For the following year, we stayed at Royal Palm Marina in Englewood, Florida. We met a lot of interesting people there, all in totally different walks of life. We strived to leave the marina most weekends, when we didn't have a long list of chores to do while we were off work. Ed and I worked together doing retail merchandise resets until May. At that time I had to stop work due to an auto immune arthritis issue in both my wrists and hands. I was happy to be "home" and decided to offer up my sewing skills with small repair jobs at the marina. That was fun until my hands and wrists became too painful and stiff. I was forced to take a break from sewing. That also meant I had to break from making my beach jewelry. I was fortunate enough to take control of my health and get my symptoms under control. After investigating food sensitivities for 18 months, I discovered Gluten was causing the inflammation. I was able to heal and begin sewing again.
Ed's sister Nancy and her husband John decided to return to the SE Florida coast and moved from South Carolina to a beautiful home on a deep water canal off the St. Lucie River in Stuart, Fl. Luck came to us, as we were invited to come over and rent their dock. We would have use of the dock in between our trips to the Bahamas and beyond. This was also a much needed opportunity to secure a safe haven for Manatee during hurricane season. We were able to come stay with them during Hurricane Dorian, and although thankfully we were not impacted, we were able to sense the security for Manatee during a storm. We were pleased at how other boats in the neighborhood held up. We secured a new position with the company Ed was working for and got Manatee ready for another trip and relocation. We were excited to be going home, to the place where our story all began.
We were all poised and ready to leave the marina (very happy to leave that type of life) on October 19, 2019 when Tropical Storm Nestor decided to give us some nasty weather. We woke up to 45-50 kt winds and were bouncing all over the place. I was in the middle of sewing a new sail cover. We had to put off our trip for a day, which really bit into our great weather window we had hoped to get. But we were on a schedule due to Ed's job, and left the following morning.
We left on the high tide on Sunday October 20, 2019 and headed south to Pelican Bay. We relaxed at anchor and spoke of all the memories that anchorage holds for us. We reminisced. We 't probably woudn be back to that anchorage.
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| Pelican Bay Anchorage at sunset |
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| One last night in this peaceful anchorage |
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| A crowded anchorage, the migration of snowbird sailors, heading south for the winter |
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| A beautiful sunrise to start our new adventure |
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As we have seen in many of our travels, a bald eagle to wish us a good trip,
on our way out of Pelican Bay
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