From the "Windy City" to Windy Florida

We are at the Cayo Costa State Park, near Sanibel Island, Florida. Enjoying the most beautiful sunset and a glass of Red with some great cheeses from Italy (what else would we eat?!). The last few days have been very windy and cold for Florida (not Chicago). We had very shallow water all along the Intracoastal and we hit the ground a few times. Florida’s ground is very sandy and muddy, it was not really a problem to put our bottom in the sand. It seems that we still can’t be a day without some excitement. A few bridges that opened a little late for the strong winds; only four feet of water under us; a leaking hose somewhere – I am sure that life in the office is sometimes a little less stressful but overall we convince each other ever day that we did the right thing to go sailing. Some days we need a little more “Red” to convince ourselves that others. Both of us can’t wait for the day everything runs smooth and we just relax (maybe that’s something we have to still learn).

Florida’s Real Estate is booming more than ever and we amazed by the size of the houses and boats – it is good to see that the economy is doing well and people are enjoying their lives. It made us a little sad to sail by our old home. We were very quite and had lots of memories surfacing from the days we enjoyed our home in Florida.
The day we past the house we decided we past the past and are looking forward to a new life in our new home. We have come to love our Lucky Star; she keeps us save and we have everything we need and we can make everything we need. Our little Watermaker is doing a great job and we have anchored out since we left Yankeetown two weeks ago.

The Florida Key’s are waiting and we are making our way slowing downwards.

Soon Time to leave Yankeetown

These are our Last few days in Yankeetown. We spent a great deal of time cleaning out our storage to fill it up with new provisions (of course!) and lots of spare parts. We bought bulk flour and grains and fifty !!! pounds of caraway seeds (because Margit likes them – and they did not come in smaller quantities, at least not that cheap!
We are all set to make our own bread so we don’t have to rely on Wal-Mart entirely. We are planning on leaving Yankeetown on March 16th if the weather god will smile upon us. Tarpon Springs with it’s sponge divers and Greek population is our next destination – about a day and night for us to get there.
We spend last weekend watching the Crystal River Civil War Reenactment – it was a very hot day already with lots of gun and canons fired – very strange hobby some people have?!
Chris spends still time at the farm feeding the horses and cows – he loves it and I am sure that if we ever get tired of boating we have lots of animals especially chickens.

Yankeetown Florida - February 2006

We have finished our “first leg”. We arrived in Yankeetown February 5th early in the morning and made our way up the Withlacoochee River to stay with our friends Dan and Joanne (who recently became the mayor of Yankeetown). In the last three weeks we have done a major cleanup on the Lucky Star, we have taken all our winter cloth out and hope that spring is just around the corner. We are still working on our damaged rudder and some other things that need to be done to go further south.


We have finalized our plans for this summer. We will go down explore Florida, the Key’s, Key West and the Ten Thousand Islands. For hurricane season we will come back to Yankeetown the fist week in July and stay here until November when we plan to head to the Caribbean.
Life is great and we are enjoying every day when we wake up having a great view of the River with morning fog seeing the turtles swim by.
I am in heaven since I have a great range and oven to cook with in Joanne’s kitchen. Florida’s great shrimp where an inspiration to cook:

Shrimp and Water Chestnut Toast

This recipe feeds a family of 6 to 8

¾ pound shrimp shelled, deveined and coarsely chopped
4 tablespoons of butter softened and unsalted
6 canned water chestnuts drained and cut in 1/3 inch dice
2 scallions sliced
¼ cup Chinese cooking wine or dry sherry
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
A little salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 baguette sliced in ½ inch thick on the diagonal (2 pieces. as an appetizer, 4 for dinner)
Vegetable oil for frying
¼ cup white sesame seeds

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. In a food processor combine half the shrimp with the butter until pureed.
In a large bowl toss the rest of the shrimp, water chestnuts, scallions, wine, soy sauce, sesame oil, salt and sugar and blend with the shrimp butter.
Spread about 1 ½ tablespoons of the mixture on each baguette.
In a skillet heat 1/8 inch of vegetable oil. Put the sesame seeds on a small plate and dip each toast to cover the top with sesame seeds. Fry the toast (as many as fit in the pan at a time) shrimp side down, until shrimp mixture turns pink about 25 seconds.
Transfer toasts to a baking sheet, shrimp side up and toast for about 5 minutes. Serve right away and enjoy with a salad for lunch or as an appetizer for dinner.