A Celebration for Randy!

Sometimes a picture says it all............

 Yesterday took us out of Annapolis for the day and over to Cape May, NJ.  We rented a car and headed over to Lewes, DE to catch the ferry to NJ.  It is a nice boat ride and we elected to keep the car in the parking lot and ride, walk around town to the celebration.

Heading out of DE

And into the Cape May ferry terminal

Our destination

As many of you know Randy passed to the other side of the walk on June 6th after a battle with melanoma.  Not a man to do anything conventional, he always was thinking about an alternative way of doing something in what ever he was working on.  Our paths crossed many times over the years and Randy, Janet and their daughters, Faith & Grace (to us they were "First & Goal) became some of best friends.  More times than not they were ahead of us on the race course but it never mattered when we hit the beach for a cold one.

One of the craziest times Anne, BobO & Randy had was the cross country trip to Santa Cruz for the Hobie Nationals.  He thought they were going to starve him as whenever they pulled into a gas stop Anne & Bob just wanted to drive again.  That was until he yelled...."Dudes......how about some food!!"

The girls have grown up......

Still "First & Goal to us!

We saw a lot of old friends that we sailed with for many years during our time on the Hobie 16 circuit.

Jen, Faith & Rob 

Becky, Gwyn, Jen & Andrew

Randy always had one of largest and coolest watches during the Hobie days.  To cut some of the tension of everyone yelling at one another at the start we would always try to find Randy & Janet to ask them a question.  Randy would then hold up the big watch and we say "thank you!!"  The next time we are on a race course starting line I know we'll have one question we'll yell to whoever is next to us......."Randolf, how much time!??"

Osprey Marina can cooler in action!

Everything that gets put on a sailboat should have more than one use. It helps by not having everything man has created on board including the "kitchen sink"!  Well, Evan has helped us in that avenue so now we have something on board that keeps milk cool also!!

Good job Capt. "E"!

Meanwhile....back in Annapolis.....

We are spending time now trying to get Nati ship shape for the fall season.  Anne has the teak looking good, we did our first diesel polishing to keep the fuel clean and I'm going to do some cleaning in the engine rooms to keep the soot and grim to a tolerable level.  It's nice not to come out of the engine room looking like a person shoveling coal all day!

OK, back to work......

Who says you can't beat batman??!!

OK, here we were......all but ready for a nights sleep at 204 when, I spot a questionable item in the bathroom that resembled a mouse with the ability to hang upside-down from wall paper....Hmmm??  Didn't know mice could do that.

Oh Boy........mice can't fly!  Yes, batman arrived and now the match is on!!!

1. Get the window open.......but first take out the air conditioner since it's the only window without a screen.
2. Arm yourself......in this case the weapons of choice are a toilet bowl brush and a piece of window shade laying around.
3. Have backup as Anne was waving the fan behind me.
4. Now fight the bat out the window.........

Well, after a few minutes he gets the hint and heads east out the window.  We didn't have to shoot him out of the sky and I didn't have to pick up a dead bat.

Sure hope that bat is happy for that!!            Just another night of fun at 204.

204 cleans up at the Jr Olympics!

As a follow up to the earlier post we were able to sail back to the Annapolis area on Sunday to see Trey & Gabe wrap up their 2012 win in the Hobie 16 class.

15 boats were present for the 3 days of racing and I believe their finishes were:

1, OCS (they crossed first also), 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 2............very good you guys!


Congratulations ........great sailing!!!!!!

204 is in the house!

The first day of racing for the Junior Olympics in Annapolis is about to start.  Trey and Gabe are the fleet's entry this year so we wished them much luck.  Now they need some more wind as it is only blowing about 7 knots on the Bay.

204, 204, 204!

3rd of July party on the Severn River

Every 3rd of July a housing community named "Sherwood Forest" starts the holiday off with a very good fireworks display.  Hundreds of boats come up to Round Bay to watch so we decided to be part of the party.....Lots of boats!

Of course Captain Evan was the parties main attraction and he didn't let us down.  Lots of swimming, boating and friends.  Tim & Natalie  even came out with the family Pearson monohull.

The Pearson!

E-man being very cool!

For the 4th we watched a huge display in Annapolis.  The finale was great and we have a video of it but for some reason I can't get it on the blog.......but I'll keep trying!

Boom!

We know what hot feels like now!

So what do you think???  Warm enough????......

The temp above is in our main cabin and the "out" temperature is in the freezer.  How about somewhere in between!

The evening I took a picture of the thermometer is when the wicked front came through.  They had 60+    knots at the Navel Academy and it sure seemed like a lot of wind here!  Nati came through just fine but a few boats had some damage such as bikinis, chairs, cushions, etc.