Holiday Isle

Beau here and making up for the lack of a blog post yesterday. Based on the tide we needed to leave the marina early to make sure we had as much water as possible and thus no blog post. So we got into Holiday Isle Marina on Islamorada around 1230 pm. It was my first time docking the big boat so I was reasonably nervous. As we approached the marina I tried to hail the dock master on the radio but he didn't monitor the radio (What!?!?) and this lead to me running aground on the approach. I was able to back out of that no problem and docked beside the sea wall. Greg, the dock master, did nothing to help with the effort and as soon as we made it on land he hurried to get us registered and receive payment. I tried to hook up the power but the only pedestal available couldn't be reached from my position which again would have been wonderful insight from Greg. I decided I needed to reposition the boat which was a last resort believe me. The wind at 25 knots and the tide were pressing me against the dock but my unbelievable wife came up with a great idea to solve the problem. We held the starboard bow cleat firmly to the dock and only using one engine rotated the boat off the dock, repositioned her, and secured her. Really pretty cool and being one of the larger boats in the marina this drew some attention. We then hooked up the power to find that pedestal was only 50% functional thus we had AC but no 110. We thought about moving be after all the stress and an incoming storm just decided to stay. We headed to the pool and had piña coladas and got to know new friends that had watched and helped with the docking. One couple that was particularly cool was Barb and Ken (not a joke) rom CO. They live at the marina for part of the year and have a successful property management business in Boulder. They made some recommendations on dinner and we headed to a great shower on the mainland. Once we were ready the storm had arrived and another neighbor offered to give us a ride. Marina folks can be just awesome. We started off at Whale Harbor, a bar that was storied to have great conch fritters. Completely delivered and then we caught a cab to Chef Micheals. Kathryn had grouper with key lime butter and caper sauce. Moms was prepared with olive oil and herbs over pasta. Morgan had sword fish and I had hog fish prepared creole style. All very good but their key lime pie didn't compare to Ballyhoo's. When we got back to the marina we debated on staying another day but decided we wanted to sail. This lead to the early departure and the lack of blog post. Up next a whole day of sailing. Hooray! That is Barb in the photo.