Happy New Year - Feliz Ano Nueva - Bon Anee!

OK - the spelling might not be correct, but the message is the same, and heartfelt. To all of you who stop in now and then, to check out my life living aboard my wonderful, old, fat boat, Annah Foster - Happy New Year!

I have just returned from the happy hour at the marina green, where there were at least 25 cruisers together for a glass of champagne, or cocktail, to begin the night. My good friends Jim and Norma and I talked for over an hour - yeah, tellin' lies, but having fun. For the rest of the night, the plan is dinner away from the resort, with my friend, Patricia, and then returning for the party here at the resort - we will miss the dinner, but there will be some games, Garifuna dancers, fire dancers, and Henry, our steadfast bartender - who can mix drinks and music with equal skill, will DJ the last bit for everyone to dance.

Pictures will follow. The celebration begins! Happy New Year, all!

The Best Christmas in Years!

Although I will never forget my first Christmas living on the boat, spent with my French friends, Josieanne and Jean, Bernard, and Peggy in St Martin, I think this year tops it -mostly because here in Honduras (Latin America and Mexico, as well), Christmas begins on the evening of the 24th of December and continues with gifts on the 25th, so I was able to celebrate for two days, instead of one. I cannot forget the open hearts and arms of my friends in SXM, though, who invited me to their tables so that I was not alone, and I love them and miss them.

Friday morning, I worked several hours writing a short all-denominational service which I had offered to anyone who cared to come by Annah Foster. But more about that later.

On the afternoon of the 24th, some of the cruisers met at the palapa restaurant, offered to us by the resort for the event, and began decorating. Below is Annie, who made all of the center pieces for the tables, as well as coordinating the whole party. Annie is one of those creative people who with some leaves, nuts, berries, and spray paint, can make a beautiful centerpiece or decoration. My friend Norma was chair, but Annie did a lot of the work, too. I am not so good at these things, but had donated 3 strings of Christmas lights. Later that night, I walked by and was amazed at how nice it looked. They returned the morning of the 25th and did even more. That's Annie, below.

Early in the evening I found my friend, Patty, and after talking a bit and having a drink or 2, I offered to take her out for dinner down the road at friend, Gary's restaurant, called The Deck Cafe. Not a very fancy meal, and I am a pathetic substitute for her friends and family, but I didn't want her to be alone, and we both had to eat something! You see, this is Patty's first time away from home and family at Christmas time, and since she has only worked here for a few weeks and lives within the resort, she hasn't had time to make many new friends. We agreed to a time. She arranged for a taxi to pick us up, went to her room, returned looking amazingly beautiful, and off we went for a nice meal - Gary's food is always so fresh and tasty. Patty's family and friends had not forgotten her and they texted her all evening, missing her. When we were returning from dinner in the taxi, I asked her if she wanted to be taken to the lobby, and she said No. Let's go to your boat. We took 2 Bailey's-on-the-rocks out to the gazebo, which is at the end of the point past the palapa. It has a platform at water level and ladder, and is a place where divers and snorkelers climb out of the water after a swim. At night the tarpon, baracuda, and sometimes a ray, will come in to feed on the smaller ones drawn to the bright lights. There we sat until 3 am, talking and laughing- it required a trip back to Annah Foster for a second round of Bailey's. While there, she received several phone calls and more texts - dinner and the celebration started at home at midnight and she was missed. Isn't she beautiful! With a beautiful heart.The following morning, I had to wake the old brain up and get my head cleared for the religious service I held at 10 o'clock. Only my friends Jim and Norma, and Patty had said they would attend, so I really didn't know if my idea would be a big flop (although, even alone, I always read the Christmas story in the Bible some time around the 25th, and would have done this regardless.) In the time prior to anyone showing up, I was able to contemplate, thinking of Mom and Dad - family and friends, counting my blessings.

