Time To Get Caught Up!

The Winter Doldrums have taken their toll as evidenced by the lack of postings lately. The weather keeps teasing us....gets warm for a couple of days then turns windy, cold, rainy or just bleak and gloomy.

I attended another Cape Fear Singles Happy Hour last night at the "Circa 22" and enjoyed meeting several people. The Guinness was good and the company was most pleasant and hopefully a few will turn up for some sailing once the weather does finally turn good.

Good and bad news on the helicopter front....The PHI S-76 that crashed in Louisana is now thought to have been caused by a bird strike although no good answer on why the pilots lost control is forth coming. One survivor out of nine persons aboard on that one. A Bond Helicopters Super Puma flew into the water while making a night approach to an oil rig but fortunately all survived with minor injuries. Very tragic news in Newfoundland....a Cougar S-92 crashed after declaring an emergency and only one survivor from that one with seventeen dead or missing.

I watched a couple of Documentaries this week. One told the account of Sophie Scholl and the White Rose Movement she was a part in during World War Two. She, her brother, and some other students at the University in Munich got caught distributing Anti-Nazi/Anti-Hitler pamphlets and were arrested, tried, and excuted by guillotine. It was as moving a film as I have ever seen. The other film dealt with the atrocities committed by the Japanese Army in China and in other places they conquered during the war.

Ship's Cat Frady has a new game. There is a nice tree near the Marina Office that he enjoys climbing. It has lots of forks and branches that are easy for him to move around on. He crouches down by the wooden piling that marks off the parking lot and when I scratch the tree bark above my head he pounces....jumps to the top of the piling then into the tree and swats at my hand. Two or three repetitions of this and he is happy to go sight seeing on up into the top of the tree. I then head on into the shower and find him perched on the deck railing waiting for me when I come out.

Jessie, the wiener dog on the trawler across from my boat still has Frady's attention. Jessie barks at Frady and the Cat will perch on the bow of Luna and coldly stare at Jessie. Max, the Boxer at the shore end of the dock has treed Frady a time or two. I keep hoping ol' Frady will stand his ground one day as he is twice as big as Jessie and Max is just a big ol' goof who only wants to play.

Al Becker, Dockmaster at Matthews Point, spent a couple of days visiting. His Lady Sarah gave him a kitchen pass for the his weekend and he travelled down in his RV. We did the walking tour of Fort Fisher, visited the Museum, and had a few foaming ales at Jack Mackarals in Kure Beach. Later I took him to the Confederate Memorial at the OakDale Cemetery and explained to him why there were no memorials to Yankees in this part of the world.