They're Here!!!!

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

They're Here!!!!

After tossing and turning all night, and finally giving up on sleeping, I got up at 430 this morning, I had at least mentally written a shopping list for Denise and Erik's visit. After my coffee, I took a taxi to the market and bought some small things to have around while they are here. Denise, my niece, and her husband Erik are arriving today, after a day's travel yesterday from the States to the mainland where they spent the night in a hotel. Then, up very early for the 2 hour+ bus ride to the coast and the 2 hour ferry ride to Roatan.
I took a taxi to the ferry terminal at 1030, and just as I walked down the drive, someone blew a horn, notifying the taxi drivers that it was time. They all jumped into their taxis and headed for the terminal. The ferry has arrived.
A short wait and soon I saw the silhouette of a couple through the ferry window and one waved. Seconds later, Denise and Erik emerged, smiling and waving.

I raised the camera over the glass enclosure and snapped this just as Denise walked by, with Erik trailing just behind, in the white shirt and backpack on.

A brief wait for luggage, short taxi ride to Fantasy Island, check in at the front desk, and we headed to Annah Foster for a Bloody Mary, and then lunch. This was a quick shot taken from the balcony of their room.

We decided over lunch to take the zip line tour but the sun came out and it warmed up, so instead we changed to swim suits, hopped into the dink, and headed out to snorkel the reef. No pics of that, but we will go back, weather permitting. Zip line will have to wait until tomorrow.

4 o'clock is happy hour for the cruisers and I took them over to meet everyone here on boats. Kind of a high brow group this week, with the 2 MD's, 2 Ph.D's, a couple of engineers, and the rest of us monkeys. Denise always looks good, eh? Or is that Britney Speers???

They borrowed my cell phone to call home and talk to their kids, Anna and Andrew, and to tell Erik's mom and dad, who are sitting with the kids, that they were here and safe. Erik snapped this pic after I handed the phone back to Denise, after talking to Anna about her day at school - what she learned today and the surprise she is making for Mom and Dad for when they get home.

Although Harry, the manager of food services blew the surprise early on, we still managed to get some candles lit on the cake I bought this morning, and sing Happy Birthday to Erik. Then we left the remnants of the red velvet store-bought cake for the restaurant staff to enjoy. So sorry, Erik, but after baking Rosemary's and helping to bake one for Jerry, the dock master yesterday, it was just so much easier (and a better cake, too) to buy you one. Regardless, Happy Birthday! I am so proud of you.

After dinner, we headed to the bar (again) and waited for the Garifuna dancers. I snapped a couple pics of D and E there.

Poor Denise. Stuck with her crazy Uncle Denny, or Oodie, as she calls me - that's U D for those who don't know the family. I have been holding off making this public, to surprise her today -when I was dating Jane, the wonderful Aussie gal, she pearced my ears. I wore extra big earrings today that Rosemary brought me from the States, just to make sure that Denise would notice them. So now, I can unveil Jane's work, and my new look. Shortly after buying Annah Foster, I decided that someday I would pearce one ear for a pirate earring. A few months ago, I met a friend of Skip's from the States with both pearced and liked it, and asked Jane to do the pearcing for me, and to help me buy some rings. Still old, fat and ugly (and is my nose really THAT big??? or is it the this new camera? - thanks also to Rosemary for bringing me the new laptop and camera and earrings!), but now with earrings.

Is 130 in the morning and I have to get to bed. It has started to pour down rain, and it sounds like it is not going to let up anytime soon. I hope tomorrow has some sunshine for the kids' vacation but I cannot control that at all. I hope they get a taste of how I live now - at least here in Roatan, tied to a worn out dock at this beautiful 22 acre resort island.

I will turn over the blog tomorrow to Denise and Erik to post some more pictures of their vacation to keep their friends and family back home updated on this very short vacation in Honduras. I am so glad they're here, and now have my 2nd visitors to see me in this year old new life. Which, by the way, is very good!

