26:52.79N 80:04.38W  Loggerhead Marina, North Palm Beach

 

We took Time2 to Loggerhead marina to leave her for the hurricane season,. She is to have general servicing done by James Knight and his YachtTech team, while we returned to Cape Town. We had Mike’s 70th birthday – and a big celebration was planned at False Bay Yacht Club.

 

As we were about to do our final tidy up and securing of Time2, when we had some drama. We went down to Fort Lauderdale to visit friends for the night, and while there Mike had another kidney stone “attack”  I took him to the Broward General Hospital on the Monday morning in agony, where he stayed until Friday.  The short story, is that he had to have surgery, and a stent inserted, so we could fly home that weekend. It was a bit chaotic to say the least, with Time 2 up in Palm Beach, 65km away. Thanks to the kind support of our friends in Fort Lauderdale and  some last minute scrambling, I was able to get the yacht and our luggage packed up and get us on the plane home.  Mike’s party was a great success, thanks to his daughter Hayley’s superb organisational skills. We also had two great surprize guests for Mike – Jerry flew in from Fiji (we met him cruising the Pacific) and Coenie, who returned from Italy (Coenie sailed with across the Atlantic in Indigo in 2008)  After the party Mike returned to hospital to have the stone pulverised and is now fit again – hopefully drinking all the water he promised.

 

         

 

 

Further “excitement” while we were home, was the boisterous Atlantic hurricane season that saw Irma and Maria decimate parts of the Caribbean and Florida Keys. We watched the tracks nervously as they headed towards Florida.  YachtTech prepared Time2 for the storm, but luckily Loggerhead saw no more than 50knots of wind, and no damage was done.

 

We will return in early November.