Merry Christmas to all!!

Here is a photo of Enchantress on her mooring in Boot Key Harbor in paradise sporting her "Seasons Greetings" flag! Linda and I wish everyone a happy holiday season!

We are very excited waiting for Amy, Mark, Laura and Olivia to arrive on December 27th!! They will be staying in a rented two bedroom condo and will be here until January 4th. We have a lot of places that we plan to go here in the Keys while they are here.

Linda and I will spend Christmas Day at a potluck dinner here at the marina. The harbormaster and his wife are hosting the dinner and providing the turkey and ham and sweet potatoes and all of the cruisers will be bringing a dish to share so there will be tons of food. There are over 200 people expected for dinner!!! The harbor is finally almost completely filled with more than 250 boats on moorings and anchored in the harbor as all of the cruisers from the north have been flowing in every day.

Since this is our fourth winter here in Boot Key Harbor, we have a number of old friends here and many of the same boats come each year along with lots of first-time visitors. We have met some new friends this year and have lunches and dinners out with a group of people. The cruising community is a small world and people come and people go from each harbor, often keeping in touch by e-mail and by following each others blogs. We follow the progress of some people we have met who are sailing around the world or are down in the Caribbean. We know we will run into many of them again in some harbor somewhere and sometime down the "road".

The cruising community is diverse. The majority of people seem to be couples around our age, most of whom have retired. Some of them are full-time cruisers like us, while many others still have a land base, usually up north somewhere, and they cruise six months during the winter and then store the boat in Florida and go home for the summer or they go back and forth on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) each year. Others are headed further south with plans to sail to the Caribbean islands and back and a few plan to sail around the world. There are also single people, mostly men but a few women, who sail singlehanded. Some people just live on a boat and have a job ashore and never leave the harbor. And finally, there are a few younger people with children who have decided to go NOW while they are young and not wait for retirement. They mostly home school the children but may occasionally stop for awhile in a harbor like Boot Key Harbor and put the children in a public school while they get a job for a year or two to earn more money to keep cruising. This year we have more children in the harbor than in prior years. They have put up a Christmas tree and decorated it in their play area. Santa is even going to come on the VHF marine radio this year on Christmas Eve on his way south to say hello to all the kids!!

The boats that people are cruising on also cover a wide range. In Boot Key Harbor they are mostly sailboats with a few trawlers (powerboats). They range in size and price range from small and inexpensive boats up to boats costing $500,000 or more. No one really cares who you were, how much money you have, or what you did for a living before you got smart and went cruising! (GRIN)

We hope everyone has a great holiday season and a wonderful and healthy 2010!