Well, I never expected the crowd of folks who turned up. Let me try to count - OK, there were 11 adults and 4 young ones there - crowded into my cockpit, with my keyboard taking up space where 2 more could have sat. After we began, late arrivals started to come, hesitantly, and someone would wave them aboard, and everyone would scoot around and make room. When friend Nancy showed up about 10 minutes late, with a teenager and 3 children in tow, everyone welcomed them and squeezed together a little closer. I think everyone had a good time. I had prepared a formal program, trying to include parts that would be familiar to American Catholics as well as what I know from my Protestant upbringing. So we had a few carols to sing, a couple prayers, the Christmas story read from a Willis-family Bible - 1869 - that I have aboard, and when the kids showed up, we did some more carols for them - they are bi-lingual and knew the English words to the hymns. We concluded the service and passed around some nut bread that a couple had brought along and then sang some more carols. I am sure it lasted for over an hour, and almost every one of these folks came up to me later and thanked me for helping start off their Christmas day a better way and saying how much they appreciated it.

Patty lingered a while after the service and then left, promising to return to help me if I needed it, as I had 2 gag gifts to wrap, music and keyboard to pack up, and 2 pumpkin pies to bake. Well, the pies were a disaster! But I learned and will do better if I ever have to try again. One burned to the pan and the other was soupy!

When I first met Patty, and learned that she would be alone on Christmas, I asked her to be my guest at our Cruiser's Christmas party, although I was not sure if she would appreciate several hours with mostly old folks - mostly American, at that - who live on boats. She accepted. She returned from her room in time to wrap my rather bad choices of gifts for a "Chinese" gift exchange we held, which turned out to be a lot of fun. Her father had called and they talked for 2 hours. And then she helped me make the 2 trips to the palapa to take the keyboard, music, food, plates, and wine. And the party started. My friend Norma took this for us.

Skip and David played a couple high evergy pieces, to big applause, but I never played carols and traditional Christmas songs, as I had planned, mostly because our favorite bartender here was doing a great job DJ'ing the music for us, and mine would have dragged things down. Everyone was having fun.There were about 40 people who attended - Buddy Jim gets a lesson in the Blackberry from Patty. Sorry, Jim. You're too old to appreciate that modern electronic stuff.

Jim is an engineer, and amongst other international work he did in his career, he built railroads in Australia for several years. Hence, the train engineer's cap at the decorating 'party'. (He and Norma have decided to sell the boat and live on land again, making Roatan their home.)

I played the piano just enough so these 3 girls could sing a couple of carols again, with a larger audience. Here they were performing a dance routine they had prepared.

Jim and his love, Norma.

Steve and Cheryl - They were here when I arrived, and after she flew home for a few months, he showed me how to dink out to a channel marker, tie off, and snorkel the reef.

Jim and Norma and 'friend"

I cannot tell you what a wonderful holiday this has been. A piece of Paradise to enjoy. New friends. Some not-so-new. A beautiful friend, whose companionship I treasure, to share some time with. Some good folks who have not forgotten why we celebrate the holiday in the first place. Laughter. Fellowship. Fun. Quiet talks about life and Christmas mornings past.

I remember the last Christmas before Dad died -2005- when we were all together one last time as a family - and since then, Christmas has been a blur, as has been much of the rest of the calendar as the days flew by.

This was certainly the very best in a long, long while. Merry Christmas!

I am blessed!

Life is good!

Merry Christmas from Roatan

It's hard to take great pictures with my camera - or is it the operator? - but here are two I snapped one evening recently, after hanging Christmas lights on AF. I am in a prominent position for visitors coming across the bridge here at Fantasy Island, and so, thought I would dress her up a bit. (Truthfully, I don't think anyone really appreciates it, but is my small contribution to the Christmas spirit here, anyway.)

So, to all my friends and family back home - Merry Christmas from Isla Roatan, Honduras! Much love to all, and don't forget the reason for the season. I am blessed, and try to remind myself every day - failing sometimes, of course.

Life is great!

Christmas Memories and Traditions

I was fortunate enough to be raised in a wonderful, home - full of love. Some are not so lucky, but I cannot imagine anyone more lucky. We were not wealthy, nor affluent but were fortunate to live in a tiny and precious gem of a place called Rosslyn Farms, with about 120 homes and 6 miles from down town Pittsburgh. Dad was a bureaucrat, I guess. He eventually ran one of the branches of the courts systems. He started as a tipstaff (an old English term) for an old family friend who was a judge - Clarence B. Nixon - my friend Ingrid's grandfather, and he retired as the Chief Minute Clerk of the Assignment Room of the Civil Division of Common Pleas Court, in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. We were raised in a conservative Christian home (Methodist - no card playing allowed) which was full of love and happiness and, I think, some of the best Christmas mornings possible.

