Returning to the Jungle - Nawlins' up next.

We did make it safe and sound the the next day. And while my princess was a tad under the weather, she was able to make it to breakfast.

Hey, did I mention they serve all these cool shots for a buck. So, any whoo, we're late into the evening and Jenée has all these cool beads. She said people just kept throwing them off balconies. Anyone know how you get all these cool beads while walking down Bourbon Street? Me neither.

After dinner we strolled down Bourbon Street and popped in at this speakeasy and caught this band. They where playing everything 80's and 90's and sounded like the originals. They played Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" and Guns and Roses "Sweet Child of Mine" and we dug it baby. And I don't even like Journey or Guns and Roses. The lead guitarist looked to be 15 years old, barely moved, but could he play - wow.

And a great corner table to take it all in.

Dinner was at Galatoiore's, the century old "Grand Dame" of New Orleans dining. Fantastic meal.

Jenée shoots again, and scores! We love bars that spin while you drink.

We stopped in at the Carousel Bar inside the Monteleone Hotel. If you look closely at the mirror up top, you see me.

Strolling by Jackson Square.

Here is a typical balcony scene during daytime on Bourbon Street - We'll get back here later tonight.

And we're in New Orleans - on the Mighty Mississippi River. I've been here a couple of times and wasn't very impressed, but I must say we both thoroughly enjoyed ourselves this visit. We walked through much of the French Quarter.

Getting Back to the Jungle - Family Time

A happy family portrait - Next stop New Orleans!

Here is Jenée's love - her dinner. This is the venison and duck combo that she felt was the best she ever tried. While I of simpler tastes felt the Mac and cheese was "to die for".

Our Mexican Senoritas are hamming up once again.

Everyone's happy. Here is Mike, Monica and Monica's daughter Giovanna. Monica has multiple businesses in Monterey providing upscale kitchen appliances. We love spending time with Monica and Giovanna as they are great fun.

Charlene Webber and Mike Webber have big smiles for the camera.

Jenée and her Dad Lonnie pose at a restaurant on the San Antonio Riverwalk called Biga. What a meal!

We made our way to San Antonio, TX to visit with Jenée's family (Mom, Dad, Brother Mike). The Webber's just moved from San Diego to San Antonio. They settled in to a great new home while Mike and beautiful lady friend Monica live 5 hours away in Monterey, Mexico. Mike manages the Latin American business for manufacturing equipment giant Amada.

While taking a Jucuzzi, Yanko demonstrates the Ukranian tradition of "Here is my hand to you", or "here, smell my hand". As you may imagine, it is very long and loving tradition.

We made it to Buckeye, AZ and our good friends Kristy and Darren Yankovsky. They were our best man and maid of honor for our wedding - 10 years ago. Darren is from Montreal and played professional hockey for many years, mostly as an enforcer. Some may call it goon, Yanko would prefer to call it disagreement arbitration. One stat for Yanko - 87 professional fights, lost twice. I've seen him in action and it is as pretty to watch as figure skating - no doubt.

And we're off on the Jungle Land Sail 2011 ! Hold on, we blew this tire on our ride while not quite out of California. Key word being blew! I was convinced it was from having our big ride (Escalade) sitting in the garage for a good part of a year. Jenée felt it may be caused by low tire pressure - women! The AAA guy (that's right - complicated tire change for the ace) looked at the tire and said this type of blow out indicated low tire pressure. I told him that's what I thought. When he pulled the flat we found a nail stuck in the center, causing a slow leak - who knew! We then put the spare on and Jenée commented that we need to be careful because the spare is an different (original) size. I started to assure her we'd be OK for a bit and the AAA guy said "Oh no, you don't want to drive far on this spare." Of course! Tell me something I don't know. Glad I was available to supervise the effort.

Sailing to Napa Valley - sans Jungle

Here's the wine tasting team in great form.

OK, here's a flashback from late 2009. Marc and I played hockey together over the last few years on various teams. Marc is a former Montreal Junior A (highest level below professional), while I'm a former Boston pond hockey Junior D (which is ... oh nevermind). As a matter of fact all the guys pictured here after our championship game win are "Players" with the exception of the goon in the middle. Check out the score. We dominated with only 5 skaters and one goalie for 60 minutes. But I digress.

Here's the gang outside one of our tasting locations.

Here we are outside our little cottage - great place. It was loaned to us as a favor to Marc.

Jenée and I stayed at the Grassi Family vineyard where we were treated royally. We got to sample a bottle of their Cabernet. While I'm not drinking these days, it was excellent. Marc plans to feature it at his shop - look it up.

We visited the Reynolds family winery in Napa Valley and they definitely had wine. Matter of fact they had casks of wine from many other winery's in the area. I counted labels from 15 other family winery's.

To properly kick off 2011 we joined our friends Marc and Louise (seated on each side of Jenée) and Louise's brother Jean and his wife Joanne Coté. All are from Montreal and were a blast to hang around with. Marc and Louise own La Maison Gourmet wine and cheese shop in Mission Viejo, CA. They were tending to their wine shop business and invited us along for great wine and food. Let me think, okay - I'm in. Marc found this great lunch spot in Calistoga.

Christmas Time in SoCal

Santa was very good to me. I'm feeling great and I'm with Jenée. That's all I need.

