Our friend Alan of Moonlight Maid walked into the store yesterday afternoon just before I was scheduled to come home. How great to see him again looking hale and hearty and sporting a healthy looking tan. Moonlight Maid was one of the three boats from Halifax that left Newport on 1 November last year heading for Bermuda on one of the two that made it. As were the ones that put back with damage; they lost their storm anchor and their engine stopped working but they arrived. Moonlight Maid has spent since then about as far south in the Caribbean that you can go but Al tells me that their plans are to bring their boat back to Halifax over the next season. Perhaps they'll become another like us - summers in Halifax and cruising down to southern US and the Bahamas for the winter. There are worse kinds of snowbirds to be. We citizens of the Rigid Frigid are quite lucky to have close neighbours to the south that have nice cruising grounds within their warmer regions.

We had a wee bit of nautical excitement today. Every year there are at least two boats that stay at a mooring or at anchor in the North West Arm, a long finger of water that separates the Halifax Peninsula from what used to be the villages of Armdale and Herring Cove, right up until they almost get iced in. They refuse to believe that the water will freeze (it's the ocean, for Pete's sake). Most often they are people that either won't or can't fork out the moola to join one of the two yacht clubs that are on the Arm or one of the local marinas to pay for storage and they are hoping to have a cheap place to winter their boats. No matter how much the locals try to explain that they are in a bad spot, they are convinced that it is just a matter of selfish locals trying to protect their "turf". It is their God given right to drop a mooring wherever they choose in the Queen's waters and no damn yachtie is going to tell them otherwise. Well, every year someone gets iced in and they either get damaged or if they're really lucky there will be a flash thaw and they can get the boat out. The problem is that most of them are absentee owners and are somewhere else often not even in Nova Scotia. What was the excitement that I spoke of at the start of the paragraph? Well, this year one of them broke away from their mooring and drifted over to Regatta Point where they ran aground. Fortunately for them one of the selfish locals went out and got them off the shore and either put them on another mooring or set their anchor for them. Whoever did that is a much more magnanimous person than I am as I would have been tempted to save the boat (after all, you couldn't watch a boat come to grief just because the owner is being foolish) but I would have been tempted to get a hold of a maritime lawyer to see about salvage rights and claims. However, come to think about it, there are enough of us that are having health issues. The problem with the owner could simply and unfortunately be that they aren't healthy enough or are having some sort of personal or financial problems that they have to deal with to be on top of boat problems. I guess I have better haul in my horns and be more like the fellow that helped out. Bad, nasty ol' me!

I am writing this fairly early and getting it posted as I will be going in for a short stint at the store today followed by running about to pick up Barb; she is getting buffed and fluffed at hair parlour which is part of the spa where she gets the major feel good stuff done; and then we will be rushing home to await the arrival of our daughter who will be driving in from Saint John to spend Christmas with us. Have I mentioned that I am so excited about it that I can hardly sit still. I think I understand Peri with all his hind end wiggling when we come home at the end of the day. I'm glad I don't have a tail. I would be waaaaaaay too obvious!