Saturday:
Mostly cloudy in the morning then clearing. Slight chance of rain in the morning. Highs in the mid 60s. Inland… north winds 5 to 10 mph. Along the coast…north winds 10 to 15 mph becoming 5 to 10 mph in the afternoon. Chance of rain 10 percent.

Saturday Night:
Colder…clear. Lows 34 to 39. North winds 5 to 10 mph.

Sunday:
Sunny. Highs in the lower 60s. North winds 5 to 10 mph.

There were ~20 people for dinner without a complaint to be heard.

Ben, Ken and Barry started the smoker around 4:45am and put two 16 pound Butterball birds on at 5am. The birds were placed in aluminum pans with foil over top and smoked them between 220-250 degrees until 3 pm, at which time the foil was removed and temp dropped to 200 degrees till 4:45pm, when Ben removed/carved the birds.

Ben, Ken and Barry stuck together the entire time with various visitors through the day stopping to gawk over the smoker. Ken picked up a box of oysters that we snacked on all day. Barry provided Ben with coffee in the morning, then Stan dropped off a bottle of rum around 10am followed by Jimmy dropping off a bottle of Crown Royal around noon. They both said they didn’t want Ben to concern himself with walking back to the boat for a drink as the day went on.

Carol setup additional tables and decorated all tables with linen covering, followed by a touch of color using fall leaves and small pumpkins.

Ken started the morning with no clue how to run a smoker and ended the day paying very careful attention to how slight adjustments with dampers can make big differences with the temps.

Everyone enjoyed it so much, we have plans to smoke some Boston butts tomorrow.

And now on to the pictures…

It was a fantastic time and I will let the photos tell the story.

Thanks to Pensacola Marinas (Island Cove, Palm Harbor, Yacht Harbor) for the great turnout, yummy food, and lots of fun!

Happy Birthday Ben!

We will made the best of it with Ben and Carol’s moms stopping by for a visit, then Ben and Ken sailed the little boats, with a fireworks display from downtown Pensacola being easily viewed off the bow of Jim’s sailboat.

Moms visit.

Ken is cruising.

Ben is right behind him.

Carol took pictures, video’d, and chatted with Sheri.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iIgFpF-OSE

We started off Friday afternoon at the usual cocktail hour under the marina gazebo, before retiring to the boat for the night.

Blake read us a bedtime story.

Pogo found her bed spot.

Saturday Blake went to see a movie with his MawMaw, while Carol and Ben spent the day moving stuff from boat to boat.

There was some time to relax though and enjoy the sun.

Carol and Blake coloring.

At some point over the weekend there was a regatta going on with lots of boats in the channel. They had to scramble when a barge came through.

The sailboats were decorated with their flags.

Although we never left the dock, we did spend the entire weekend on the boat and had a great time.

Next weekend we plan to be at a local anchorage providing the weather forecast holds up. Can’t wait!

We ended up keeping ‘The Force’ in the water for the weekend, though the weather really wasn’t ever good enough to sail it.  Carol did take it out for about 10 minutes, but the current was too much, so she came back to the dock.

We still had a great time at the marina.  Conrad and Roxanne made it over from Louisiana to hang out on their boat, so they joined us for BBQ pulled pork that Carol made on Saturday.

Carol’s parents made it down to join us for dinner as well.  Brice ,then Ken and Sherie (Private Stock Too), showed up for cocktails with Ken bringing his guitar for some impromptu Karaoke.

We finally called it quits about midnight.  Carol, Blake, and I stayed on Monomoy for the night and headed home this morning for coffee and breakfast.

We didn’t get any real sailing in over the weekend, but we still had a great time.  Now if we can just dodge these upcoming tropical cyclones, then perhaps we’ll get another chance at sailing to Pirates Cove.

The photos today were taken by camera phone, so the quality isn’t the best, but you get the idea.

We spent the first half of the day catching up on yard work at home, so we didn’t make it out sailing, but we did go hang out on the boat at the dock for the afternoon and grilled burgers for dinner.

Our dock neighbor was returning from a day of wind surfing at the time we were done grilling the burgers, so we invited him over and he graciously accepted bringing a bottle of wine. Our dock neighbor lives in Quebec and speaks French as a native language, but does pretty well speaking English; he drives down to Florida during the summer months to enjoy sailing his Pearson 32 on Pensacola Bay. So we enjoyed the chit-chat.

The Oar House was busy in their typical fashion.

The sun was beautiful as it set behind the Chico Bridge.