First and Foremost, Deb and I want to wish each and every one of you a Happy Thanksgiving.  It is truly a time to be thankful for the things we have and thankful for our relationship with others.
For us, it was great to get to spend time with Deb’s Parents, Dan and Joan as they visited us here at our location near New Orleans.    This is the first time they have been able to see the new boat in person (other than just pictures).  I got such a kick out of Joan saying that she was going to see that boat even if we had to roll her onto it.   We all laughed and said we hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
The trip onto the boat, wasn’t too horrible as we were able to use a board to go from the deck of the boat to the top step on the dock.  Our timing was good because today (thanksgiving) the water was up another foot and a half or so.  That would have likely been too steep of an incline and too big of a step, so our timing on Wednesday for checking it out was great.

We also did several smaller projects in the last week including the following.

We replaced the hot water heater.  The old one started to leak and after attempting to repair it, I noticed that the new ones had a few features that i liked.  First the power consumption of this Isoptemp unit was half of the wattage as the one we had.  That combined with the fact that it automatically mixed the hot and cold water so that it would avoid scalding.  Typically the hot water heater in your house can have the temperature set and this one does too, but if you are running the engine and it is heating the water through the heat exchanger it would be much hotter than a typical 140 degrees F that may be set on the actual water heater.  This unit came from Defender and was a bit more than the ones you can get at West Marine from Kuuma or Seaward, but we felt it was worth it.

Here is the link to the one we chose.
http://www.defender.com/product.jsp?path=-1|51|2234308|2234312&id=2357759

Deb put up the tile in the read head this week too.  This is a great product that looks very good and is actually an adhesive backed tile that you can cut with scissors or a utility knife.    They can easily be wiped down to be cleaned and the adhesive is unbelievably strong.  We put one piece up that had to be pulled back off the bulkhead and it was pulling the paint off the wall so once it is up, it should be kept there permanently.

The other great thing about this tile is that it is easily sourced and I am really happy with the way it looks.  Where the tile and the trim/molding come together, you can’t even tell that the molding is not on top of the tile as if it were ceramic.

We picked ours up at Lowes home improvement.  Below is the link to the one we picked up, we also have a different tone/color to do the forward head as well.

Link to Lowes site for this tile 

We also started to plan for Thanksgiving and pre-made a few items for the holiday.  Since I have been eating more healthy, I was looking for recipe’s without as much sugar and that could be made naturally and organic.  I found a great and simple recipe for Cranberry relish.  It was 3 ingredients.  Cranberry’s, a whole orange and crystalized Ginger.  I didn’t want all the sugar that comes with the store bought candied ginger so we made our own and used Swerve sugar substitute instead of real sugar.  I got this recipe from “GoGoGail’s website and it turned out to be great.  Definitely make it a few days early and let it sit in the fridge for all the flavors to meld together.

Below is a link to Swerve that you can buy on Amazon, but I also found in “The Fresh Market” but I suspect Whole Foods also sells it.  It was $8.99 where I bought it.
Link to Amazon site or Swerve

We also made homemade Apple sauce, again making it ourselves allowed us to only put what we wanted into it.  In this case it was nothing more than peeled apples cut in small cubes and heated in a skillet (with a little bit of water) for about 20 minutes.  After that I put in about a teaspoon or 2 of Cinnamon and puree’d it in our Ninja Blender.  It was great after it was good and cold in the fridge.   We are really liking our Ninja and have found a ton of stuff that we use it for now.

Deb also did some sewing and made us some eco-friendly shopping bags so that we don’t have to use the paper or plastic ones when we go shopping.  We have found that we can never have enough bags or totes on the boat.  We are always using them to cart stuff on or off the boat, store things in, move them from one place to another.

We must have a dozen and frankly having another dozen we would still likely find more uses for them.  In this photo, Deb is actually sewing on an ironing board folded down low and sitting on an ottoman in her parents hotel room while they were visiting from out of town for Thanksgiving.

We took a great drive with Deb’s parents and right where the Tchefuncte River flows into Lake Pontchatrain, there is a sunken tug boat that has been there for years.  The other day, the sun was setting right behind it and led to some GREAT pictures.  These were just taken from my phone and I was impressed with how well they came out.

Then it was time for our Thanksgiving meal and we went to a great place called Dakota’s.

Being near New Orleans, I opened for a non traditional thanksgiving as did Deb.  It was delicious and we had Oysters Rockefeller, Crab and Brie Bisque, Beef Tenderloin and I had flounder fillets.  Deb’s parents had traditional Thanksgiving fare and it was Turkey, Pork Roast, and all of the fixings.

Bottle of Wine and waiting for dinner to be served

If your even north of New Orleans, you should check this place out.  The Service was amazing to boot.
http://www.thedakotarestaurant.com/

Dakota’s take on Oyster Rockefeller

Apple Walnut Salad with Blue Cheese

Pan Seared Flounder Fillet

Beef Tenderloin with Jasmine Rice

Traditional Thanksgiving with Turkey/Port and fixings

Join us on our journey as we continue to rebuild, refit and prepare our Formosa 51 Sailboat for our continued cruising journey.  We have always loved the Formosa, bought one (on a bit of a whim) late in 2014, moved aboard this one right away and started to do our refit while living board.  We are avid fans of Cruising Outpost and Good Ole Boat (Good Old Boat) magazines and love the ideas we get from them.

Please do share this video below or our blog with your friends and fellow forums people.  Thanks everyone and Happy Thanksgiving.