THE PIN CUSHION IS BACK

May 7, 2012  Dateline: Cape Canaveral, FL USA

Rich and Carol got back to me on Saturday.  When Rich left more than a month ago, I thought he was sick.  When we got in from the Bahamas he did not wash me---in fact he barely hosed me off.  I knew something was wrong.  I have learned that he is really SICK.  The doctors just love to stick him with needles and IV hoses.  He is afraid to drink water because he is so full of holes he thinks it might leak out.  He told me that he receives two weeks of treatments and then gets one week off.  He and Carol told me that they would come back to me on the off weeks and move me closer to home.  This is an off week, so on Sunday morning they filled my tanks and off we went to Ft. Pierce some 54 miles north. 

While I was sitting in Old Port Cove Marina Rich hired someone to wash me, a really nice guy named Brian, who gave me a good detailing.  Boy did that feel good, he got the diesel soot off of me and I was nice and clean—just waiting for the two of them to get back.  When I got to Ft. Pierce Carol found out that something had gone wrong with my Satellite TV antenna and she can not Fox News, Rich did some basic checks but could not find the problem.  I hope he can put up with her withdrawal symptoms over the next week.

The trip from North Palm Beach to Ft Pierce was easy, the seas were flat and I ran at 20 knots almost the whole time.  Rather than going up the Intracoastal Rich told me to go out the Lake Worth Inlet and run in the ocean (Did I tell you I like deep water).  He told me that we have to make the Isle of Hope, GA by next Sunday, so my job is to get us there on time.

Carol took this picture going into the Ft. Pierce inlet on Sunday afternoon.  The sight looked a little different on the way going out on Monday morning.

While at the Harbortown in Fort Pierce, Marina Rich and Carol met two other Loopers, one of them they had met before in Mobile, AL.  It is strange that Loopers go their separate ways and six months later end up in the same place.

This morning I left Ft. Pierce and went back into the deep ocean water for the 70 mile run to Cape Canaveral.  Rich got me into the ocean, set my auto pilot and then he and Carol sat back and let me do all of the work, that was ok with me.  I can do a better job of steering a straight line than he can.  Humans!! There are not too many pictures today because all I saw was ocean, but here is one that Rich took of the Canaveral barge canal as I came in off the ocean.  Neither of us noticed the gray skies.  Of course there is always a silver lining in the gray skies and that is that I had time to do this posting.

My sister, Cindy, made this sign for Rich.  They are words for all humans to live by.