This entry is for February 5, Super Bowl Sunday. I'll have to correct the date when I add the pictures. I don't know if I can change the date on these remote posts and I didn't write this until the sixth, so that's the date that will post.

Anyway, since we didn't leave Long Island we decided to go to the Super Bowl Party being held at the Long Island Breeze restaurant. Fuzzy had seemed really anxious to get off the boat again during the day yesterday, so we decided to take him and his bed and set him up in the breeze-way area on the ground floor while we went up into the restaurant on the second floor for the festivities. While we were getting ready a call came over the radio for any boat in the Thompson Bay area. Gideon answered, the boat furthest to the north and west. The caller said the couple on Margareta had just called them on their cell phone from their dinghy and they'd lost their engine. Fairhaven, the caller, asked if Gideon could see them, if they were getting back to their boat OK. Gideon couldn't, but we are anchored right behind Margareta, so I stuck my head out and saw them, just about 50 yards from their boat. I got on the radio and let Fairhaven know that they were OK. It was too late for us to go assist them. They made it back to their boat before we could have gotten in our dinghy. At Bud's suggestion, I called them to see if they wanted to ride with us over to the Super Bowl Party. They were very grateful for the offer, and if we didn't mind, they would love to come with us. We finished getting our stuff together and went and picked them up. With four of us and Fuzzy in the dinghy (Fuzzy was in his front pack) we couldn't get the boat up on plane, so it was a slow ride and we all got a little splashed, but we didn't mind at all. It was nice to get to talk to them, we've been anchored right near them for a couple of weeks, and hadn't really met them. It turns out that Fairhaven isn't a boat, it's a house! It's a couple from Cleveland that has a house here on Long Island for the winters and an RV back home in Cleveland for the summers. They've gotten to know a lot of the cruisers over the years, so they ended up getting a VHF radio to talk to them. They were very happy that we'd given Bill and Margaret, from Margareta, a ride, since they'd made plans to meet them at the Long Island Breeze, but they have no boat and no way to help them get there.

The couple on Camelot that had organized the Monday night get together also added some extras for the cruisers get together last evening. They set up a conch horn blowing contest and a football pool. I took my trusty conch horn in and came in dead last on the horn blowing contest. I'm not sure if mine is difficult to blow, if I don't have the technique down, or if I just don't have any lung capacity, but the best I could do was a 9 second blow. I'll have to practice. I think by was of a consolation prize they gave me a certificate for best looking conch horn. Mine tied with another really gorgeous horn that was made from a different king of shell, the man thought it was a Trident. He'd bought the shell locally and made it into a horn. My shell isn't that pretty, but being made from a conch just harvested and since it's never been in the sun, it's not bleached so the colors are very nice, especially the pearly pink inside the shell.

The football game was fun to watch. Most of the folks seemed to be Giants fans, so they were happy. Bud bought two squares for the football pool and we would have won $10 if the Patriots had made a field goal in the last seconds of the second quarter instead of the touchdown they got. Oh well, we don't often win anything like that. I met the couple from Fairhaven and talked to Penny, the wife, for a while. We talked to some of the other friends we've made here at Long Island and actually stayed for the whole game. I think the folks from Fairhaven left after the third quarter and Bill and Margaret said they would leave anytime we wanted to, but we ended up staying for the whole thing. Bob and Francie from Barefootin' gave Bill a ride home, so there were only 3 in each dinghy.

After the conch horn blowing contest Fuzzy finally gave up and laid down in his bed and slept through the whole game. I walked him a bit just before we left and he rode back to the boat in the front pack. It was amazing how well you could see. There were thin clouds over about a three-quarter moon and you could see the bottom in the six or seven foot deep water we ran through. One of the things that amazes me here is that the water still looks blue, even at night. Deep water looks black unless there's a lot of moonlight, but the shallow water looks blue, even by starlight.

I missed another beautiful picture. We had rain come through in the morning. We took Fuzzy ashore fairly early, it was just misting here and was raining to the southwest. There was probably the brightest rainbow I've ever seen. One end of it was right at the edge of the bay, it had a faint double rainbow and there was a third rainbow outside those two. The brightest rainbow was reflected in the water. I mentioned to some of the folks at the party how nice it is to be somewhere where rain is a treat!