Snug as a bug, a cat, 2 people & 150 boats in a rug

Vero Beach ~
So here we are snuggled in 3 abreast rafted to 2 other boats and gabbing away that here we are ~ just another day in paradise. " Heron" ~ "Angel" ~ "Veritgo" ~ Mark and Allison on Angel are terrific and have been living full time on their boat for about 10 years. They summer and work in Annapolis and winter in the Bahamas. Their boat "Angel" is in the middle so we don’t know our second neighbor as well except a nice conversation the first day he came – He’s a very friendly guy from Toronto – they have a sailing club I think on Lake Ontario – 11 boats travelling together. The weather is nice – one morning down to 42 but last night we had windows open all night and today the sun is shining and there is a nice breeze.

It’s a bit of an odd existence being so close to folks doing the same thing you are but you’ve never met before and we hear them and they hear us. Actually when we are inside the boat we can’t hear them so assume they can’t hear us. We are a little city of people riding their dingys , scurrying back and forth to land, trucking the laundry, the groceries, water, garbage. It seems completely normal to this group of cruiser’s but if you separate your mind and think about life on land it seems a little silly.

The trade off is that of course these independently minded folks get to be warm in the winter, have some great adventure, live within their means and are always mindful of utilities, water, waste ~ making the most of everything they have, learning new skills because everything on the boat sooner or later needs attention whether it’s mechanical or cosmetic.

For my piece of paradise this morning I did laundry – it took 2 hours – seems everyone else had the same idea – well not actually everyone else. Paradise has just 6 washers for 150 boats and the same number of dryers.
We kept it civilized all the while hovering to be sure we got our machine in the order we think we called dibs on them. An opportunity to meet a couple of people and share our stories of how cold we have all been for the last month. Unlike other avenues of our life, camaraderie here is instantaneous.

The night before last at 3AM, Tiller started jumping around the bed and we could tell he was after something. It was moving around the V berth because Tiller was first on one side, then sniffing the wall where my head goes. We got up fully, Don pulled back the mattress to see a large black bug. Yesterday we pulled everything apart . Allison is from St. Petersburg, FL and let us know it was a palmetto – that is a nice little palm tree I thought or an American cockroach. Nice ~ in bed with us ~ nice ! They are harmless and we brought it somehow on to the boat. We never had a problem last year. We are sure it came in a box that had been waiting for us at the marina when we arrived. Having cardboard on the boat is a known no no as the bugs like the glue. We had a lamp that leaked and the marine store in Maine had sent us a replacement. The package sat at the dock house for a week – we needed the box to ship the leaking lamp back so brought it aboard – big mistake.
Anyway – no sign of the bugger last night, I slept a little fitfully but will have faith Tiller will do the job should it dare to show itself again...