Tomorrow is the tree lighting ceremony at City Hall, followed by an old fashion downtown stroll. But when I looked for a tree, the blog photo shows what I found. I guess there aren’t any Colorado spruce trees in Florida.

I was talking to a woman in the laundry room. She said there is a sailboat with no mast anchored out near their Pearson 53. I didn’t know Pearson made such a boat. But back to the mastless boat. She said it had an electric motor and is covered with solar panels. Now who in their right mind would toss their diesel engine and replace it with ... oh wait ... well, I’m sure Pete and Sue aren’t reading this ... In Waukegan, a large power boat did the same thing. They became a solar powered boat, with a generator as a backup to charge the batteries that powered the engine. In all these cases the speed is limited to 5-6 knots. Not a big deal for a sailboat, but that is certainly slow for a large powerboat.

While walking the docks, I came across yet another abandoned looking boat, at least the bottom looked neglected. The name struck me - Paisley. I used to follow on Facebook ‘Paisley’s Pirates’. Sure enough, this was the boat. The last time I saw the boat was on Mackinac Island after the Mac race in 2014. They tied up next to me on the start of their grand adventure; this young couple with their young kids in tow. They sold their stuff and were going cruising, even though none of them had any sailing experience and the mom and some kids were prone to seasickness. Their path south was much like mine, but it was painful to follow. He complained that the halyards clanging against the mast kept him awake at night, but that has such an easy fix. They were going down the ICW, but he tried to go offshore once and do the Charleston to Jacksonville run that I did, but had to be rescued by a fishing boat. When his propeller fell off and he started looking for it, he had no idea what his propeller even looked like. They made it to the Bahamas, but the adventure fell apart soon after that. Then they tried to lease the boat in Florida, but nothing on the boat worked apparently (according to the owner of the boat right across from Paisley). So now the boat is supposedly going to be repossessed soon. Sad. It was a nice boat. Hmmm ... upgrading to a bigger Dufour ...

There were fireworks tonight. Not extensive, but a nice diversion.