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Kamis, 07 April 2016

HYC Cruise Day 1 July 25 City island to Port Jefferson on Long Island 39 Miles

Every cruise  has some boats that try as they might, just cant make it for mechanical or personal reasons. This year, so far, it has been Paul and Mary on "Little Jumps", a victim of the press of business. I use to be a slave to the law so I know. We will miss you.

The day was warm and sunny; well you know, pretty much the same as back in Eastchester Bay.

Mark and Marsha of "Leeds the Way",  spent Friday night in Oyster Bay to make a shorter sail today. They got to the mooring field of the Seatauket YC in the 2 to 2:30 time frame. As did "True North" who motored from the Harlem.

ILENE, left the HYC mooring field at 7:30 in a dead calm and put up the main for almost the whole way and one or the other or parts of both headsails for most of the way -- after a bit of wind stirred the surface of the water. So we motor sailed almost the whole way. The problem was that the wind was from the east, where all the boats were heading. Motor sailing took us from Huntington, Long Island to Norwalk, CT and back across the Sound again to Port Jeff, arriving a bit after three.

And thats why Leeds the Way and ILENE were the only ones able to enjoy the wonderful cocktail party that True North hosted, starting at 5 pm.
PC Mark, Marcia, Lene, Diane and PC Bruce. Im the photographer and I kinda like the diagonal of the heads though this was purely accidental.

But we three were not the only Harlem boats here in Port Jeff. The rest just arrived too late for the party: PC Ernie and Camille and their guests, pc Marty and Ghenie, on "Blast", Dan and Mary Jane on " Tively II" and CJ and Jenny on "Shanghai" (who sailed with us and the Hermione on the Fourth of July).

Shanghai wins todays award for most intrepid sailing, not motor sailing but sailing. They had a long day.

Tomorrow, Leeds the Way and Tively IIs schedules require them to turn back but the armada is headed for a two night stay in Mattituck, LI. Unfortunately, ILENE will be there with them for only the second night. A funeral for a dear friends son means we will spend Sunday in a rental car, catching up with the fleet on Monday.
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May 12 13 Last Two Lay Days in Washington No miles

No, not a Maritime Museum. This is one of the fishing boats used by the Danes in WWII to smuggle most of their 7000 Jews into neutral Sweden. It is one of the many artifacts in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
I spent a whole day (10 to 5:15) here and did not see it all. Designed of the same beautiful pale yellow stone that is used in most other government buildings in this city, the interior has a long atrium around which the horrible history unfolds, as one starts on the fourth floor and works ones way down. This atrium is glass covered and reminded me of a railroad station  -- such an integral part of the Germans "Final Solution". I have been to such museums in NY, Jerusalem and smaller ones in many other cities but none that were as comprehensive, with a significant slant on US responses before, during and after the war. It showed how gradually Hitler came to power, consolidated his power and set to work first trying to drive the Jews out by making life unbearable and dangerous, then deporting them and finally, exterminating them. One huge wall of etched glass, has the names of the numerous European towns where Jews lived before Hitler, including my fathers birthplace, Untergrombach, middle row, right, with my imagined "RR Station" below.
The place was very crowded with lots of high school kids who were very respectful. I was quite moved by the experience. The museum repeatedly discussed the plight of the Roma (gypsies) and other victims. It also had exhibits on the three post-Holocaust genocides: Cambodias killing fields, the Serbo-Croation conflict and Rwanda. It seems humanity has not learned yet, despite the saying "Never Again! We had lunch in the museums cafe, located in a small building outside the Memorial.
Our final day was for Congress and the Library of Congress. We had planned to visit the adjacent Supreme Court as well. I had to be admitted to its Bar to oppose a Petition for Certiorari  in the late 70s. (Since about 95 to 99 percent of such petitions are denied, winning that one was rather easy.) But our tourism stamina gave out before we got there, which was a shame because Lene has never been there. On our way we passed the Frances Perkins Department of Labor Building.
Ms. Perkins was one of FDRs "brain trust" and the first female Secretary of Labor. She co-taught a seminar in labor history I took at Cornell in about 1964.
In 2008 Congress opened a huge underground entrance, visitors center, "Emancipation Hall," with Museum, gift shops, a large cafeteria and many restrooms to handle the throngs of tourists. We were shown an inspirational movie about how well Congress works, which is somewhat of a joke given todays hyperpartisanship. Leah, our assigned
tour guide was energetic and bright with the kids but the tour did not include either house of the Congress. We easily secured a pass to visit the House, which was in session, but just barely. The person acting as speaker recognized a stream of Representatives who rose to give speeches of up to four minutes. It was mostly women in red suits on the Democratic side and men in blue suits on the other side. Several democrats spoke in favor of refinancing the Highway Trust Fund and opposing yet-another bill to restrict abortion, which the Republicans are addicted to and will undoubtedly pass. The Republicans spoke in favor of the anti-abortion bill and in memory of slain police officers. They all spoke to an almost empty room. The speeches go into the Congressional Record and are fodder for the folks back home. "See how I represented your interests!"
After lunch we visited the Library of Congress through an underground tunnel which avoids having to go through security again. Our first time here.


