Before I get into the holiday stuff I thought I would mention that our blog is sporting a new look. I’ve revamped it some to hopefully make it easier to navigate. I also recently changed our blog feed service (the one that notifies you via email that a new post is available to read) over to a new one so sorry if anyone received a duplicate email on that first post. Hopefully I have that cleared up. And if you haven’t done so yet, you can subscribe to our blog post feed in the upper left corner above our logo. I also added a “Destinations” section in the navigation at the top. This page has most the spots we cruise to around Florida and the Keys and will show any posts that I’ve tagged with that location. Now back to the post about the holidays…

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we plan to take Blue Turtle to Salty Sam’s marina so we can watch the Fort Myers Beach Christmas Boat Parade. We aren’t participating in the parade but plan to have some family and friends over for a little party to watch the parade. Now, I normally wait until the last minute to do the Christmas lights and decorations on Blue Turtle but this year I had to plan ahead. I wanted to have our lights up in time for the parade and party. Since the parade is the weekend after Thanksgiving and we planned to be out on hook that weekend, I had to do them early. This of course, did not make us very popular with our neighbors 🙂 We set the bar early this year and we heard a few grumblings about it not even being Thanksgiving yet. I see it as an opportunity to enjoy our lights even longer.

Getting out the Christmas decorations is no easy feat since they are stored under our bed in the aft cabin. We actually have a huge storage space under the bed but wrestling the memory foam/posturepedic mattress up to get in there isn’t much fun. Once we had the lights and decorations out, we decided it would be a good idea to clean the exterior of the boat thoroughly before installing the lights. This took Randy, Corey and I about 4 hours or so since we hadn’t really cleaned the boat this well in a while. This includes using a water and bleach mixture to remove all the mildew from the rails and seat cushions. We also pulled off all of our window coverings and Corey gave them a good scrub. Once Blue Turtle was squeaky clean, we wrapped the lights around the railings and bridge. We also installed our newest decor addition, a lighted weiner dog with antlers on the bow of our boat (I saw the dachshund reindeer at Walmart and had to have it). Randy secured it using some of our dive weights and it has endured 25 mph winds during a cold front. I don’t think it’s going anywhere. I just hope it fits into the storage under our bed after Christmas.

I still have a few strings of lights to put up as well as some interior decorations, but with our exterior lights shining, we are ready for the boat parade and the holidays.