Family Christmas

We had some of Luann's family over for Christmas and New years.

After the flight was held over to the next morning, they finally arrived on the 26th. The day's activities took the starch out of Papa's shorts.

This picture shows the gray wall-dragon Katrina received from her boyfriend, John.

Here we are, celebrating Jaime's birthday a week or so early so the family could be with her for her birthday.

Jaime did a nice job of carving up the cake.

Luann made this neat close-up shot of Jaime with her mother, Amy.

Next the family took a few laps on the go-karts. I stayed in the stands to photograph the hotshot moves.

Katrina is extremely focused...

Here is Mother & Daughter pacing each other, lap after lap.

Jaime's younger sister, Ambrosia, kept working on her grandfather.

Here's the family, coming around the bend in a pack.

Time's up and the karts head back into the bullpen, with Jason, Jaime's dad leading the way.

The next event on the list was bungy jumping. The girls are sitting in line, awaiting their turn.

Katrina strapped up first and demonstrated her back-flipping style.

Next, it was Jaime's turn and she held her own.

Then Ambrosia topped off her performance with a forward-backward roll combination.

Friday the 29th was a day of sailing and visiting the sponge docks at Tarpon Springs.

This is the Cajun tour guide for the sponge diving tour.

Taa-Daa! Here's the diver with a sponge he picked up from the bottom...

Ambrosia just had to fall for the very touristy 'stick your head here' snapshot.

While Papa & Nana toured Tarpon springs, Jason, Amy and Jaime went sailing with me and my First Mate, Katrina. Amy decided to sleep in the berths during the ride (like daughter, like mother), snoozin' while we're cruisin'.

After a couple of hours of sailing, we stopped at the Tarpon Turtle cafe for lunch (as planned).

Here we are, tying up Udara Tanda to the dock at the cafe. Nana took this picture from our dinner table.

As we waited for our order to arrive, the kids started getting antsy.

So we watched this little alligator we had seen by the docks the last time we were here.

After dinner, we set sail with Nana, Papa & Ambrosia on board, while Amy, Jason and Jaime went with Luann to the Tarpon Springs sponge docks

During the sail, we encountered stiff winds that tested the repair work I had made to the sailboat. She held up well to the gusts that heeled her over more than she ever had before when we sailed her, (the water didn't even touch the rub rail), it wasn't much lean to cause concern though.

At the end of the sail we tied up to the wall at the East end of Anderson Park so the kids could explore and play for a bit.

Jaime tried to make friends with this brave squirrel.

And Amy came across this cute little Green Tree Frog on one of the trails.

Well, all good things come to an end, so we pushed off from the sea-wall and headed to the boat ramp to haul Udara Tanda out.

And the break-down begins. Seems like Katrina & I are getting pretty good at rigging and de-rigging the boat.

Road Trip To North Carolina (Again)

I had to fly out to GE in Mebane, North Carolina (the same place we went to last June) to help them build their first medium voltage soft starter, rather than having us build it for them. The project has gone well and it looks lilke they will manage the deal pretty well. It was a tough flight out Thursday morning, what with having to get up at 4:00 AM to catch the plane, then I was fairly beat because I didn't get back to Tampa until midnight on Friday. Other than that, the trip worked out well, corporate-wise. Unfortunately, I only took pictures of the project I was working on, which is proprietary information so I can't show them and besides, the pics aren't anything all that scenic anyway.

A Trip To Lake Tarpon

Due to the suggestion of a fellow owner of a 19-foot Com-Pac sailboat, we decided to make a trip to Lake Tarpon to see how the lake would bear up to launching a sailboat (we would have tried to sail the lake but we were feeling a bit rough due to a bad case of the stomach flu) and to look into a nice place to eat sometime during the ride. We saw quite a bit of neat things while we walked around Anderson Park.

For instance, we watched this great snowy egret trying out his fishing skills. He did pretty well...

The view from the boat ramp is pretty nice.

