Ahoy maties! We have some bad news... The Catmandu, and this blog, have been taken over. The evil necromancer, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, has re-animated the dead to force the Catmandu crew to compete in some sort of food fight. Or fight to the death over food. We're not sure which. Anyhow, by now you might have realized that Captain Bill has left his computer and this blog unattended. Consequently, it is careening out of control at this very moment!
"Well then," you may well ask yourself "if not Bill, then who IS responsible for this wacky blog post that I am rapidly losing patience with?" The short answer would be Jessica and Kevin, which is short compared to the longer answer, Bill's daughter and her husband, which is still short compared to even longer answers. Compared to answers of about the same length, it's about an average answer. "I don't care about all that," you have undoubtedly scoffed "How did you people get on the Catmandu, and when will things be back to normal?" Those are certainly questions.
The answers to the questions asked by people-who-ask-easily-predicted-questions make for a pretty good story, but not quite as good a story as suggested by our first paragraph (although still pretty good when compared to slightly worse stories.)
We flew into Florida late Monday night with some uncertainty as to how we would travel the hundred or so miles from Pensacola airport to Turner Marina, near Mobile, AL. With a last-minute phone call, we established that Captain Bill and Admiral Chris had secured us a means of transportation, and that we would have no delay at all. Unbeknownst to us, however, was that our means of transportation was in fact their poor marina's courtesy car, which was not supposed to leave the county let alone cross state lines. We were also on schedule to return the car 5 hours later than they had arranged But thanks to some ketchup'd receipts and some smooth talking by the admiral, everyone managed to escape punishment; and we had arrived!
The next day, Kevin's boss (who is in China and only knows Kevin is on a boat
in theory) sent an urgent request for some work. Kevin therefore spent the day in front of a computer while Bill and Jessica got the boat ready for the week's trip and Chris took a swim. That night we went to dinner in downtown Mobile, AL with some fellow loopers. A fun time was had by all and surprisingly, many oysters were eaten.
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| Swimmin' Chris |
On Wednesday, we motored up to an anchorage in Wolf Bay, stopping at LuLu Buffet's bar for lunch. We spotted some dolphins on the way, although they didn't come quite close enough to scratch Jessica's itch for dolphin interactions. At Wolf Bay, we settled in for a pleasant night of card playing. Jessica and Kevin reintroduced Bill and Chris to Dominion, a fabulous card game that everyone should be familiar with. Bill and Chris in turn introduced Jessica and Kevin to Club 7, a card game that everyone should have just read about.
Thursday brought a trip to Orange Beach Marina (also known as the place with the best brochure). After an hour long trip that would have taken scant minutes by land, we arrived at a marina full of power boats. The harbormaster was flummoxed when he learned that we were a sailing looper catamaran, an oddity he had not come across in all his born days. After recovering from his confusion, he welcomed us and gave us a golf cart ride to Tacky Jack's, a restaurant we thought we'd left behind. After some appetizers, we returned to the boat and a tasty dinner. We played some more card games that are boring for you to read about but were fun for us to play.
After the card games, we were forced to take on the arduous task of writing this blog post which we are now finished with! Jessica can go back to reading the Hunger Games and Kevin can return to playing Dwarf Fortress on his computer.