The entrance hall reminded me of The Hermitage in St. Petersberg, with its staircase, marble, red, statuary and grandeur.










The main reading room is much smaller than the one in NY but more elegant.
A highlight of my stay here was a visit to the Geography and Map division, where I was given access to their collection of nautical charts published by the United States Navys  Hydrographic Office from about 1850 to 1950. The charts are numbered, to about 6500, with some omissions. I have been studying them and cataloging them, as a volunteer in the Map Room of the NY Public Library for about seven years now. They describe the coastlines of the world (excluding the U.S. and the Philippines which are the subject of a similar series of charts published by the Coast Guard. Each branch of the armed forces had its champions in Congress and back in the 19th century they worked out this geographic compromise.)  I had a good conversation with the director of the map room who invited me back. Maybe, by land, some day.
I also saw a German antiquarian map of the world, in Latin, published a few decades after 1492, purchased for $11,000,000 (less than half of it taxpayer dollars), an exhibition of Herblock political cartoons, and a recreation of Thomas Jeffersons circular library of Monticello (he sold it to the government) with mostly his original books. He was a well read man.
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Senin, 04 April 2016

HYC Cruise Day 4 Tuesday July 28 Mattituck to Noank 35 Miles

Views exiting Mattituck
     
Yesterday I described Mattituck Creek as "scenic," so I added a few views taken on our way out. Tide was "up" so no depth problems today

North Star left first, headed for Block Island where we will join them tomorrow. ILENE left next and took this picture of Blast as she passed us.

The wind was from behind, but rather light. It provided only a few tenths of a knot to our engine speed. The biggest help was the tide rushing out of the Sound as we passed alongside its end, pulling us along. ILENE got about three knots at one point, making 8.5.

The posts from this cruise are being sent back to the Club and posted on its own blog. The Fleet Captain, moi, made a stupid mistake but fortunately a harmless one. ILENE and Blast had made reservations at Spicers. However, in my mind, I was thinking of the Noank Boatyard, where the Club Cruise stopped in Noank in 2012. I remembered where the Noank Boatyard was and went there, despite PC Bruce advising last night that Spicers was a long walk to Abbotts lobster restaurant, where we had planned to have dinner. Bruce was right; he usually is. So arriving off the Noank Boatyard I found out that I did not actually know exactly where Spicers was. We had to go out again into Fishers Island Sound, go back east a bit and then North again to Spicers. The detour was only about 1.2 miles. In this picture the pencil points to Noank Boatyard, the pen to Spicers.
We asked to be berthed near Blast and they honored this request after a fashion as this photo from ILENE shows. A short swim away!
And yes it is a long walk to Abbots so we dined at The Sea Horse, located in Spicers, the six of us from ILENE and Blast. Food pretty good. It was another quiet night. A bit of wind would have cooled things off. It is always cooler on the water but snuggled into slips it was hot.

