Bouncing Kitty and The Red Otter

We watched the Giants beat the Pats last nite at a Superbowl party here in the Marina. It was a fantastic event, and they had about 75 people upstairs and downstairs having a ball. Great food, great conversation, and an overall great time. Karen was there to help us party, and it was a lot of fun.

This past week was marked by several kitty events, and the start of some serious efforts to figure out how we are actually going to get to France. We had made some inquiries about shipping the boat, but the outfit in Ft. Lauderdale that does this was only able to give us quotes from Ft. Lauderdale to Genoa, or St.. Thomas to Southampton. We called them on Thursday and they say that they can likely take us from Ft. Lauderdale to Southampton in late April, which is a bit early for us, but doable. We also exchanged emails with one clearinghouse for delivery captains, and a local fellow who does deliveries. He came out to the boat on Sunday AM, and we talked quite a bit about having him and his wife help us, and he is quite enthusiastic. We are waiting for a proposal from him and the clearinghouse, and will make a final decision this week. The really hard part of this may turn out to be the cats, because Air France has a 6kg weight limit on animals in the cabin, and we also have 4 cats to move. We are looking into the possibility of having jlm take a containership with the cats, if we can convince them to let her take them along.

We ate out more this week than any other week since Charleston, and discovered some nice dining spots. The first one was Osceola Cafe in downtown Stuart. We went there for breakfast when we found the Pelican Cafe was not open on Wed AM for breakfast (only Th-Su). The Osceola was full of people, and both the egg sandwich and the bagel with hummous were tasty and delicious. They also provided LARGE mugs of tea. We eventually made it to the Pelican Cafe on Sunday, but were dissapointed, because there was only one server and she was overloaded. The grilled raisin-bread was nice, but the eggs were cold (not enough help). The location was superb, though, at the foot of the Roosevelt Bridge.

Wahoo's here in the marina continues to amaze us. Their seared tuna is a favorite and we combined it with steamed clams for a nice pre-Superbowl lunch.

Saturday we went up to Ft. Pierce with Karen and Pete to The Ramp, which is a small hole-in-the-wall raw bar. rxc had the "snapper reuben" and jlm the grilled flounder sandwich, which were quite good. We have noted that there are lots of faux-"reuben" sandwichs down here, with all kinds of fish, turkey, and chicken substituting for pastrami. Pete thinks that the transplanted NYers insist on having their favorite NY sandwiches, but since their doctors won't let them eat meat, the restaurants have come up with "healthier" versions that keep most of the flavor. You can also get real reubens, if you wish, but they are not widely available.

The kitties had an exciting week. Calpyso finally got up the courage to leave the boat and go ashore, on Wed evening. Unforunately, rxc had finished installing the netting on that side of the boat that day, and she did not notice it when she went to jump back on-board. She bounced off the netting and tried to grab the toe-rail, but was not successful. We had to use the net to help her up the piling that she grabbed onto. She is now convinced that she should NOT leave the boat, under any conditions - there lies trouble....

Dante has been fixated on the new large boat tied up behind us, and has been extremely willful about jumping up and down onto it. Sat AM, while rxc was filling water tanks, he took off down thepier at a good clip, and when warned not to do anything bad, he decided to do exactly that, and tried to leap up on their highly-varnished handrail. Normally he would have made it ok, but that morning there was a heavy dew, and everything was quite wet, so the varnished handrail was quite slippery. He tumbled about10 feet down the side of the big boat into the water. He immediately turned and swam to our stern, about 50 feet away, where he tried to haul himself out. Unfortunately, the dinghy was in the way, and rxc had to give a hand. jlm was on the pier when he swam underneath, and she says that he looks just like a red otter swimming thru the water. It was a fantastic sight. Unlike Calypso, however, this does not cause him any hesitation about jumping ashore. He wasn't even dry before he decided to try to go ashore again. Boys...

The damn high-output alternator is still not here, and we will have to call Jackrabbit this AM. They promised to ship it in January, but we still don't have any shipping details. This is not good, because we hope to leave in 9 days.

More later after we attend to various chores...