He was late getting back to the boat,
With the clothing he needed to tote,
And a smile on his face,
For he’d found, in that place,
That it’s great fun to feed a small goat.

Here’s a picture of Barry feeding 4-day old Lucky, the tiny goat who was living in the laundry room at Osprey Marina:

~~~

This word once described her: Poquito.
But this bug, with her massive libido,
Must have slept with a cow,
For her offspring are now
Too huge to be called mere “mosquito.”

There once was a man with a frown,
And he glared at our boat, bearing down,
We escaped in disgrace,
From that look on his face,
But our new spot’s the best one in town.

In Wrightsville Beach, for the first time, we dragged anchor amongst other boats. Most of our neighbors were kind, except for one who sat on his deck and stared. We had a lovely night by ourselves in another basin, free from fetch and wakes, with an excellent internet connection.

My thesaurus tells me that a synonym for “disgrace” is “dragged through the mud.”

The tourists in Southport today,
Signed up for a tour of the bay,
The first stop on their trip,
Was this Flutterby ship,
Which they circled, then puttered away.

Anchoring in the middle of Southport’s boat basin, home to fishing and charter boats, has made us a temporary tourist attraction. The skipper of the sunset cruise boat circled us, asking us questions and then explaining our answers to his landlubber tourists. Barry and I cracked up this morning, when one of the little charter boats slipped his lines and the voice of woman rang across the water, saying, “I hope this is not going to be like Gilligan’s…”
–

Though we stayed from December til May,
It was time to get back under way,
We had put our hook down,
In a posh Florida town,
And they just kicked us out yesterday.

Just kidding! The truth is complex –
No one in this fine town objects,
To our presence, in fact,
They speak to us with tact,
For my Dad’s the Crown Prince: “Vero Rex.”

He must be: He treats us like royalty!

Dad’s garage is our workshop, therein
Is the stuff that we’ll need to begin,
We will lay plywood flat,
And we’ll draw lines on that,
While his car is out, to his chagrin.

But what’s this? While her spouse was obsessed,
Margaret boarded a plane for the West,
She’s gone off to give care,
To a friend they both share,
Leaving Barry to sew all the rest.

So he lofted the panels and cut,
Out the sail fabric, cheerfully, but,
Figuratively, a wall,
Stopped the man. Then a call,
To his wife, got him out of that rut.

I’ll be helping with the sewing when I return later this week. And I’ve provided emotional support by phone every day. But please, feel free to leave your encouraging comments for Barry on the blog!

Oops… I just figured out that comments are disabled for the limericks section. That’s goofy! We’ll have to fix it one of these days, when we’re not making sails in Dad’s garage. Well, send him an encouraging email instead. But don’t tell him I said so.

There once was a lady named Ann,
She’s an awesome friend with a big van,
For our carless existence
Required help and assistance,
To begin on our junk sail-rig plan.

Said our friend, as to Lowe’s we propel.
“Please beware of the dog-mothball smell,”
With that big engine purring,
We hauled plywood and furring,
Don’t apologize, Ann: Your van’s SWELL!

As dear Flutterby hung on her rode,
We both got in our dinghy and rowed,
To our bikes, which we rode,
Down a nice, level road,
Meanwhile, Margaret composed this, Our Ode.

The problem with limericks is that sometimes they chase me down and refuse to leave me alone. This was one of those. “Go ‘way,” I said, but it didn’t. It followed me on my bike for 5 miles. It’s not even a proper rhyme, just a bunch of homonyms.
-30-

I’m wondering what are the odds
That people who call themselves “CLODs”
Would hang out with SLOBs
Who do not have jobs,
And party with one of their PLODs?

“It would be nice to find out about the weekly cruisers’ breakfast,” Barry said to me. We’d heard about it years ago through the Seven Seas Cruising Association.
“What do you mean, find out? Can’t we just go?” I asked.
He looked puzzled. “We’d have to find out when and where it is.”
“There’s a sign in the … uh … women’s bathroom…” Evidently, there was not a corresponding sign in the men’s room.

The sign advertised a weekly breakfast for cruisers and CLODs: Cruisers Living on Dirt. In other words, people who have “swallowed the anchor” here in Vero.
I told my Dad about the cute acronym. “I guess that makes you a PLOD: Parent Living on Dirt.” I suggested that he should join us for the boaters’ Happy Hour, and we would introduce him that way.
The next day, an email came from Dad, asking if he could “observe the SLOBs and PLODs thursday at the happily happy hour?”

SLOBs: I guess I asked for that.

To find the right words would be tough,
When “Thank you” is not quite enough,
Our lives wouldn’t be
Fancy free on the sea,
Without them to manage our “stuff.”

Every week or so, we get a cheerful note in our email box with the subject, “Mail underway…” We love Barry’s parents, our Camano Island angels, who make sure that our important mail follows us wherever we go! (And that the unimportant mail disappears into the recycling bin, almost as valuable a service.) It is impossible to express the depth of our gratitude to Mom and Dad in these five simple lines.

Yikes! The depth-sounder beeps, and I twitch,
There’s a red one — a green one — but which?
Whew, I’m glad they’re not pink,
For these nav-aids, I think,
Are quite Christmassy here in the Ditch.

Anyone who has “done the Ditch” knows how critical the red and green markers are. After grueling sun-up to sun-down days at the helm, we see them in our sleep and sometimes have nightmares about going on the wrong side of one.

For you landlubbers (and Lee), here are some photos of the markers I mention above.
Top to bottom:

1. What happens when you miss a marker. (The haze here is from a wildfire, no relation to the wreck.)
2. Another red one — with an eagle perched on it.
3. This is what a green one looks like in the fog. Or is that a red one? Believe it or not, this is the Georgia-Florida border. Where are the palm trees?
4. Here’s what the markers look like on the chart — Hell Gate was aptly named. No range markers, just aim and hope.
5. Barry smiles in relief after he makes it through Hell Gate. It only **looks** like there’s water there.

The clock said two-thirty today,
When the boat ceased to be underway.
We have busted our buns,
For these two little ones,
OK, kids, it is now time to PLAY!

We are moored at Cocoa, Florida, having been on the move (except for three groundings) from sunup to sundown for 8 days. We’re exhausted, but there are cookies to bake and a boat to clean.

Why the rush? We wanted to rendezvous with Barry’s nephews and their parents before they fly back to Ohio. So tomorrow, we get a special treat — a visit from Emanuel and Gabriel. That’s like an early present from Santa! We must have been very good this year.

We’ve encountered some sand and some rocks,
And we’ve tied up at places with docks,
But the further we roam,
From that boatyard called home,
Then the more I get homesick for Bock’s.

I called the boatyard today to catch up on the news and find out whose boats have splashed. I miss our friends there a lot — both human and feline!

This day’s turning into a dud,
As I sit here and wait for the flood,
No longer afloat:
I have grounded my boat.
My name is not Meps, it is MUD.

She floated free after about an hour and a half of sitting outside the Beaufort Marina, staring at the Beaufort Hospital. A good time was not had by all, but we’re OK now.