Happy Anniversary Baby

Our 24th Anniversary!
We pulled out of the Don Pedro Island anchorage at seven o'clock again this morning.  Another uneventful day of travel with the wind on our stern.  We grabbed mooring ball number one in Sarasota.  It took two attempts as the wind was blowing right in the inlet to the mooring field.  On the second attempt, though successful, Linda had to release the boat hook.  The line to the mooring ball was so large she could not get the boat hook off of it.  As it started to bend against the boat she saw the better option to just let go of it.  We've had this happen before.  Once Ray helped to get the second line secured to the mooring ball he attempted to get the dinghy down to go retrieve the boat hook floating away.  Before he could even do that though, Barbara and Willard from m/v "Safari", whom we met in Marathon came over and got it for us.  They were a few mooring balls away.  They were glad to see they were not the only one's that struggle with mooring balls.
We were ready to get off the bouncing boat.  We loaded up our bicycles in the dinghy and headed to shore.  Barbara and Willard were already there.  None of us had lunch yet, even though it was after 2:00 p.m. so we headed into town.  We went to Mattison's City Grille, our favorite.  Thank you Barbara and Willard for our Anniversary lunch!
After lunch Ray and Linda rode bikes to Ace Hardware.  While in Marathon Ray had a new davit system built to lift our dinghy out of the water and haul behind the boat.  After being in the little bit of seas to get this far, he felt the need for some stand-offs to make the whole apparatus more rigid.  His temporary solution was to use a 2" x 2" piece of wood.  Linda had to make sure she didn't make any sudden stops in front of Ray for the trip back to the marina as he had an eight foot projectile strapped to his bike. 
We put our purchase and bicycles back on the boat before heading back to town just in time to meet our friends Candice and Heather for dinner as planned.  We had already arranged to meet them at Mattison's, and they were able to bring their new Yorkie Riley there too, so that's where we stayed even though we had just eaten lunch there a few hours before.  Linda and Ray were still full from that lunch so we just enjoyed catching up.
Once the girls left we walked farther up town.  Unfortunately we were about 20 minutes too late for a movie Linda wanted to see, so we leisurely strolled back to the marina with a side trip through the park in front of the mooring field.