Living It Up In Long Beach – July 18th – October 25th

Shoreline Marina was good to us. We made lots of new friends. The people of dock CC were so friendly and welcoming, we really didn’t even want to leave. We met Jessi, Robert, Zoe and Apollo of SV Morning Star and had a few fun nights with them. I had been following them on Instagram for some time, so it already felt like we were old friends in real life once we met up. Social media can be weird, but this was definitely one of the positive aspects of it. I hate that I didn’t get a picture of us with Jessi and Robert, but I took a plenty of the kids.


One of our best friends, Natalie, turned 20×2 and had her birthday celebration in Huntington Beach, only a 30 minute drive away. So we got to spend the weekend hanging out with a bunch of our favorite people from the Bay Area. It was so nice to catch up with everyone and we had a great time celebrating the birthday girl.

We drove the sprinter back up to the Bay on Tuesday, August 6th for a visit with family and friends and to finish the sprinter build out with our good friend Anthony. But our hearts broke on Friday morning when we found out one of our closest friends Alex had died. Alex’s memory will always live on with us. He will be remembered in the funny stories that he shared with us, the funny situations we found ourselves in with him, his crazy quirks and his way of loving and accepting people as they are. Natalie put it best when she said that Alex didn’t love us in spite of our craziness, but because of it. We will laugh and smile and tell stories in Alex’s honor and he will always be with us.

So in spite of that, we managed (sort of) to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. We were so fortunate to be surrounded by our family and friends who got us through. We spent a few days at Anthony’s house with his sweet girls, feisty wife and zesty mom and finished the sprinter build out. It came out great and was made complete with special decor made by Noor (Anthony’s daughter and one of my favorite sailing buddies). Thanks Italiano for your unbelievable craftsmanship!

We were lucky that Amy kept us again while we were in the Bay Area and continued to extend our reservation dates. I am really lucky to have a sister and best friend all rolled in to one spicy mamacita.

         

When we got back to the boat we did some boat projects, tried our hand unsuccessfully at lobstering, spent a lot of days at the dog beach and had a fun visit with our Frazzitta family. We made the most out of Grandma Francis’s passing and celebrated her long life together.

 

Some other celebrity visits included the Love Family all the way from San Ramon, the infamous Lisa from Folsom and Natalie & Randy. Sorry about falling off the paddle board, Lisa! Glad we were able to save you from the sharks.

And then, wouldn’t you know it?!?! All of a sudden it was October 25th & time to git on down the road! Saddle up, we’re heading for Mexico!

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