I could write, and may possibly still, about the Christmas morning when Santa brought me a kitten which I found waiting at the top of the basement stairs. She lived 18 years and had become such a member of the family that Dad chiseled onto a headstone for her when she died - LIZZIE - A Good Friend. It was still there on the back hill when I sold 211 Alden. Or I could describe for you the thrill of finding a cage with my pet monkey in it one Christmas morning. Or the year my brother and I found lemons in our stockings. But tradition is on my mind this week - traditions that I miss since leaving the USA, and some that I have never known.

Grandad retired on disability as a conductor for Pennsylvania Railroad (after an injury in what I read was 1 of the 100 most deadly train wrecks in American history), and worked on trains his whole life. Railroads were once the 'space age' or 'computer revolution' for America and great pride was taken in some of the rail systems and locomotives that were developed. (At one point in his early married life before I was born, Dad was a night watchman - railroad policeman - for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company (B&O), and told me that every night in his guard shack, he fed a mouse cheese and crumbs from his sandwich as he ate the meal that Mom packed for him, and which, surprisingly to me, included a clove of garlic to eat raw.) Railroads, and therefore model trains, played an incredibly large role in my family's life and story.

Dad bought my brother lots and lots of train sets - not Lionel because he couldn't afford them but American Flyer, a less expensive model - and after they bought the house on Alden from the Ray Cathcart family, he set up a large 8 x 8 plywood platform down in the basement for them each Christmas season. (The plywood was painted the same silver that Dad had painted all of his yard tools, so I guess either Grandma had a few buckets of it in her garage, or it was cheap to buy - war surplus.)

Every Christmas, he would stack his fusee cases - the wooden boxes that the railroad flares were shipped in - and put the plywood platform together, and then started building his railroad with my brother. Little lighted houses. Street lights and crossing lights. A Bridge - called a tressel and pictured above, which Dad made by hand because he couldn't afford to buy one. The paper mache tunnel, with sparkly snow on its top. Electric rail switches. A lighted airport tower light that rotated from the hot air rising from the lamp. The obligatory water tower with its hinged spout, to fill the locomotives. I especially remember the Pullman train - sleek and silver with lights behind silhouettes in the windows of people sitting in their seats, including a man with a pipe's smoke curling up from it. Polished aluminum - it was 'cool' to me.

Dad had many complete train sets and, for those who remember one like it, a heavy and smelly transformer with 2 handles for 2 track sets, with green and red lamps that glowed when everything was right, and buttons to push to make the locomotive's whistle blow. Little buttons to throw switches and even a railcar that dumped, with the aid of an electromagnet, 'logs' onto a loading platform. The smell of ozone, and hot 3-in-1 oil, used to clean the tracks, burning off.

I recall at least one year when the Christmas tree was in the center of the platform, but I am not sure if it was there every year. Photo records show several years of trains, and the photo album included a color snapshot taken at Maw Swanson's apartment (before we moved to Alden Road) of one train set up - a photo taken by our next door neighbor, Dr. Harry Black, father of my recent visitor, Rosemary.

Eventually, as my brother grew older, I guess, the train platform either shrunk, or was eliminated. The reason, in my mind at least, was that I was a fat and clumsy kid. I could never re-right the trains onto the tracks with my fat and un-coordinated fingers, and could never have figured out how to run any of the other devices and lost interest in them. It is proof of an era passing, though, in my family. One son who loved them and a younger, who never could appreciate the significance of the tradition, until years later.

There are 5 and a half years difference in my brother's and my ages. So, Dad bought me my own, more simple, train set - I don't recall the brand, but it was not Lionel nor American Flyer. But in the midst of this giant set-up, it was "my" train, and will always be mine in my heart - even though, as I said, I could barely re-set the cars onto the track when there was an upset.

