The sunset tonight was fantastic!  I was sitting in the cockpit sanding a piece of teak from the galley and looked up to see this beautiful sight.  It was one of those ... "it don't get any better than this."  It is one of the reason people live on boats, for these moments.

More about the Blue Pearl

Our boat was originally named Courstormer, a name that meant nothing to us, but a name that the original owner and a group of his golfing buddies had made up to describe what they did when they hit the golf course .... "stormed it".  So we looked around for a new name, one that appealed to us and eventually came up with the Blue Pearl.  When we did a Google-search on the name we came up with this:

The Blue Pearl
a.k.a. Blue Dot, Blue Sphere, Blue Disk, Blue Angel, Blue Flash, Blue Trails

… the Blue Pearl [is] the subtlest covering of the individual soul....

When we see this tiny blue light in meditation,
we should understand that we are seeing the form of the inner Self.
To experience this is the goal of human life.

[The Blue Pearl] is tiny, but it contains all the different planes of existence.

- Swami Muktananda 

This seemed perfect since we have been fans of yoga and meditation for quite a while now.  I especially like the last part about it being "tiny" and containing "all the different planes of existence."  If you have ever lived on a boat or spent a lot of time on one you know how true that is.  A boat, like yoga and meditation, can bring out a lot about a person.  How you deal with frustration, how patient are you, what kind of things are you afraid of, do you really "need" a lot of what you have or do you just "want" it?

Here is a picture that went with the quote above.  I've never seen that when I meditate, but maybe today ....

What is the Blue Pearl?

The Blue Pearl is our Niagara 31 sailboat, which we bought this past summer.  Once we sold our townhouse in Vienna, Virginia, we needed a place to live and thought a boat would be a lot less expensive than another piece of real estate and more fun than renting something!  This is the Blue Pearl at her new home in Callao, Virginia.  We sailed her down from Annapolis in October, and plan to keep her here at Olverson's Lodge Creek Marina, which is just off the Potomac River and a few miles up from the Chesapeak Bay.  The marina is very quaint and homey, nothing like where we moved her from in Annapolis. Olverson's is a family owned  and operated marina that is nearly 50 years old, and believe me, some of the docks look like they are at least that old.  But we really like it and everyone is so friendly and helpful.