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December 25 and 26 Vero Beach to Lake Worth Then to Ft Lauderdale 48 1 and 54 Miles

These two rather longer passages were quite different because the first was inside, cold and dry while the second was out in the ocean, warm and rainy.
On both days we got underway a few minutes after seven but we dropped the anchor at 4:15 the first day and 3:00 the second. More miles in less time.
The ICW requires attention to detail and while we flew the small jib for speed, we could have profited from the larger genoa except that the wind was generally directly behind us so that the self tacking smaller head-sail gybed back and forth as minor wind changes and course variations took place. With the genoa such gybes would have been a major problem. One of the myriad beautiful homes we passed.
There was very little other traffic on Christmas morning and we wished a merry Christmas to the bridge tenders of the low bridges when requesting openings. Bridges were the major frustration, causing delay and providing the days "moment of terror". When we called to alert the tenders that we were coming from the north and request openings, most of the tenders, who these days are mostly ladies, told us to maintain speed -- they would open for us when we got there. One failed to live up to this promise and at the last minute, moving at almost seven knots, three of them provided by a favorable current, I had to slam into reverse gear, hard, to avoid breaking our mast against the not yet opened bridge. A moment of terror. We normally thank the tenders for the openings.

We also had to wait for three of the bridges to open because they open only on request but only on the hour and half, or at 15 and 45 minutes after the hour. I have written in large print on our paper charts whether each bridge is "High" or "Low" and if low, its name, (needed to hail it to request an opening) and what its schedule of openings is, or "on demand".  But what I have yet to do is calculate the nautical miles between each pair of bridges with schedules so that we can regulate our speed to arrive "on time."

One cant get there late and early is bad too, because the current is sometimes trying to push you under the closed bridge. And I learned through experience yesterday that a 1:30 pm opening does not mean that the bridge will actually be open at 1:30. Rather, the whistle sounds then that the gates will be coming down and only after all the traffic has passed and the gates lowered does the bridge begin to slowly swing upwards. So our ability to pass will not occur until 1:35 and an additional five minutes of fighting the current has to be built in together with a five minute delay in starting toward the next bridge. I hope it does not sound like Im whining about the bridges; actually I write to give you a sense of the challenges we embrace.

I tried to rendezvous with Dave of the Harlem YC, who was visiting in the Deerfield Beach area but our plans were thwarted by a failure of communications. Lake Worth, Florida, is a city that appears on land maps. But the lake in question is quite long and our anchorage was in a cove at the extreme north end, in Palm Beach actually. This extra drive, the difficulty in finding a restaurant open on Christmas night and the problem of directing Dave to a parking spot near the dinghy dock of a place I had never been before all conspired to prevent the rendezvous. I changed the oil instead. And after a long day, we had a quiet evening aboard and did not lower the dinghy. I won at rummy and Lene won at casino, as usual.
The anchorage is quite large with many boats and room for many more. And it is surrounded by private residences including many high rises and a marina where mega yachts stay, like those in Antigua, St. Maartens and St. Barts, and, well, Fort Lauderdale. We are in the crowded wealthy part of Atlantic South Florida. Many of the people up the coast told us they felt that they had escaped from here.
(The only time I was ever in the Lake Worth anchorage before was briefly, aboard m/v Sea Leaf, in the spring of 2012. heading north, I had continued straight into the anchorage instead of making a left turn to continue up the ICW. All of the thousands of reds and greens that mark the ICW have a distinctive yellow square to distinguish them from non-ICW buoys, like those marking the channel into the anchorage. But I did not know that then. I sensed that something was wrong, however, and the captain confirmed it and we turned around.)
The next day we avoided about twenty bridges by going outside in the Atlantic from the Lake Worth Inlet to the Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale) Inlet. One high bridge before transit through a busy commercial port on the way out and one low bridge with half hour openings on request at the other end, which we made without a significant wait. And once out, our course was essentially a straight line, an average of about .7 miles off the coast. Actually the coast here curves slightly to the west so we added a few degrees to the west as we got further south. At first the wind was from the west, not the north-northeast, as had been predicted. And then it was confused and near absent. But by nine a.m. the wind came in from the predicted direction and the apparent wind was  a bit more east, about ten to twenty degrees aft of ILENEs port beam. We used full main and genoa; how long has it been since last we used them -- before Thanksgiving on the overnight passage to the St. Marys River. With apparent wind in the teens we were making better than seven knots, with autopilot steering.
We overtook one sailboat. It first appeared as a speck before us on the horizon. Soon it became apparent that it was a sailboat. Her mast kept getting taller as measured against the slot between the upper and lower rails of ILENEs  bow pulpit. She was not even visible behind us when we turned in. We passed another sailboat being towed north by Sea Tow and I felt so sorry for him. We passed the condo where my parents lived in Pompano Beach. We passed four huge freighters anchored out at sea. The rain was mostly light but decreased visibility to the beach, though you can see it in the photo below.
A brief heavy downpour occurred just as we were furling the headsail to turn right into the inlet.



