One of the great things about Fort Myers is that it's on the Okeechobee Waterway, and thus not only can you get from here to Key West, but from here to the Bahamas also, without going around the Florida peninsula, provided your draft isn't too large. It also means that there are many sheltered places upriver to keep your boat in hurricane season. As H-season gets worse each year (on average), this is a valuable circumstance of real estate, from a boatie's perspective.

We are all healthy and attending work with proper Covid-safety precautions. Grant's college is considering being entirely online for the fall semester; that would be really different for them as they pride themselves on small conference-style classes, but I think there's a novelty and future-orientation to it that kind of also makes it an adventure.

Wishing you all safe harbors, virus-free voyages and sweet sailing!

That's the update, haiku style:

She is on the hard
awaiting work in a yard --
One day, little boat!!!

So, while *we* are figuring out where to haul and do some work on Parallax, our newlywed awesome friends are on their first hairy-chested sea adventure to the Abacos... so catch up with them here: https://www.sailblogs.com/member/cyana/

The thrills, the shallow waters, the Second Anchor (some assembly required)!

Raise your Kalik in cheers to Carly and Shawn!

What a thrill, one of our (former, graduated) students and her beloved have purchased an awesome catamaran and have started living aboard!

Sorry no posts for more than a year, but that's life in a slip, ashore in a house... sailors can forget who they were, too, like mermaids who sprout feet. So, thanks to Carly and Shawn aboard S/V Cyana (right here on SailBlogs), who have reminded us!

Because I am a slow grader who makes lots of comments, I am practicing improving my grading speed with the summer class I'm teaching online. My department chair suggested using a timer, so I am trying it now... will report on how it's going!

Derek is getting ready for the next Navy duty. We were planning a rather stay-at-home summer after returning from the Cool Stars conference (Harold was there! And Dave H! Awesome to see them both!), but it hasn't worked out that way -- Ed passed on, so I had to make a trip to New Jersey, and the Navy told Derek he's teaching a class at PSNS next week because the person who normally teaches the class has to replace her boss in his duties -- because her boss disappeared in the fatal Washington State landslide. So, effectively, a landslide changed our plans.

Grant is taking a class this summer that his schedule wouldn't allow him to fit in last year, so I expect to be regaled with tales of international relations and governance for the next few weeks! As usual, he loves the class, the teacher (history PhD) is awesome, and better still, the dress code is more relaxed in summer :-)

We went to the festivities in downtown Fort Myers for the Fourth of July. It was a crowd scene, but in the middle of it there was a reserved-for-veterans space with seating, hosted by a local veterans' group. Derek being a veteran, we asked and were allotted tickets for the family. What a wonderful surprise!

Some "cheap cruiser" recipes:

Cheap Cruiser Pina or Guava Colada
8 oz pineapple juice or guava nectar
2 oz (6 TBS) International Delights Almond Joy coffee creamer
Blend those two together thoroughly, this is to keep the creamer from getting a little "grainy." Then add:
2 oz rum (shot)
Blend with crushed ice or just shake. Far fewer calories than an equivalent amount of pina colada made with Coco Goya, and a lot cheaper, besides. Tastes good, too. Probably kill me by Thursday...!

Farewell to Ed, who made lieutenant before retiring from the Port Authority police, who remarried a few years after being widowed and had a 20-year happy marriage with my godmother, Marilyn, and who was a veteran of WW 2 Pacific theater (Phillippines). A lifetime of service to others and a great sense of humor, slipped away over time via Alzheimer's, which steals your loved one's personality and mind before finally stopping his autonomic functions. The farewell was to the man we knew and loved, who was trapped in a container which didn't even allow him to say goodbye properly. The farewell was properly done, with two police from the honor guard the day of the viewing, who delivered the final salute, with a police piper playing him into the church with Dawning of the Day (an unusual selection, overtones of Raglan Road or perhaps William Bloat), with a mass and choir, with the piper playing him out to the hearse on Amazing Grace (more appropriate), and with two other police honor guard saluting on entry and exit. Finally, at the mausoleum, two US Army honor guard saluted him into the building, played taps and conducted the flag folding, presenting it to the widow, who will send it on to his son-in-law who's now the acting paterfamilias, to be left to one of the grandchildren's households.

That was all done well, very appropriately, very movingly. Ed's grands and his son-in-law will have some good and moving memories of the process, which spanned two days. And it was very good to see them, to get to know them a bit; Ed was proud of them while he was lucid, and they deserved to be proud of him -- of who he had been and what he had lived through.

In the words of my once-office-mate, Paul, "Oh, never mind, oh never mind, oh never mind, oh never mind --
Oh, come and join old Dabney,
And you will never mind .. !"

That's about right. Good things: music, Grant, Derek, family and friends.
Bad things: oh never mind. [CalTech: The Dabney House Song]

Let's go here, instead: