and long day on Monday, we slept well last night. We walked the dogs for a longer walk then returned to the house for a breakfast of cold cereal. Mark and Cindy drove to Lecanto to pick the new boat up from Gulf to Lake Marine while Mary & I vacuumed the interior of the 2018 Camry. We then drove to Beth’s Car Wash and selected the wash package that included an underbody wash. We were having ham sandwiches for lunch when Mark and Cindy arrived with the new boat. After several attempts, Mark was able to back the boat between his garage and the neighbor’s house.

Mark & Cindy with the new boat

While we were at the house, Mary discovered that we could return to Florida next month via a highly discounted flight from Allegiant. The flight to Clearwater was less than $40 before taxes and fees. The return flight from Clearwater to Cincinnati was a little more but was still less than we would spend on gas to make the trip. She scheduled us to fly down on Monday, April 15, and return to Cincinnati on Friday, April 19. Mark and I hope to get a lot of fishing done that week.

We removed the expensive high tech Minn Kota Riptide Terrova trolling motor and considered ways of storing it safely and securely in the workshop area of the garage. We decided to craft a holder from two 5” angle brackets that we mounted on the block wall inside the garage. We also wanted to put stainless oval head screws in the bracket for the Bimini top to replace the panhead screws that tended to drag on the sliding mounts. The local True Value had everything we needed, and we finished up around 5 pm.

Mary awaiting sunset on Morris Creek

We covered ourselves with Skin-So-Soft to repel the no-see-ums that were coming out then took the dogs on a short walk on nearby streets that Mark refers to as “The Square”. We had the leftover Schmidt’s meatloaf with rice and broccoli for dinner then prepared the kayaks for launching into Morris Creek.

We paddled out just in time for a beautiful sunset and didn’t have much problem with biting insects thanks to the cream we had applied. We were back at the house before 7 pm where we unloaded the kayaks. I listened to part of Marshall University’s TedTalk that was organized by our friend, Dr. Brian Kinghorn. Afterward, we all watched an episode of Astrid on PBS and two episodes of Evening Shade on Prime Video. Mark headed for the sauna and the rest of us went to bed.

Sunset from Morris Creek