But it was warm so the rain was not unpleasant, though it chased Lene and the paper charts below. If I do not look like a happy camper to you, your impression is mistaken.













Lots of big traffic in and out of Port Everglades. We saw this guy miles away, heading west toward the inlet as we came south.







Two of these funny looking rectangularish tugs came out to greet her and push her in just behind us, honking us further to the red side of the channel.
We hugged the eastern shore tightly going in and at mid tide saw no less than 7.8 feet of water during the entry. As soon as we were secured, on 50 feet of chain in eleven feet of water, the rain stopped and the drying process could begin. The cats began their mutual bathing ritual. We were the 17th boat in the lake, with room for more. (Sorry about this font.)
We spent a week in Lake Sylvia in the Spring of 2012 but this time we are planning to stay most of our time in Fort Lauderdale at Cooleys Landing, a municipal marina in the New River, next to Riverwalk and two blocks from Las Olas Boulevard. I guess we are just city people at heart, though we do enjoy nature too, like this Lake Sylvia sunset.







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Minggu, 03 April 2016

May 14 Capital Yacht Club DC to Anchorage North of Bluff Point Colonial Beach VA 56 6 Miles

Two observations: 1. From the last bridge in the ICW in South Norfolk, to Maine -- no bridges that we have to worry about!  2. The Washington Channel is the flying lane for helicopters in the DC area, which has lots of them, apparently to keep them out of the way of the runways of Dulles Intl Airport that are parallel to the Chanel. If you stay at the Capital YC -- get used to their noise!

It was cold the past two nights and yesterday and today. So I was warmly bundled for todays 7:00 to 3:45 passage  -- a retracing of our path, back down the Potomac. The early start was dictated by the desire to capture a few hours of good tide.  We went further than Fairview Beach because we had the time and want to go further tomorrow too. Here is Fairview from the channel, above the gate in the lifelines. It shows that this river is w i d e!
Tide was favorable at the start, giving us, with engine, small jib and wind at our back, about 7.5 knots, gradually diminishing to 4.9 and then building back up to 5.9. Going downstream is faster than going upstream.
With the wind behind us the small jib self-jibes at will while the other two sails, though they would have given us more speed, would have been a bear to handle through all the jibes of the twisty river. In fact the Potomac is a pretty easy river to navigate, especially once you have been there. Our electronic chart plotter displays the water more than 20 feet deep, the channel, in light blue, with dark blue for the shallower water at the sides. Red and green buoys are shown and we generally respect them, but if you stay in the light blue, you cant go wrong.
Tonight the wind is predicted from the south at 5 to 10 knots so while we elected to stop in the Potomac, rather than in a harbor, we are on the north side of a bluff which should make the 5 to 10 knots of wind from the south easy to take tonight. We have 60 feet of snubbed chain in 11 feet of water and no other boats in sight. For those with Google Earth who want to know, we are at 38 degrees, 16.6 minutes North; 076 degrees, 59.4 minutes West. Here:

I have tried to show pictures of things you have not seen before, or new views of the old.  Like this style of buoy. Ive never seen such before. They are common on this river. This one has a guest, or squatter, who is hawking "Danger" as we got too close for his comfort. Check the current running past it-- the "bow wave"
Floridian gargantuan houses on the upper Potomac.
A better view, on a non-foggy day, of the huge power transmission towers with strobe lights.
The rivers banks are lined with such cliffs, as if the Potomac is trying to become the Grand Canyon. It still has a way to go.

Maryland Point Light, with rapids flowing past and many birds watching from the man made islands on both sides.



Tomorrows destination: St. Marys, Maryland.


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Jumat, 01 April 2016

July 3 4 Parade up NY Harbor with LHermione 60 Miles

The New York Times of July 3 had a full page article on the visit of The Hermione. (We learned that while we pronounce her The Her-my-oh-knee, the French call her LAir-me-own.) A replica of the French square rigged wooden gunboat that ferried Lafayette across the puddle to help us win independence from the Brits. She visited Yorktown VA, where the original boat helped defeat the British resupply and re-enforcement fleet, thus causing General Cornwallis to surrender to General Washington, effectively ending the military aspects of the Revolution. We visited Yorktown on our way south and on our way north. Hermione is doing this as a good will tour, to remind us of our friendship with the French and making stops up the eastern seacoast to Boston. 

