Jeorgia Sails Off --- Without Us!

Jeorgia has a new owner and we, on the other hand, simply own one boat now: Georgia. A real financial relief. Investing in sailboats is a bit like like Richard Branson said about the airline business: “The easiest way to become a millionaire is to start off a billionaire and go into the airline business.” The new owner is a project manager on the refit of the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln that is starting in Norfolk. She will have a life of ease, club racing and doing lazy afternoon sails on the Chesapeake. We hope she is well cared for. I explained to the new owner as he was getting ready to leave that the warranty was 90 days or 90 feet, whichever comes first.
I rented a car for a few days and drove up to DC to pick Chris up at the airport on her way back from San Diego.  We decided to do a day in DC being a tourist.

This is where our elected officials, aka Congress, diligently debate daily and reach wonderful and wise compromises that keep the country’s spirit up: supporting a health care system which provides the best results in the world at  the most economical price, diligently removing waste from the military budget, and ensuring that we will leave a better country with even better opportunities for our children than the one we inherited. We should all be thankful to ourselves for electing them.

We stopped into the US Botanical Gardens. Here’s a Venus Fly Trap to step carefully around.

Here’s the starter Venus Fly Traps – so dream on Meghan and Tyler (who are raising a killer fly trap in their kitchen).

Lots of long named orchids in bloom in the gardens hot house.

This is the congressionally funded research project into hybrid sunflowers. It is a cross between a giant sunflower and a TV screen.

A drinking fountain in the Smithsonian Museum. It reminded me of when I was a kid growing up in rural Florida, aka The South. The A&P grocery store I used to go into with my Mom had two fountains at the back. This was one of them.

Well we haven’t been lazy working on Georgia. Here’s the newly painted and refurbished windlass motor.

Here’s the new 77lb Spade anchor that the windlass will be picking up. Now we just need to get the new chain to go with it and we’ll be ready to sail.

Painting the dish rack.

To relax at night we watch our new flat screen TV. So far, not much on.

We finally got the new name on Georgia – and I think we spelled it correctly this time. Whenever you rename a boat there is an elaborate renaming ceremony that is required to avoid future bad karma. Part of it requires giving Neptune a drink of good spirits. The champagne was thoughtfully supplied by our friends Torbin (aka Capt Bligh) and Judy when we bought her in Nova Scotia. The rest of ceremony I will explain to Chris tonight.

Paul