We even strolled along some of the footpaths in the park.

The foot path is peppered with these little picnic table/barbecue areas. When Katrina and I stopped at one, this Anhinga was sunning himself, trying to dry his feathers.

He seemed pretty bold, and struck a pose for us a couple of times.

He was relatively unafraid of us, so we settled down and watched him for a while.

A lttle further down the path, we came across this snowy egret bedding down for the night.

At the end of the path, we sat on a park bench while the girls sat on a swing.

When we left the park, I decided to look for a restaurant that is supposed to be on the water called: The Tarpon Turtle. We found it and as I was checking out the docking situation, Luann heard this guy doing a live performance at the Turtle and recognized him as Alex Parnes, (Click Here To See His Website), somebody she had worked with for years. We stepped into the outdoor dining area to have dinner and talk to Alex when his 'set' was over. The dinner was great and we had a fun time watching a 3-foot alligator ("He's just a baby!!!) swim around the boat docks. This looks like a great place to take the family when they come down to visit.

Up, Up And Awaaaayyyy!

We got to watch the Space Shuttle launch at 8:47 this evening. It was a spectacular event, to say the least...

When the rockets first lit off, we could see a huge ball of orange light reflected off of the clouds on the horizon. (Click on the pictures to make them bigger)

Then the bright orange light rose up from the ground.

Everybody was holding their breath as the shuttle kept heading up to the sky, and beyond.

It was amazing to watch as the flames broke in and out of the clouds. The light became pretty dim after that, with the exception of a brief blue-white flare-up of the exhaust, then it settled back down to the usual orange color, until we couldn't see it anymore.

For the most part, before we went out to the Courtney Campbell Causeway to watch the shuttle go up, we spent most of the day installing the Christmas lights in the yard.

Katrina and Jaime worked on the side yard, while Luann and I worked on the front systems. You can see Jaime is wearing her trademarked, blank stare...

And then she kicked back into gear and helped by swapping around some flasher lamps to find some good ones to put in the non-flashing strings.

After we were done, we treated ourselves to some snow cones, because it was a bit warm and we have been wanting to stop this cute little cart and see how good their snow cones are. Result: Not bad...

Looking For The Space Shuttle

We decided to go out to the Courtney Campbell Causeway boat ramp to watch the shuttle take off. Unfortunately with 5 minutes to go, they scrubbed the mission due to poor visibility from low cloud cover. Hopefully, they will get it done tomorrow.

NOTE: The launch has been delayed until Saturday evening at 8:47 EST.

This is a picture of the laptop screen we had at the boat ramp showing the countdown was frozen at 5 minutes to go.

Cast Upon The Rocks

As I was heading to work, I came across this sailboat that had somehow come loose from its mooring and was driven across Tampa Bay and cast upon the rocks on the northern side of the Courtney Campbell Causeway.

You can see where the wave action battered the hull against the rocks.
The police have already come by and tied her up to the rocks, but I don't know if they contacted the owner. You can see the round, tan spots on the hull where the blue bottom paint and white gelcoat has been worn through down to the base fiberglass due to wave action grinding it against the rocks. Kinda sad to see something like this...

Follow Up

As I was heading to work this morning (Wednesday), I could see a powerboat had tied up to the sailboat and was pulling it in the general direction of Safety Harbor ( I assume that's where they were heading because the wooden registration plaque on the sailboat had a sticker that said 'Safety Harbor Marina' and a unit number too). I say 'general direction' because they were having a devil of a time trying to get the sailboat to move in a straight line. Beyond the fact that I'm amazed the sailboat still floats, I'm even more amazed that the guys in the powerboat didn't realize that due to the nature of a sailboat's hull design, it will tend to tack back and forth on the tow rope if it is unmanned and the tiller isn't lashed down. Every time they pulled the sailboat, it would go left, then bank hard and pull to the right. Back and forth, back and forth. They were struggling mightily with trying to keep the sailboat going in the right direction.