Free Beer

Hehehe...wonder how the title of this post will impact blog traffic. Well, read on...the offer is there.

In my last post I mentioned that I met the folks at Diving Into Cruising via my blog.  They sent me a note after recognizing that my "Christmas Card" post was a picture from St. Augustine.  Well, shortly after they sent me the cool video they did of my renaming ceremony included in that post, I met another couple that found me through this blog.

John and Mary from Moondance arrived at Brunswick Landing Marina, where I am currently docked, late last Friday and sent me an email after they arrived.  We got a chance to meet in person Saturday.  They came over to Rover and found me doing what I do a lot of these days...fixing things.  I was working on my windlass that decided that it only wanted to work going down and not it's more important function of pulling the anchor back up and I was cleaning up some more poor wiring practices trying to rectify the condition when they arrived.

We had a couple beers and swapped stories on embarking on this cruising lifestyle from repairs, enhancements, cruising plans, and the journey of going from complete novices to cruisers.  We then met for dinner at the local pizza place after I finished up a few chores on the boat where the stories continued.  We had a nice evening and it was great getting to meet yet another couple that share the dream of cruising.  Of course I forgot to bring my phone or camera along so again I have no pictures...one of these days I might remember to do that.

As it turns out (and if my memory were better I would have put this together before we met) they are the new owners of the nice Fountaine Pajot Tobago that my wife and I looked at in Miami.  It was the cleanest of the boats we had looked at and I'm sure they will be happy with her.  I think they have a very nice boat.

The Tobago 35 when we saw her in Miami

At this point I've either met or have been in touch with people that have bought or looked at several of the boats I ran across while we were shopping for ours.  While the cruising community is very transient in nature it seems to be a fairly tight knit group and I have to admit I feel closer to to many of the cruisers I've met in person or on the internet than I ever did with most of my neighbors back in the 'burbs.

And that gets me to the title of the post.  If you ever find yourself in my area and would like to talk about this crazy thing we are doing, feel free to drop me a line.  I've added a widget on the right hand side of the blog so you can send email from there without having to play the email address riddle game I was using to avoid posting my email address and ending up on a thousand spam lists.  I'll have a cold (if the refrigerator cooperates) beer waiting for you.  And if you are not in the area but want to chat by email instead of on the blog, please feel free to do that as well...but sorry...I can't email a beer to you. ;-)