“All I Want for Christmas is a Great Loop Boat!”

Hear the tune in your head? Pretend Bob and Cathryn are singing the song, only pretend we also know how to carry a tune (not!)

We flew to Florida Tuesday, then spent Wednesday and Thursday with our amazing boat broker, Curtis Stokes and his wife Gill Stokes. Curtis drove us about 900 miles all up and down the west and east coasts of Florida to look at 11 boats, a list we’d generated together in the previous weeks by our looking online from Seattle, and Curtis previewing about half the boats in person. Curtis and Gill are hilarious:  despite being only a few years younger than Cathryn, they have the energy, tenacity and calm demeanors to put any 30-year-old to shame, and certainly us!  They sleep very little, eat only infrequently, and don’t need to use the restroom half as often as we do.  Wednesday we were racing around the state from 8:30 am until 9:30pm, and Thursday from 6:30 am until 7:30 pm, spending both nights in Fort Lauderdale.

This morning we’re making an offer on a 42-foot Jefferson named “Golden Dolphin”, currently located in Stuart, Florida. If we reach agreement with the Sellers on price and contract terms, we will conduct a survey and sea trial on Monday, then fly back to Seattle late Tuesday to get ready for Christmas with all three of our kids and their fiancee, husband and boyfriend.

So . . . “All I Want for Christmas is a Great Loop Boat!” seems an apt description of our current frames of mind. Having said that, we also received a phone call last night from a friend of 30 years informing us her husband was diagnosed with brain cancer earlier this week. We are so, so terribly sad about that, and hope he is successfully treated. Meanwhile, it reminds us that life and good health are precious, and we should be doing exactly what we’re doing, enjoying adventures around the world, together, while we have the health and resources to do so.