When the time came many, many years later, to pass the trains on, it was only right and fair for Dad to give them to my brother. They were his, and he enjoyed them so much more than I did. And, since he had a child and she would have a family someday, it was natural for me to 'allow' Dad to give him MY train set as well.

My brother sold some to collectors and paid experts in restoration to rebuild some. One was Dad's own childhood train - probably bought in the late 1920's. Another he invested in, was mine, which he gave to Denise, for her family.

Today, at my brother's request, she emailed me some pics of MY train set - around the tree in their new home in York, PA. Her son, Andrew apparently LOVES all things "train" and even pushes or pulls it around the track with no power applied. Dad's train - a precious antique now - runs around the tree at my brother's home, so the kids have 2 sets to enjoy.

The model trains are a tradition in the Doak house, but one that I failed to enjoy at the time. Regardless, I appreciate things which are traditional - passing on old to the next generation, and I derive great pleasure when I hear that the 'old' is so much appreciated by the young.

In a different vein, I have made a new friend here, whom I now describe to myself, for lack of a better phrase, as having "Olde World" values. I introduced you to her several postings back, when she visited AF along with a young American engineer working here. She is a Mexican beauty - that's pretty obvious - but more importantly, she has a beautiful heart and spirit, which is drawn from her family's history and traditions. She is proud of her country's history which goes back to the Mayans, and Aztecs and has taught me some of it. (I should also add that she promises me Spanish lessons, - we are starting on numbers - but her success teaching me will be limited by this old and worn out brain.) She has great pride in her roots in North America and has repeated to me several times, a sentiment - "All Mexicans are not Mayan, but all Mayans are Mexicans."

We have spent several evenings talking into the late hours about our lives and I enjoy hearing about a different set of values - I often interrupt to ask her to clarify some detail - and a morality and formality that is lost in American culture.

I imagine that anyone observing us as we talk would immediately jump to the conclusion that I am trying to seduce this young and beautiful woman (and any man would be envious that I share her company, for sure) but they would be wrong. I enjoy her companionship. Our relationship is as platonic as I can imagine possible, (Oh my, if it could be more....... but I am also a pragmatist when it really counts) and truthfully, I am not sure if, with my background, I could ever assimilate into her culture successfully. I wonder sometimes if any American is capable of truly understanding the purity of love she has described in her family and friends. (That doesn't keep me from fantasizing about being introduced to her grandmother - the matriarch of her mother's family, and how I would try to dig deep into my soul to show the respect and deference that her position, and tradition, requires.) We gringos are so whitewashed now - our hearts bleached of the ability to love with the innocence that she describes. I love to listen to her stories and my heart soars when she laughs, her eyes flashing smiles of their own. She is intelligent, educated, mischievous and funny. Still young, she is, in every sense of the word though, a lady, with a wisdom and insight that astounds me, and although I am not sure I could ever squeeze myself into her culture, I cherish hearing about it - a life born out of different traditions. I am learning so much in my new life away from the USA - only honed to American values and now open to learn new ones.

As I enjoyed learning the traditions of serving a meal in a French home - the formality and order and structure, I love to hear her talk of the pleasures of her life and family from a very different set of traditions.

This is about "tradition". New. Old. Forgotten. Re-discovered. And, to me - good. I have never accomplished anything that gives me license to advise, but if I had, one piece of advice I would offer would be to find a forgotten tradition and give it life again, or, if you cannot do that, then create a new one. Create a legacy. Start a tradition.

I will write more, I hope, before Christmas, but if not, let me repeat - Life is Good. I am blessed. Merry, Merry Christmas, or Feliz Navidad. (The Spanish lessons are paying off.)

Happy Hour.....

Jerry, the dockmaster here at Fantasy Island, tries to put a nice happy hour - 4-6, weather permitting - almost every night. I go pretty often, but have skipped a few lately. A few days ago, Dave, an incredibly talented guitarist and I tried to jam a bit - yeah, right - like I can 'jam" - with my keyboard and his guitar, but during the 2nd song, it started to rain. He and his wife walked by the boat this morning and asked me to come over tonight and try again.