1 comment:

NancyDecember 10, 2010 at 6:43 PM
What a life. How nice!
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About Annah Foster

Annah Foster is a 1980'ish Morgan 462. She is a USCG Documented vessel and the year on the document is 1979, which I believe is the year the keel was laid. She is known as a ketch, which means she has 2 masts, and the aft mast is forward of the rudder. She also is a center compartment boat, which means the helm is located between the 2 masts, which are, by the way, the main and the mizzen. She is equipped with roller furling on the jib/genoa sail which is the big triangular sail on the front. Her empty weight, or rather displacement, is 33,000 lbs, which is fat for her length. Mr. Morgan believed in thick fiberglas for strength and I am told that at places it is often found to be 2 inches of solid fiberglas. Her keel has encapsulated lead weighing 8,000 lbs.

She boasts 2 staterooms, - v-berth forward with separate head and twin beds aft with separate head, including the famous bathtub. The configuration of the aft stateroom could easily be changed with a change in the mattresses to an almost queen berth, port to starboard, but currently she has twins, running fore and aft, with 2 large mattress cushions separating them. There is also a ladder and sliding hatch aft for egress in an emergency, to the aft deck, which I call the back porch. I bought some director's chairs for it and have sat there many evenings enjoying a drink and sunset. The aft deck is also the location of the propane gas grill, storage for the 2 outboard motors, Yamaha 4hp 4cycle, and a Yamaha 15hp 2 cycle, which power a new Apex Lite 10'6 inflatable dinghy, which can hang from the installed davits.

The main sail has 2 reefing points on jiffy reefing and the mizzen has 1. No lines lead to the cockpit but the jib, main and mizzen sheets.

She has a Switlick 6 man life raft mounted aft the mizzen mast. And, an emergency tiller aboard.

She is equipped with a Perkins 4 cylinder diesel engine, powering a Hurth transmission and turning a 4 bladed Max Prop, which feathers when sailing, and reverses pitch in Reverse so that she has the same thrust as in Forward. One unique design flaw is that the propeller shaft exits the boat at 3 degrees off center, making the port prop walk in reverse, even worse. The engine is equipped with about a 90 amp alternator with a very good voltage regulator.

She also has a Westerbeke 5.7 kw diesel generator, which produces 110 v AC power, and charges the batteries thru a 40 amp charger. I also have a Honda 1000 watt gasoline powered generator for emergency 110v, and an automotive battery charger aboard.

She came with an old Windbugger wind generator, not quite perfectly mounted. Stowed in the V-berth, there is a replacement AirX marine wind generator and 8 foot mast waiting to be installed, along with the controller, and 2 solar panels, which are half the possible wattage the controller can handle.

She has 3 4-D AGM batteries for the house bank and a type 18 start battery - all are 12volt.

The 4 gallon water heater will heat with both engine cooling water and 110v AC power and is equipped with a mixing valve to prevent scalding.

Tankage - Water - 110 gallon port and 85 gallon center tanks
Fuel - 175 gallons
Range when new at 2250 RPM is almost 800 nm.

Currently, her refridgerator and freezer are 110 volt AC, with several holding plates each which must be manually started and stopped. She has waiting to be installed, 2 Cool Blue 12 volt systems, with automatic controls, but truthfully, I don't know where the new holding plates will fit.

Electronics -
She is equipped with 2 VHF marine band radios, one at the helm and the other at the nav station, with repeater at the helm, and a hand held low power VHF 'walkie talkie'. Also, at the nav station, she has a Single Side Band HF radio - SSB with a Pactor 2 modem making her capable of downloading NOAA weather fax and Sail Mail emails and Grb files. onto a dedicated IBM laptop. She has as primary a Raymarine E-80 Chartplotter at the helm and a smaller Garmin Chartplotter for back up at the helm, a handheld Garmin Chartplotter, and an older Furuno GPS at the nav station. She has an older Raytheon black and white 24 nm radar at the helm, with a repeater at the nav station. She has a RapidFix 406 EPIRB, emergency locator beacon, that is hand activated. She has a new Clarion AM FM CD player, with input for computer or MP3 player on 3 sets of individual speakers - cockpit, salon, and aft cabin.

For those who do not know me, I named her for my parents - Annah Margaret and George Foster Doak. It is through their beneficence that I am able to live this dream and I felt that I should dedicate my boat to honor their memories.