We’ve been home now for a little over a week and we’re starting to get more serious about selling Moonrise. So far we’ve put her on Craigslist, talked to a few folks on the phone, and shown the boat once. But we realize we need to up the ante a bit if the universe is going to hear our plea for that blue-water cruising boat.

Part of the problem is that we’re struggling with the idea of being….. BOATLESS in Seattle. Or Tacoma. Or anywhere for that matter. I mean, when the weather is nice, Mike and I actually spend a lot of time on our boat, unlike many of the people with boats in our marina.  Those boats just seem sad and neglected most of the time. We go down to Moonrise and hang out, have dinner on the boat, read a few books, pretending we’re on vacation even if we don’t leave the dock. This weekend we plan to be on the boat circumnavigating Bainbridge Island with the Puget Sound Cruising Club. When Moonrise sells, we’re going to have a big hole in our lives. We’ll have to fill it with actively looking for the next boat, but it’s not the same.

So on Sunday we planned to go down and spend the day on the boat, put some ‘for sale’ signs on it, and generally hang around. It turned out to be a lovely day and also the day of the Marine Daffodil Parade! The Daffodil festival is a 79 year old yearly tribute to all the kinds of daffodils grown commercially in the Puyallup valley. There are Daffodil Princesses, Queens, and probably various other royalty. There is a huge parade with floats decorated with daffodils. And Sunday’s marine parade was the culmination of all of these festivities.

I want to say that we are completely in tune with the cultural happenings in the Tacoma area, and we deliberately made sure we were in time for the marine festivities. But I’d be lying. We had no idea Sunday was the marine parade. It turns out we had a front row seat! So we sat in the cockpit and had lunch and  waved at all the duded up yacht people, using the time honored ‘float princess wave’. You know: elbow, wrist, elbow, wrist. Repeat. Man, we’re going to suffer profoundly when this boat sells. At least for awhile.

The theme for this year was 'Don't Stop Believing'. Don't the flags look spiffy? I love the flags.

Loads of flowers on this one!

The Sea Scouts looking extremely ship shape!

These guys had fun with it.

So since it’s causing us so much emotional pain to come face to face with selling this boat, it’s nice when we get to show the boat to a lovely young family and take them out for a sail, all at once. When Laura called and asked to see the boat on Sunday, our first thought was ‘maybe she’d like to go for a sail’. Turns out she did! It was a perfect day for sailing with someone new to the sport. Steady, but not heavy wind, and sunshine. When we sold Saucy Sue, our Catalina 27, we sold it to a young woman named Laura who had a very young child.And here was another young woman named Laura, and her very young child, Mia! It was just a bit of deja vu, as it were.

I don’t know if Moonrise will be the right boat for Laura, but we sure did enjoy showing her off and taking Laura and Mia for a sail. I think Mia is a natural sailor, as you’ll see in this video of Mike during his first stint as a sailing instructor.