November 2012 to January 2013

Summer, 2012

The dahlia show.  Bill took hundreds of pictures of the over 2000 vibrant, surreal flowers

Our four months in Comox was a LOT more fun than the previous year, and I was able to glimpse, at least,  the notion of being happy there.  We had ten days WITHOUT company and I was in heaven!  What a treat to enjoy our friends and family!  Turns out Comox is a more attractive destination than Edmonton.  Who knew?

Build, Bail & Sail at Nautical days

This was a hoot as teams signed up to make a boat out of $85.85 worth of materials and their own hand tools.  Then they raced out to a buoy, changed places in the boat and finished the race.  Needless to say, many did not complete the race.

April Point No Smoking Sign

Cathedral Grove, a most magical place - Bill took this picture

Pat and Laura got married in New Jersey in December.  We are delighted to welcome this lovely young lady to the family.  They are pictured here at Trent Falls just south of Courtenay

Seals at Comox Harbour where everyday at 6p.m. we can purchase freshly caught fish.  Delightful!

I lucked out to find some really good girlfriends who provided me with entertainment, information, and connectivity to the major goings-on on the Island and who continue to share with me their lives, loves and livers (I hoist a few in their honor and absence, and they do the same for me) from afar.

September, 2012

At the condo in Florida, we enjoyed our friends there too enormously.  Our best friends and boating buddies made the shocking decision to quit cruising and go back to work after 5 plus years of retirement.  Everybody thinks he’s lost his mind(!)  but Chris had been becoming increasingly antsy and disgruntled; he and Robin put their boat up for sale in Puerto Rico and moved to Houston, where he hopes to get a job.  While we wish them well, both of them are sorely missed and will be even more so from the Caribbean.

Robin in the lineup for grub at the Building A Party

But before they left, we headed out on a road trip to Alabama and Tennessee to see the sights and visit with boater friends, Troy and Betty from Betty Boop.  They own a Tara-esque plantation in Alabama and treated us to some southern hospitality, the likes of which we have only read about.

Antique Anthology sample

Jack Daniels where they make their own charcoal from the pallets you see.  It's in a dry county of Tennessee,  not too far from Marker's Mark and Jim Beam.  We think they can imbibe in spite of the interdict.    This was a very good distillery tour, and we've been on a few.  We can even remember some of them......

Chris blowing the conch aboard Kaos.   Last night aboard!  Allan and Susann (middle two) are now in Costa Rica checking out how it would be to emigrate there.  Do they know how to live, or what!??

We enjoyed a lovely round of send off dinners (thank you John and Sue!) and our good friends Pim and Eleanor even drove us to the airport, saving us a good deal of money and stress.  We left our great place there in the good hands of Binnie and Jim, again.

The day before our departure to the BVIs and the RSVP, we attended the Stuart Boat show in an effort to divert ourselves from the dragging time.  We weren’t expecting much compared to Annapolis, Fort Lauderdale and Miami Boat shows but were pleasantly surprised at both the number and variety of vendors.  It proved to also be the germination of a new plan and potentially the start of an altogether new adventure. 

We both fell in love with a tug/trawler powerboat, which is sort of a natural progression from sailing. (the older you get, the more important your creature comforts).  We still enjoy the flexibility and stamina afforded to us by the contortions, climbing, pulling and lifting on our sailboat.  The challenge of fitting 20 pounds of sausage into a 10 pound casing never loses it’s appeal.  Boldly going where no (sane) man has gone before (without a biohazard suit) and relying on the wind, waves and dramamine to get us places.   We’re thinking of selling the sailboat (Bill tears up a bit here), buying a trawler (IF the stock market is good to us) and bringing the new boat to Comox.  That means going to Cuba, Mexico, Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, through the Panama Canal and up the west coast of North America.  Fun, huh?  Other people have tried it, and some of them even lived! At this point, it’s just a pipe dream.

