The overcast today is partly due to the forest fire west of us in Lillian Swamp (it started from lightning yesterday)... ash is falling from the skies. The Lillian Swamp is so hard to get into that at 400 acres, the firefighters can only watch it from across the bay... it has to be 1,000 acres before they can justify fighting it.

Derek awoke with an earache, so instead of heading out to Quietwater, we headed to the urgent care clinic. Ken said he'd relay the message to the gang at the anchorage, and we hoped to catch up to him later. The doc prescribed some stuff to clear Derek's ear pain up, and said it would be a few days before it was really going to be better. We went to the Navy Hospital Pharmacy to fill the prescription, and that is where we first saw the ash falling from the sky. At this point, Derek would like to go to Quietwater when his ear is better: maybe tomorrow morning early to catch the Blue Angels show. Now that he's not leaving town for a class, there's not so much time pressure. But I hope we get over there, otherwise what do we do with all this beer?! :-)

Finished painting the registration numbers on the new dinghy. We defrosted the refrigerator (first time) and installed yet another clever device to keep it open... may this one last and work well!

We've been thinking about burgees recently; that's the little triangular flag one flies to signify that one is a member of some club or association or perhaps that one is serving drinks... anyway, last time we went to sea, we put up the SSCA (Seven Seas Cruising Association) burgee and didn't take it down for 18 months. That is one torn-up, faded, rather smelly (probably the big rubber band) burgee. It got us thinking, and we decided to join the Navy Yacht Club here in Pensacola. They are friendly and down-to-Earth, they hold (and participate in) regattas and cruising gatherings (gam, raft-up, rendezvous, what-have-you), and they are right on base at the Bayou Grande marina. So now, in addition to flying a new, non-torn, non-faded, non-funky-smelling SSCA burgee,
we'll be flying the Navy Yacht Club of Pensacola burgee:


We're hoping this will come in handy, at least along the Gulf coast and a Naval marinas.