Oh, I did get some really cool socks.

Happy Holidays everyone.

After our dinner, we caught up with our pals Karen and Randy Hutchinson for a New Years Eve celebration at the Montage in Laguna Beach.

We had a wonderful New Years Eve dinner with our friends Dennis and Lori Puddester. We had dinner at Kya in the La Casa del Camino Hotel in Laguna Beach. WE've come full circle as this is the first place we stayed years ago before walking around town and finding our home in Laguna Beach. Dennis and Lori were determined to get home and tucked in by 9 PM - newlyweds! Gotta love em'.

Here's my bride chillin' with Katie beside our (real) Christmas Tree. Garrett and I picked it out and set it up. Jenée did the trimming - nice. Katie thought all the lower ornaments were her personal toys - isn't she special!

The master chef Garrett (Jenée's son) is carving up the Christmas Eve turkey. Garrett prepared and grilled the turkey and everyone agreed it was the best they've ever had! Garrett plans to go into the Police Force, but he'd make an excellent chef as well.

Ah yes, time to catch up with friends in Southern California. We spent an evening with our friends Linda and Ron in downtown Laguna Beach. Linda and Ron are moving in together on board Ron's 36 foot sailboat. They are planning to set sail together in the next few years. Linda comes from Chelmsford, MA, so she is a wicked hahd Patriots fan too. God Bless her.

Jungle "On the Hard"

Now she is backed out and placed in the yard. I'll have pictures of that when we return.

The lift makes quick work of lifting Jungle.

Here' a view of the lift and Jungle.

Jungle is in position so the lift can pick up the 22 ton ship.

Jenée and I head back to SoCal for the holidays, while Jungle gets a much needed bottom painting. We are taking her out at Westland Marina in Titusville, FL. We'll do additional work on Jungle before "splashing down" in late January. Here, Jungle is being put in position for the travel lift.

Here's a video of Jungle moving to land - the yard manager moves her around like a toy.

What's a few more shots on board Jungle?!

Can you spot Katie the Jungle cat?

The Captain and Admiral posing on board. I lost 50 lbs in my latest diet. My secret - sensible eating, portion control and radiation 5 times a week! Jenée is is forcing me to eat as much as possible and drink Ensures all day long. Two things, I'm not digging my one-on-one time with Jenée as much, plus I plan to machine gun Ensure whenever I see it on land, while wearing a Ninja outfit. Think of it as a public service exercise. Oh I kill me! So does that damn Ensure!

John and Jenée reeling in a catch - turned out to be a small shark. We sent him back.

Here's a cool looking trawler passing us headed southbound on Adams Creek, NC. This is a narrow part of the Inner Coastal and very quaint. Fact is Jenée and I still prefer open ocean as we can sail round the clock, versus motor only. But this was a nice break from the weather.

Here's Linda posing on her first voyage at sea, after a couple of days and her sea-legs under her. On her first day Linda had Jenée's delicious breakfast and lunch, then showed it to us again later - Yahtzee! I call that the sailing tri-fecta or the Davy Jones three course meal - I just made em both up. I'm funny. Linda didn't think so at the time.

How about a few more people shots on the trip south. I plum forgot about them until Linda sent these pics. So, here's me and brother John, I mean my brother John and me, no wait, John and I, no, two asswipes, staring out a window - whatever! See my new haircut? Compliments of radiation treatment. I'm told it does grow back, probably in a blond afro - that's nice.

Jungle Landed - Titusville, FL

And we're safely tucked in for the night at the Westland Marina in Titusville. We set sail from Boston on 40 degree weather on Friday, Nov 12 (never leave on a Friday - bad luck) and we pulled into Titusville on Sunday, November 21. The total open ocean time was 7 nights. Mass Bay and Pamlico Sound, NC was another 2 nights. This was the first open ocean sailing for Linda and John Fraine and they were absolute champs! Everyone kept to their shifts and John made some great and timely course changes when we were battling the Gulf Stream. Now that we're here, Jenée and I will get some clean up work completed before spending time with our sailing friends, Charlie and Saundra Gray and land based friends Martha and Carl Williams. Then we'll pull Jungle for a much needed bottom paint job. Jungle will remain "on -the-hard" until we return from California in late January. Of course that's after my 3 month check up at the Boston University Medical Center.

Back to the Inner Coastal Bridges. The fixed bridges are set at 65 feet - Jungle was designed with a mast that stands 62 feet off the water - phew !!!

And on this same evening, beautiful moonshots. This one was taken at 4 AM on my watch.

Ahh, more beautiful sunsets once we are out to sea.

Here is a bridge view coming into the Oregon Inlet.

Here is another view of our roller coaster ride into the Oregon Inlet in North Carolina. We entered the Inner Coastal and spent two nights before heading back out sea for a 4 night sail to Florida.

I wanted to show off a little technology - this is a screen shot from Jungle's Furuno GPS system. The one we have is a bit older technology but it works very well so we decided to make it work versus going for the "latest and greatest" new toy. Here we see the tracking from Boston down to North Carolina. - approx 600 nautical miles. The yellow dots are waypoints or target destinations on the map. You can see one yellow dot at the 76 degree waypoint where we changed course and decided to keep going on to NC since the weather was so good.