A few more people showed up last time than did the week before, so this was a more social sail, but with much less learning/practicing/etc. (So many people, so few things to do!) Ah well, socializing while eating oreos is good too. :)
The wind was good so we got to go a good distance before turning around and heading back. I mostly laid under the boom the whole time, scooting back and forth after our turns to get back under the shade of the sail. Relaxo-sailing.
Now here's the best part. When we got back to the dock, I went up front to help tie up. I looked down and saw.. nostrils! A manatee! Two manatees! Ahh! "Someone else can do this, no?" I said and jumped off the boat to get a closer look. I spent a good ten minutes laying on my stomach on the dock reaching in the water.. The one bigger manatee was eating all these weeds in the water, but there was, of course, garbage intertwined. It was a race to get the fork out of the weeds before the weeds got in the manatee's mouth.
The one touched the bottom of our boat with his snout and got blue paint all over himself. Ah, so helpless.. :)
I'm Stacey. I'm a 31(!)-year-old Wisconsin girl living in sunny South Florida. The highlights in my life are my lovely boyfriend, my aloof cats, my adorable/adoring stepdogs, my two lumbering tortoises, select family members, being outside, being underwater, taking pictures, yadda yadda. Stay tuned for lots of babbling!
A small boy lived by the ocean. He loved the creatures of the sea, especially the starfish, and he spent much of his time exploring the seashore.
One day the boy learned there would be a minus tide that would leave the starfish stranded on the sand.
When the tide went out, he went down to the beach, began picking up the stranded starfish, and tossing them back into the ocean.
An elderly man who lived next door came down to the beach to see what the boy was doing. Seeing the man's quizzical expression, the boy paused as he approached. "I'm saving the starfish!" the boy proudly declared.
When the neighbor saw all of the stranded starfish he shook his head and said: "I'm sorry to disappoint you, young man, but if you look down the beach, there are stranded starfish as far as the eye can see. And if you look up the beach the other way, it's the same. One little boy like you isn't going to make much of a difference."
The boy thought about this for a moment. Then he reached his small hand down to the sand, picked up another starfish, tossed it out into the ocean, and said: "Well, I sure made a difference for that one!"