As Fleet Captain I put this out as a potential Club adventure and three other members joined us for the parade, though only two of us on  HYC registered boats. My friend since 1972, Marty, joined us at ten a.m. at the Harlem and we got underway at 11. But a failure of communication caused us to spend half an hour, drifting, waiting for "Shanghai," a Pearson 31, the other Harlem boat, with CJ and Jenny, while they had gone ahead. During the wait the NYC police burned off a vast stash of fireworks they had taken.
No problem once communications were restored; we caught up with Shanghai at about 90th Street in the East River, making great speed with the favorable tidal flow and engine.





ILENE, shown here passing 25th St.,used mainsail pretty much the whole way, but the wind was so light that except for a few puffs it mostly just prevented rocking.
 We anchored in Gravesend Bay, off the west end of Coney Island, Brooklyn, On the way we were passed by Gandalf 3, another Saga 43 out of Stamford, which I had visited to study its dinghy davit blocks before connecting ILENEs
Gravesend Bay is huge but exposed. But its very near where the parade was to start and there was very little wind at night, so we anchored out on the flat in 17 feet of water, with 70 feet of snubbed chain. There is a deeper channel, 25 to 27 feet, closer to shore, so we stayed further off. Our new smaller stainless steel snubber hook was deployed and it works like a charm. Finally!
Having left at 11:30, we arrived at 3:00 and lowered the dink. You cant miss the spot, Toys R Us put out a big welcome sign. The boats to the left are among the four French flagged Beneteaus,  Waquies [the key for the last letter of the alphabet is inoperative] and hard chined aluminum sloops "dressed" for the parade with their signal flags. They came in after us and anchored far enough away from us. I had expected more boats.


Then came a few hours rest, except I used the time in an unsuccessful attempt to get the cockpit VHF radio to power up. It is so convenient and useful because VHF Channel 8 was used for communications during the parade, but we had to use the inside radio turned up loud.
A shared dinner aboard ILENE for the five of us: Lene, Roger, Marty and CJ. Thanks for your pictures Jenny!
Everyone had brought food that did not need to be cooked and the menu was varied and delicious, starting with a bottle of champagne and cheese provided by Shanghai. We were together from 6 to 9 before I dinked CJ and Jenny back to Shanghai and everyone had a good nights sleep. Jenny, became infatuated with our cats, and can you blame her.











Sunset under the bridge:
In the morning, mango- sweetpotato pancakes were on the agenda, sweetened by honey that we had, and peanut butter that Jenny brought, not that the pancakes really needed to be sweetened much. And I forgot the bacon as well as the maple syrup! And the final system to seemingly go down was the fresh water pump. I can hear it run but it is not bringing water to the tap. So the dishes were rinsed off in a bucket of soapy seawater and will be properly washed once order is restored.

The parade formed up: about a hundred boats at its peak, all at the sides and rear of Hermione once she turned at the start.
I felt bad that I had not yet purchased a new American flag and flagpole after ours went missing during our winter excursion. But marty wore a sweater during the parade which eased my guilt.

The leader had a fetish about arriving under the Veransano Bridge, and at the Statue of Liberty, at precisely pre-scheduled times
presumably for the coordination of a US Navy flyover by two jets, for the media and for fire boat blasts, center in next photo.
But this caused me problems because Hermione did not maintain the five knots speed over ground that had been the plan and was repeated via VHF. I had only the small jib up and engine but it is hard to go straight when you slow down to 1.8 knots and when boats are perhaps fifteen feet away on both sides of you. I should have furled that jib but no harm done.    Here is Shanghai:
 The other expected Harlem participants were Gene, not on "Chandi Nerissa", but on a friends boat out of Stamford, which I did not see, and Rear Commodore Peter, not on "Annandale" but on Ricks boat, now in Jersey City who hailed us immediately after the parade formally ended. Several other Harlem boats rafted up in a rendesvous in Oyster Bay these days so there were plenty of guest moorings available.

I felt guilty for not having purchased a replacement for our American flag and pole, which went missing during our winter travels to Florida. But Marty assuaged my  guilt somewhat by wearing an appropriate sweater.
It was too early to go home when the parade ended because the tide in the East River and Hellsgate were adverse. So we drifted slowly down the Hudson from midtown to the Battery under only the small jib and tide.

