Bad Day For Boaters

It was a bad day for boaters when Hurricane Ian paid us a visit. Not as bad as it was for people over on the Gulf Coast of Florida, where hundreds, if not thousands, of boats were destroyed or damaged, but it was still rough here on the Intracoastal Waterway.

This big sailboat broke loose from its moorings and wound up beached at one of the parks along the waterfront. I talked briefly to a man and woman who were trying to figure out how much damage was done and if it was salvageable. They told me that before the boat wound up where it is now, it ran over another smaller boat and completely destroyed it.

This isn’t the wreckage of the boat it ran over, but what’s left of another that vessel washed ashore a mile or so upriver. There are at least half a dozen others in about a five-mile stretch between Edgewater and New Smyrna Beach.

I guess we were lucky. Besides no damage to our house, my pontoon boat trailer was turned sideways and almost hit Terry’s Chrysler Pacifica. Fortunately, the back end of the trailer wedged against the side of the garage, and that seemed to have stopped it from moving any further.

Everywhere you go around here, there are piles of debris lining the curbs waiting for trash crews to come along and pick them up. It’s going to take at least weeks, if not months, to clean up everything around here. Driving around the area, I am reminded again of just how fortunate we are that we came through the storm unscathed.

Today we have to go up to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville again for an ultrasound for Terry, more follow-up to all of the radiation she had to save her from stage four cancer 22 years ago. The doctor told her at the time that he could save her life, but there would be a price to pay for it long term, and he was right. But as Terry says, it is a small price to pay for all the living she’s done since then.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Thought For The Day – You can’t blame people for sucking the life out of you if you keep giving them the straw.