Flowers on the Gibson…

I received these flowers this past week from some of my co-workers and thought it would be nice to have them on the boat for the weekend rather than leaving them at home with the kids – who would just munch on them (our kids/our cats).

The last time we had flowers on the Gibson we ended up with our picture in the Cincinnati Enquirer. It was Sunday, the last day of the Tall Stacks celebration in 1999 and we had been at the Mike Fink for the week enjoying the festivities. Our neighbors came to our boat Saturday evening for dinner and to watch the boat parade. I remember the boat parade was incredible with many of the boats decorated to celebrate the new millennium. Anyway, our neighbor brought us the most beautiful flowers cut from her own garden. They really were striking and Sunday afternoon they caught the eye of a reporter from the Cincinnati Enquirer. He wanted to take a picture of Keith and me on the front of the boat with the flowers. Keith and I really didn’t want our picture taken. Well, he took the picture without us knowing and the picture ended up having a lot more to it than just some flowers and Keith and I – we weren’t even on the boat! Luckily it was in black and white so unless you knew what we were up to, you couldn’t make out the bright red gas cans Keith was carrying. Nonetheless, Dan and Marsha put the picture up in the marina store and even though it was never our practice to bring fuel to our boat vs. stopping at the gas dock, we sure caught a lot of grief over that picture. So since then, anytime I had flowers for the boat, I put them inside!

This past Saturday the weather was beautiful. It seems that we haven’t been able to get the sunny, dry weather to last beyond Thursday/Friday each week. So even though it was quite breezy, we took Cotton Jenny III out for a ride to the end-of –the world (Sugar Bay).

Used to be when the Gibson started up, people on the dock could hear it and knew it was time for a ride. This one’s a little quieter so I had to go round everyone up when we were ready to go. Hank, Sally and Wes had found a shady spot to sit while waiting for me to come and get them.

Wes, Sally, Lee and Alex found spots to sit on the front of the boat.

Hank was on the bridge with Keith.

Cathy “Steg” says “HI”

You can see that the river has really cleared up nicely after all the rain and near flooding we had a couple of weeks ago.

Alex showed Wes how to use the digital camera -

- we weren't going to include any of the shots with his finger over the lens, but then decided, what the heck.

When we turned around to head back to the marina – boy oh boy was it windy. Everybody went inside, except for me and the captain (Keith). The swells were about 2 -3 feet, but the new boat took them beautifully.

Keith looks pretty comfortable running the new boat.


I’m not really sure how this happened - usually I’m the one running the boat……… Judging by how comfortable he looks, it looks like this Mate’s going to have to over-throw the Captain. Arrrrrgh – I’ll use me good eye!