Goodbye Brunswick

We said good bye to Georgia on Thursday. Brunswick Georgia wasn’t ever our planned destination but watching it diminish as we sailed away was bittersweet. Jake made so many friends at Brunswick First Baptist that they had a little going away party for him last week. Someone wrote “We Love Lily” on the marina sidewalk the night before we left. Lily wanted to know who wrote it but she has so many friends there we didn’t try to unravel the mystery. And lastly, Chewy, our beloved dog, has found a new home in Brunswick. We had hoped that Chewy would do well on the boat. However, it seemed a really hard life for him. The heat was tough. The sailing was unpleasant for him. He seemed to be having trouble even jumping on and off the boat at the marina. We began to really question whether we were giving him the type of life he needed. We decided to see if we could find him a home and Lynn came to met him. Lynn is an animal person and they got on well from the start. She had a cat and we cautioned it probably wouldn’t work. She took Chewy for a few nights and reported that he and the cat are fast friends. He’s got a yard but prefers indoors, particularly the sofa. Pet owners frequently wonder what their pets are thinking and we have asked ourselves what Chewy thinks when he remembers us. I don’t know the answer but I have decided it goes like this:
Hmm. Remember my first family, the man, the lady, the tall boy, the little girl. We had so much fun and then I came here. What happened to them? Oh Yeah, they are trapped on that awful floating thing. Maybe I should try to help them! Maybe they need me! Maybe my new friend would let them live here and sleep on the sofa, too! Yawn. We might not all fit. I’ll just stretch out and see if there’s room. Goodness, it might be tight. Yawn. Maybe if I wiggle a little more into the cushion. That’s better. I think I’ll just close my eyes a minute. Snoore. What was I? Snore…
We arrived at West Palm Beach, FL, on Saturday. The two day sail down here gave us a chance to test new gadgets. Randall installed a screen at the helm so we could view the chart at the helm. We love it and Jacob already plans to split the screen so he can play computer chess while helming. The new auto pilot Randall put together by mounting a tiller controller to the windvane worked fabulous for about 23 hours and then quit. Randall is trying to figure that out because we already suffer auto pilot dependency. Finally, everyone says AIS (Automatic Identification System) is great and we agree. Now when there’s a boat looming on the horizon, we can look at the chart and see its name, how big it is and what it’s current heading is. A friendly professional voice even cautions, “You are on a collision course in three minutes. You are on a collision course in two minutes. You are on a collision course in one minute.” We all waited with anticipation for final comments. I half expected, “Everyone jump,” but apparently AIS doesn’t say goodbye that way. I guess I’ll have to continue my habit of saying this when I think we are too close.