Christmas Season 2024

 

Christmas 2024

We hope you had a good year - for us, 2024 was a Year of Travel & Hurricanes 

In March, we flew to Manus, Brazil where the muddy Amazon and the Rio Negro meet. We met a Viking ship there for a cruise down the Amazon with pretty Caribbean islands ending in gorgeous Puerto Rico. 

Later in June, we escaped the summer heat by canoeing the Boundary Waters and toured Minnesota. Afterwards, we joined a Friendship Force Journey to Minneapolis & St Paul continuing onto Northern Colorado. On the way home, we had a wonderful visit with Richard’s brother, Bart, and sister-in-law, Nita and family in Oklahoma City.

Last spring we hosted members of the Western Kentucky and Minnesota Friendship Force clubs in our home here in Punta Gorda. We love Friendship Force, especially the friends we’ve made all over the world!

 In September, before boarding a Viking cruise ship in Bergen, Norway, we flew to Oslo and traveled by ferry through breath-taking fjords. A highlight of the cruise was the passage through Greenland’s Prince Christian Sound.  It is hard to describe the beauty of the blue water against the soaring mountains and fiords in the gorgeous sunshine.  A memory that will be forever stored in our minds and hearts!

In October we joined a World Friendship Force tour in Morocco of 20 members from around the world where we stayed with an Arab family of three women for two nights in Fez and experienced “A Day in the Life of a Berber” in a very poor and remote village in the south of the country. Richard helped them plant crops and Joanne make almond butter.  Richard loved riding a camel and we “glamped” (luxury camping) in the Sahara Desert as well. What a wonderful country Morocco is – the people are so welcoming and friendly and the scenery is diverse from desert to mountain ranges.  Very special and we highly recommend it!

We plan to spend Christmas with Joanne’s sister’s family in California. For the new year of 2025, we’ll continue our adventures.  In January we cruise to Antarctica with Atlas Cruise Lines hoping to spot baby penguins and set foot on our 7^th continent.  When we return, we anticipate welcoming a new member to our family, another little Persian kitten. In March, Joanne will travel to Japan with a Friendship Force pal, Linda since Richard wants to “cool it” and stay home a bit.  Later in the year we hope to take a Viking ship down the Douro River in Portugal with maybe a side trip to the Azores.  We are so grateful that we are still able to travel and have the resources to do so.

What a year of hurricanes for us in southwest Florida – Debbie, passing us by 160 offshore, still managed to push water over our seawall early August. Near the end of our Viking cruise across the Atlantic, Helene's storm surge reached our garage.  That has never happened before.

While in transit from Miami to Casablanca, Milton’s storm surge flooded our garage somewhat but luckily caused little damage. The walls concrete, the power off to the refrigerator, and things electrical stored high on shelves meant little loss for us. Our boat was fine as well because it was raised high on the lift and secured with many dock lines. Others here were not so lucky losing everything. We returned to streets lined with all sorts of debris including ruined furniture, soaked mattresses, sheet rock, and assorted trash. Big boats washed up onto our local Gilchrist Park. One sailboat even crossed the street from the park setting itself under the powerlines. Lots of boats in Fisherman’s Village Marina tangled with each other as they sank.  On the coast, sand piled up to the third story of some condos. The small charming town of Boca Grande at the mouth of Charlotte Harbor suffered greatly.

Good news, now - All the debris in Punta Gorda has been cleaned up including the stranded boats so the town looks beautiful again. A volunteer cleaned the mud off the big Christmas tree and the folks at Disney World provided new ornaments for the tree.

Joanne continues to interview neighbors-in-need at Saint Vincent de Paul.  Richard volunteers in the warehouse and serves as District Treasurer and Diocesan Council Secretary.  Joanne also enjoys her time in the Garden Club. We continue to be members of the PGIslanders boat club and the Isles Yacht Club.

Since there are few marinas and sites available to sail to because of hurricane damage, we decided to sell our boat.  Not surprisingly, current boat sales are slow. Once the boat has a new owner, we may consider selling our home and moving off the water away from the threat of flooding and storm damage.  Although we love Punta Gorda, we are “hurricane fatigued,” and therefore, it may be time to relocate.

Best Wishes for the New Year,

Richard & Joanne