OK. So. It's been waaay too long since I've blogged with any regularity.  One would think I'd have had plenty of time to write, since we just spent 3 months on land with unlimited wifi, power, topics.  But one would be wrong! There wasn't enough time to do all the things we wanted or see all the people we wanted to see. There never is. We did our best, though, 8302 miles, 17 states. We  wore out our welcome with lots of relatives and friends.  Special thanks to our parents, who put up with our open ended comings and goings, and our daughters, one of whom got frustrated with our lack of schedule and called us "footloose and fancy free hippies". It was truly a great summer.

We've been back in the water for a week, fixing all the things that dry out and refuse to work after a 3 month vacation.  The head, of course, is one of them.  We're not using a bucket, yet, but it's close.  The electric motor is going and it's only a matter of time until I hear the dreaded silence when I push the flush button.  Can you hear silence? Hmmm. I think you know what I mean. It would be a very loud silence.  Aside from the head motor, nothing too hard or icky to fix, just little things to do and find.

The boat yard in Urbanna.

Sunrise, on the way out of Urbanna.

We've stopped in the Rhode River, south of Annapolis, for the Seven Seas Gam again.  A great opportunity to see old friends and meet more cruisers.  There are seminars worked in around all the socializing, so we may learn something, in spite of ourselves.

Boat Swag

This month's RaftUp revolves around boat 'swag'. The things we have on board with our boat's name, things we wish we had, and things we've seen other owners carrying that we covet.
I'll have to start off by saying that while everything on Celebration says Celebration on it somewhere, we weren't responsible for it. (I do mean EVERYTHING: every piece of wood, all the doors, the picture frames, the carpet pieces, sheets, towels, everything. One of her two previous owners got seriously happy using an engraver and a magic marker.)  Maybe because we see her name on stuff all day, every day, we don't feel the need to add any more. 
I looked into some L.L.Bean totes when we first bought Celebration. I thought they'd be nice to give as gifts to guests who came to stay. Fortunately for me, as they were very expensive, Celebration has one too many letters to fit on the bags. Fortunately, also, because while lots of people say they're going to visit, very few do. My SIL, Patty and my BFF, Kathy would each have half a dozen and the rest would be mouldering under the v berth.

My box of boat cards, arranged alphabetically by boat name.

The only 'swag' item I can think of that we can't do without, are boat cards. For the non-boater, these are business sized cards with our boat name, our names and email and blog addresses. Boaters exchange these as a way to keep in touch since few of us have land addresses and even fewer of us have phones that work in all the countries where we meet.  Boat cards vary from the plain and simple printed on paper, to the custom printed with boat photo kind.  My favorite are the ones that have the boat make and size on them, as Steve and I usually have differing memories of just what was what, especially after a few months.  I like to write on the cards we get, where and when we met, what was going on, kids, pets, an obnoxiousnous rating if required, "red shirt, cute shoes", that kind of thing, just to jog my memory.
I've seen some boat shirts that I really like, with the name and make embroidered on the upper left. I've even priced some. But then I do the mental scales: rum/wine on one side and nifty shirts on the other. The rum always wins.