Loading a keyboard and beer case full of music is not easy ( and I am glad I don't play the harp) but I loaded the dink with everything and headed over at 4. We had a ball. He can play anything, and I - well - I tried......

There was quite a crowd tonight, it being so close to Christmas, and the hangers on - 9pm, I think - were in the mood for a group shot as I was packing to go. Great picture and wonderful folks.

I hope they had as much fun as I did.

Snorkel Pics

Just in from the resort bar, where I watched the Garifuna dancers with some other cruisers. After seeing this show almost weekly for 5 months now, I think it was the best performance they have ever done, and I enjoyed it a lot.
Checking email when I returned to AF, I found one from Erik, with pictures of our snorkelling on Thursday. Erik and Denise spent some $$ to buy an underwater disposable camera. The weather was so variable while they were here that when Erik and I went out Thursday, he used up all the film, when it turned out the water was crystal clear on Friday. So we never got pics of the "Denise Fish" as he called her. So here are 4 that he sent me from the roll. He really like the little yellow fish with the black dot and called my attention to them several times, while I like another one that I remember from Finding Nemo. The day was overcast and the colors are not nearly as brilliant without sunlight beaming down.
On Friday, we saw 2 squid, which was pretty cool. My buddy Skip was throwing dishwater over board this morning from his boat, and scared a squid hanging out on his anchor line. It inked and swam away, but later, we saw it had returned.

Erik posing.

Perhaps the best angle to take a picture of UD.

The other email waiting was a fraud alert from Chase credit card, so there is a long and exasperating phone call in my immediate future.

I have decorated the boat with lights and will try to get a picture to post here. Christmas comes and the cruisers are already planning a dinner for Christmas day. I have volunteered to play Christmas carols on the piano - my keyboard - while they eat so have been practicing for a week. These old fingers just don't work so well anymore.

Brrrrr.....It's Cold Here!

Woke up this morning at 715 and the thermometer in the cockpit said it was 69 degrees. Winds gusting up to 18 knots. Brrr. Slept under a blanket last night, although wearing little else, so really not THAT bad. Regardless, I like to say that I paid a lot of money for heat, and don't like it when it is cold. Worked on the toilet handle repair and dinked over to town to buy Christmas lights for AF, and checked with the HVAC guy, who is going to have to order me what I need to add freon to my fridge system.
Had a nice spaghetti dinner and rather than a nap afterwards, decided to download a few more pictures from Denise and Erik's visit last week.
This is Denise and I at a hilltop lookout that Mr. Sherman rode us up to - He owns the Iguana Farm. Erik taking off on the zip line. I am still going to try to upload a short video of one of the rides and post it here.

The first night here, I took them to a cruiser's happy hour to meet some other folks on boats.

And the Garifuna came and danced on the beach that night.

Erik coming in for a landing on the zipline.

Denise and Erik on the balcony of their room.

Feeding the deer - Duh! Kinda self explanatory, huh?

OK - so this is Denise changing the oil in a farm tractor!

The balcony of a bar in West End.

And having a birthday Thai dinner.

An early, and very cold bus ride to the ferry terminal. Still haven't heard how long they had to wait there and how that went.

A quick hug and kiss and they were off headed home. What a nice visit. Just too short.

We are organizing a nice Christmas dinner here for the cruisers with 2 hams and pot luck, of course. I have volunteered to play Christmas music during the meal.

Will snap a pic of AF with her lights on, but don't expect it will be good.

Life is good.

They're leaving - already? It's only been 2-1/2 days!!!!

I am generally not crude here, but try to be honest, positive and, I never mention last names. But the last 3 days remind me of an old expression - It's like fitting 10 pounds of sh** in a 5 pound bag.
I am sitting in the lobby at midnight - the kids long ago gone to bed - downloading as many pictures as I can, of their visit here. It was so nice to see them and I can only hope that they had as much fun as I did. They must get up in time to catch a 530 am bus down to the ferry landing here in Roatan tomorrow morning for their departure. The days flew by faster than when Rosemary was here.
Denise snapped this pic of my backyard sometime during their visit. And this is a pic she got of one of my hummingbirds coming in for a sip of sugar water.