We arrived safe and sound in Nanny Cay, after dragging one awkward 50.4 pound duffel bag and one 49.6 pound rolly bag, and lugging two 40 pound carry-ons, all the while smiling and pretending they weren’t that heavy so we didn’t get charged extra.  I think I have a hernia.  Do women get hernias?

Bill boarding RSVP - note the buffer on the left

The way it works down here is that you leave your boat for 8 months, with the instructions to fix this and repair that – which will be extremely costly – you arrive to find that they started the work the day you arrived and so an extended hotel stay is required before you can put the boat in the marina, where it takes an additional week to get all things working and stocked.  If you want to bitch about it, stay in North America, where everything runs on time. 

Our hotel was lovely except for the roosters, who can’t tell time and are cock-a-doodle-doing at all hours of the night, and frequently from our patio.  Even with this extreme provocation, Bill will not let me get a gun.

The pool next to the beach.  Not too shabby!

Best marina bathrooms in the world.  Believe it!

This is what happens when the Captain has more $ than IQ

$1.3M EU - sunk after 2 days off a well marked reef.  Salvage value: $50,000US

Check it out on Youtube

The two marina restaurants are both excellent.  At The Gennaker the waiter, Devon, provides boundless energy and million watt smiles to all his customers.  He could give positivity lessons to Tony Robbins.  Everything is, “Bes on de eye-lan”.  Other than that and the word, “Well-come” we don’t understand a word he says.  The other restaurant, Peg Legs has wonderful upscale food, about the same caliber as Cheesecake Café.  But the view is world class; it’s elevated one floor, open air and oversees on three sides either the beach and ocean or the marina and boats.  We are entertained again by pelicans, which dive bomb the water from great height and at a ferocious speed for fish.  They’re hilarious.

                                                               "Bes on de I-lan" 

Bill at Peg Legs. " It just doesn't get better than this."

Dinner with friends at Peg Legs

Joyce & Dave (Autumn) Vancouver, Sue & Bruce (Andiamo 35) Calgary

and Terry (AFloat) Edmonton

The marina has been hit with an outbreak of Dengue Fever, which is no fun.  Three confirmed cases spread by mosquito bite.  There is no cure, just treated like a bad flu and tough it out.  One couple here arrived in November and left yesterday after a severe bout.  The marina imported some oddball looking devices, powered by propane that fog the area and kill the mosquitos.  It appears to be working as no new cases have been reported.

Dengue Fever Fogger - does that breed confidence, or what?

Our trip out of the slings and into a slip was the usual RSVP clusterf’k.  The dockmasters failed to show, and owing to our advanced seamanship –guffaw, guffaw - that normally doesn’t bother us too much anymore, but on this occasion we really could have used some dockside help.  We were assigned the T of the short leg of an E dock (middle leg much shorter than the two parallel docks.)  We had to approach straight in as the channel was very narrow, and the plan was to rotate the boat once the front was close enough for Bill to jump out and tie us up sideways.  My knees are too bad to be doing any jumping anymore.  So I WAS DRIVING!  In typical RSVP fashion, we got to the dock, I attempted to throw the knobby thingys into reverse but the right one wouldn’t budge and the left engine quit altogether when I threw it into reverse.  Augh!  So I ran out to the front, tried to push us back so that we wouldn’t hit the dock, or the other boat that our anchor sticky-outy things were now on top of!   In the meantime and unbeknownst to me, a couple of yahoos in marina employee t-shirts (where the F were they earlier?!)  were dinghying along,  saw our plight, and decided to ‘help’ by pushing us on the outside hindquarters with their dinghy.  The resounding thump gave me a freaking heart attack as I stalwartly put my body between the boat and the piling.  All those mop-squeezers  could say, was, “did you hit the dock?”  which we didn’t.  Or the other boat.  Bill got us tied up and we immediately headed for the bar.

You folks are so lucky to be learning all these nautical terms from me. 

You know you are lucky when:
1.   you have more bathing suits than dress shoes
2.  your husband says he likes you as much as he loves you
3.  getting up in the morning is optional

LIFE IS GOOD!