Thanksgiving and the PDQ Owners Rendezvous

I have not updated the blog in over a month and people are starting to check on us to make sure we are OK.  Yes, we are, thank you very much for checking!  Here below and the next couple of posts is what has been going on with us.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is "our" family holiday.  As our children began having families of their own it was very apparent that they would not be traveling with small children to visit at Christmas, especially since they would need to be home for Santa.  Early on we decided that Thanksgiving would be our family holiday when everyone would gather at our house for a good meal and fellowship.  This event has evolved to be every other year rather than every year at our house as our boys got married and other families and in-laws entered the mix.  Well, this year was "our" year when we would normally have our three boys, our three daughters-in-law, and our six grandchildren at our house for the holiday weekend.  We did not want to give that up just because we were traveling on the boat, so we left our boat in Stuart, FL went home to Gloucester, VA.  We had planned to do this since our travels began, so since we were going to be off of the boat for 10 days or so we also had some routine maintenance and some repairs scheduled to be done on the boat by the PDQ expert, James Power, who was also in Stuart during this time.  Being the former Commissioning and Warranty Manager at PDQ when they were in business, there is nobody who knows these boats better than James.

PDQ Owners Rendezvous

One of the reasons we stopped in Stuart was the planned PDQ Owner's Rendezvous planned for December 5th.  After getting back from Thanksgiving, we attended the rendezvous at Stuart Yacht Harbor.  This was a great day of meeting other PDQ owners, exchanging stories and experiences, and attending some very helpful seminars specific to the PDQs.  We had a very nice owner's docktail party and dinner afterward.

While the men sat through seminars on 12 volt systems and diesel maintenance, the women went on a PDQ MV34 like ours to learn some tips from each other about interior storage and maintenance.  I've always wondered how many people could fit in a PDQ MV34 salon, I think the picture below may help to answer that question.

After the rendezvous, Sharon received her boat handling class from our broker, Beth.  Beth had promised Sharon this class when we purchased the boat so she could learn boat operation from another woman rather than from her husband.  It's much better that way!  Since we were in Stuart where Beth is located, this was the perfect opportunity.  After the boat handling class, Sharon and Beth moved the boat from the Loggerhead Marina where we had been staying to the office of Rhumbline Yacht Sales in Palm City up the St Lucie River from Stuart.  We were leaving the boat there for a few days so that James Power could get back on the boat and try to track down the source of a small diesel fuel leak we had discovered, so moving the boat there gave Sharon some further boat handling experience.