When they first arrived we attended happy hour with the cruisers and then had dinner here at the resort's restaurant.

The next day, we took a bit of a walk around the island (Fantasy Island, not Roatan) and I always try to take some food along to feed some of the animals. Here they feed the little deer who are sized very much like the key deer on Key West, Florida.

Trying to schedule anything or make a plan was complicated by the weather. A squall blew through later that day, with 20 knot winds left behind with higher gusts. We all got out for a snorkel the first day but the water clarity was very disappointing, and it was something that Erik really wanted to do. I am so sorry.

Thursday we took a dink ride over to the iquana farm, owned by a wonderful man, whose first name is Sherman. He also builds boats and has one of the prettiest - cutest - little island boats I have ever seen. He is such a friendly man, and warm and kind. When the police find an abused wild animal, they will bring it to him and he will cage and feed it and make it part of his park there. He has 2 or 3 thousand iquanas living on his property, but there were few on the ground when we arrived due to the lack of sun. Denise found this one, while up on the deck over the gift shop, sleeping on a tree limb.

Even snapped this pic of her old fat uncle with a couple of the few who came down to eat.Here are some pics of them on the ground, posing perhaps for the 'touristas'.His daughter Sylvia had some leaves for the tourists to feed to the guys and Erik posed for his picture feeding them.And so did Denise.Then this wonderful man, who had already spent a great deal of time talking to me - we are a year and a day apart in age, and he said that if I came to his birthday fish BBQ, that I would be the guest of honor, since I was the "old man" - offered first to come by the today and take us all of ride in his boat and later offered and took us up to the hill east of here to see the north beach from this beautiful lookout point. I snapped this pic of the kids and Mr. Sherman.This morning - the last day for the kids - we started off, after breakfast, with the zip line tour. It is not a canopy tour - more a 'ride' and one of my favorite things here. Here are D and E just before walking down to the first platform for the first run.Erik takes off on a long run - over on the opposite hill, you might make out the patch of bare earth that is the landing zone for that first run.Denise is almost down on this one - but still waaay out there. The longest is 1800 feet long.Erik waits to be unhooked after landing on one of the platforms.Denise is coming in for her landing.Oops - They even let old fat guys do this.......Denise over one of the last ones - this one had a mattress roped to the tree in case you came in hot.She worked up her courage as we came down the mountain. No hands and almost up side down.Whoa. She IS upside down.After the zip line Erik and I decided to go out to the reef again in the dink and try the snorkelling while Denise read on the beach. The water had great clarity and we stayed through 2 different rain showers. The coral was full of color when the sun shined and there were tons and tons of tropical fish. We spied 2 squid and saw some again later. That's E waving to me as he swam over top the sunken ship here and I followed along in the dink. It was so much better than the day before that we went back in and talked Denise into coming out for another try.We taxied down to the West End for dinner, with my buddy the taxi driver, Edgar - also knicknamed Bin Laden, because he resembles him. E snapped this of us standing in the middle of the street just after a big rain shower.Erik wanted to snorkel a place he had heard about, and by the time we found exactly where it was, it was too late to go out. But, from the porch of the bar nearby, D snapped this of him standing with the place behind him.We ended the afternoon with a nice Thai dinner - again, to celebrate Erik's birthday. It was pretty nice of him to use his birthday vacation away from Anna and Andrew to come visit Denise's crazy uncle.

There are a lot more pics and a bit more to say, but I am tired and hope to get up and ride to the ferry terminal with them in the morning to say goodbye. They have a full day of travel tomorrow, starting with the taxi/bus ride to the ferry terminal and the 2 hour ferry ride to La Ceiba, and another 2 hour bus ride to the airport in San Pedro Suela, and then the long air flight back to Washington, arrived a bit after midnight, tomorrow night. So that is a taste of their 2 and a half day visit, to UD's new, temporary home, in Honduras. I had a great time, and hope the trip was worth all of the travel for them. I hope they depart knowing how happy I am, and how much I enjoy this new lifestyle. They are both such great kids. I love them both and I am so proud of them.