Boat Show

Heres a giant goose that protected the house at which we bought Mike a bike. The owner says that he just showed up one day.
Michael Neder and Beth Rowe got married. Ben began celebrating before the church ceremony.Brett post-wedding, pre-waffle house
This thing (a mudskipper?) tried to attack Luc as we waited for a ride the first night we were in town. It just kind of flops around to where it wants to go. This one wanted to cross a divided highway.


The past few weeks here have been hrd work as well as a lot of fun. We have been getting the boat ready for Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show. The work has been waxing the paint coat, acid washing the teak wood, bleach cleaning the cushions and other tiring physical labor. We have had a good group of help on many of the jobs. My friend and former boss Tony from Steverino's pizza in Athens now lives down here and was a big help. The other two kids are day workers from a crew house and are a good time. Hard Timin' Simon is a kid from Oregon who recently got arrested for getting drunk and falling into the New River. He learned his lesson in jail. John is the other dayworker from texas and is quite possibly the funniest story teller that I have ever met. He has a great perspective on life, a great texas drawl and hundreds of phrases like "Man that engine room is slicker than boiled okra" and "Stand up straight, boy! A crooked spine is the Devil's rollercoaster" I've been over to the crew house a couple of different nights. It is a crazy place with 13 kids from all over the world living in a 3 bedroom house.

Mike and i have continued to visit South Beach with Lb for some good cuban food, surfing, kayaking, and topless beaches.

I made it up to Atlanta for the wedding of Michael
Neder and Beth. Ben and I made it up to athens for a night to see some friends and drink some beers. I was really only there for 9 hours or so and therefore didnt get to do all of the things that I would have liked to do. I'm gonna try to make it back soon.

We've been mostly stationary so that we can do work on the boat. We did make it out for a sea trial after we had some work done on the engines. This is the result of 8 foot seas that day. Everything that was not stowed was somewhere else by the end of the trial.We had a good time on the top deck trying to hold on as we occasionally burried the bow of the boat into the crests of some of the waves. We were about 35 feet above the water line and were still getting wet. Getting tossed around is fun for a bit, but days at sea like that would be pretty unpleasant. 35 foot seas, on the other hand, would probably not be fun at all.

The boat show happened and we were ready for it. we had worked through the weekend to finish everything. At the show, our boat was situated next to two other identical boats in the Westport display. The boat show was fun as there were plenty of cute girls and free food and drinks. Each night a different Marine/Yacht company threw a big parties. I got to see a lot of familliar faces that I had worked with in Newport. We gave a bunch of tours to potential buyers, byt we only had one guy with serious interest. He has been back and forth with the broker so many times that I have no idea what to think about weather or not hes gonna buy this thing. If it doesn't sell, it looks like the boat will stay in palm beach for the winter. As much as i have enjoyed this boat and the crew, I got into this whole thing with the hopes of seeing the world, so I might persue other options. Either Ill look into other, busier boats or Ill go somewhere where I can ski. The alps would be good, and I could hop on a boat in the Med for next spring/summer. I'd love some advice.

Mike and I just signed up for an Open Water SCUBA certification class. We also bought the movie "Open Water" about a disaster on a SCUBA vacation. We should be ready to dive after next weekend.
Luc makes the best of a calm wave day in Miami
LB and I find a treasure in a sweet nearby park called secret woods. Its a mangrove swamp filled with cranes, giant spiders and butterflies.

This is the city in which I live. I have found frisbee, some good friends, warm weather, the sea, and a free-sushi-during-happy-hour-place. So life is good. I hope that all is well every where else in the world.
This is from Peter Dempsey. My old team plays in the Classic City Classic in Athens this weekend. If you are around, try to make it out. It is the best college ultimate happening this fall. Sorry for the gap in posting. While I have been having fun and working hard, there haven't been any epic stories to record. Warm Winds and Following Seas

Fairhaven to Fort Lauderdle

On Monday night, the six of us and our boat pushed off from Fairhaven and began cruising south. The plan was plotted to follow along the continental shelf, keeping
us anywhere from 25 to 200 miles off shore. In order to continue traveling around the clock, we split up into three groups. I had the 12pm to 4pm and the 12am to 4am shift with
Mike's friend Chris from Boston. Luc got the 8-12 shifts with captain Mike and Peter and Mike got the sunset/sunrise shifts from 4-8. While it is nice to watch the sun rise and fall, 4am
is a hell of a time to begin anything. A watch shift involves watching the radar and charts for potential hazards, namely buoys, shallow water and other boats.
It is fairly empty once you get more then fifty miles off shore, but we have had to chance course to avoid some other fishing boats and cargo ships. Watch also involves
engine room checks every hour and plotting the course on a physical chart. Aside from the eight hours of watch each day, we are free to read, watch movies, play games, sleep, etc.
There have been some cool encounters with wildlife along the way. On the first morning just after sunrise, those awake were joined by 40 or so porpoise playing in the wake and jumping at the bow. Check out the
video. Later that day, we saw a smaller pod of porpoise, a jumping marlin and a jumping dolphin. Mike, who missed seeing all of these aquatic animal displays, claimed to have seen a mermaid.
The next day, we caught some 30-knot winds coming from a storm blowing off of Cape Hatteras and spent around 18 hours in 5-foot seas. This is very exhausting. No one got seasick, but no one really enjoyed the experience.
The next day, we found that we had two small finches that stowed away on the boat. They must have gotten caught in the heavy winds and were lucky to find a place to land. Luc was able to catch one of them a few moths and feed it.
We passed within 20 miles of Cape Canaveral and were able to see the two shuttles scheduled to launch on October 12th to fix the space station. On Friday morning, we arrived at the new river in Lauderdale and met up with the towboats to pull us up the river. We got in, did a four-hour wash down to remove all of the salt and finch poop. The shipyard is Roscioli and roughly 3 miles from the downtown area. It is a fairly industrial yard and has only covered slips. Our boat stays in a big enclosed room. This is good because it keeps it cleaner, but it also means that we are unable to work on the boat in the sun.
This weekend, we made it out to the bars, found treasure in a cool nearby park called secret woods and visited LB in South Beach for some surfing and surf kayaking. It was great and we will definitely be back to visit her. Peter left this morning for Atlanta. I really enjoyed getting to hang out with him. I think he might try to get into the industry as well. Luc, Mike and I are going to spend the day looking for a bike for mike, playing some ultimate with the local pickup group and watching some football. So, life is good and steamy down here. I will see many of you in a week for Mike and Beth Neder’s wedding. My car made it safely to Atlanta, which is good, because many people were convinced that it was going to get stolen and disassembled in a chop shop somewhere.