The wind was down from the 15 knots out of the north that had faced us during the parade: still from the north but perhaps six knots. And a light rain was falling. When we reached the Battery Lene wanted to go home as soon as possible to see the fireworks from our roof so we did what was silly: we went up stream against the tide using motor, full main and small jib. Unlike the eight plus knots we had enjoyed on the way down, we made speeds that got as high as 4.2 knots, briefly, and as low as 1.1 knots at times.  But we were back on the mooring by 7:30, an hour before sundown. If we had waited two hours before starting, I think we would have arrived only fifteen minutes later, having expended a lot less fuel in the process.
A good time was had by all.

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Kamis, 31 Maret 2016

March 18 20 Three Lay Days in Lake Boca Zero Miles

Lake Boca is a large rectangle of water cut into the west side of the beach strip of Boca Raton, from the Boca Inlet north for about  .4 miles, along the east side of the ICW, .2 miles wide. The center of it is very shallow with only the edges navigable for keel boats. Anchorage for sailboats is in the NE corner. Access to land is in a park with a boat ramp and dinghy dock on the west side of the ICW, just south of the Palmetto Park Boulevard Bridge, north of the lake (less than half a mile away). We will have to request an opening of that bridge when we leave to head north.

Craig had a better idea about where to go ashore, because the tide runs fast under the bridge and big boats go too fast and make wakes: his boat, Sangaris, pictured above, is docked in a canal at the back yard of a private home about a mile further north. He picked us up there and we got to see Sangaris again, after all her European adventures.

Ive been saying that when I get too old to sail ILENE, a radio controlled sailing boat on a lake may be in my future. Well Kathy had to work, Lene did her phone work from Kathy and Craigs house, and Craig took me to another gated community a bit further north called Kings Point, which has a lake in which his club races such boats. Beauties, one meter long, high aspect ratio,with 3/4 of the weight in the keel. The control box is worn on a strap around ones neck and the right thumb controls the rudder by pushing its joy stick left of right, while the left thumb controls both sails with back to pull them closer hauled and forward letting them fly for the downwind legs of the course. Below is Craig, demonstrating and Erwin, also a Past Commodore of the Harlem and racer, to the right.
All I can say is that it is a lot harder than it looks and I lost every race; actually I did not finish them. When aboard a boat you can easily see if your bow is pointed to the right or left of a buoy; you feel the tension of the water on the rudder; you can see how close to the wind you are. But offset by 50 to 100 yards and at a strange angle, these critical facts are not readily apparent at least not yet, to me. And rudder control is maintained by constant pressure of perhaps a half inch on the "tiller". But these things can be learned and the fifteen guys had a good camraderie going. Kathy is one of the guys and quite competitive when she is not working. I raced her boat, number 3. Erwin brought some beer for the "after". We plan to see Erwin again before heading north.

And in the evening we had dinner with not just Craig and Kathy, but also Mike and Janet. The latter have a Florida home and we will see them again at their home in St. Michaels, off the Chesapeake on Marylands Eastern Shore, on our way home. I forget to take their picture but they are pictured from when we visited them in the Chesapeake in 2012 if you want to take a look. A nice Greek restaurant.

We rented a car for one day for trips to cousin Naomi to pick up a late arriving bundle of mail from home, the pet food store, Publix, the automotive store for things for the dink, the post office, the bank and the beach.
On our last day we toured around Mizener Village, which is a ritzy shopping mall. I got some new shorts because none of my old ones are unstained. We had lunch out and saw The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which celebrates India and aging. Good but not as good as the first movie. The theater is called Ipic and does not really want to be in the movie business. Seats are very large and comfortable and $14 if you want to sit in the first two rows, or $24 if you want even more luxurious seats with free use of a pillow and blanket and free popcorn. And Ipic has a full service restaurant and bar that you can patronize before or after and provides delivery of food and drink to your seat during the movie. And no reduced rate for matinees or for seniors.  The staff said it is a "good place to impress your date on a special occasion". The film is apparently just a gimmick to get folks to come in and spend money on the "entertainment experience package". This hustle offends me and I hope it fails, though we were the only two in the sixteen "cheap" seats while perhaps ten people sat behind us. We have had nice warm dry calm weather while in Boca. Next stop: Palm Beach.
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