For The Record: Formidable and Poincare have a home port of Gloucester MA. Sparred Length 72 feet, length over all 55 feet, length at the water line 49 feet, draft 7 feet, beam 18 feet and rig height 55 feet. Formidable is inspected by the Coast Guard and permitted to carry passengers on day trips. We offer an extensive day charter schedule, including fund-raising for charities. Formidable is rigged as a brigantine. Her main mast carries the spanker and her foremast carries square sails fore tops'l , and fore course, as well as several jibs and stays'ls. Poincare is a brig and sets three square sails on each mast. Formidable is licensed for 49 passengers, and operate four 2 hour cruises daily. Each cruise costs $25 per person. Poincare can carry six passengers, for $40 each. Each vessel is available for $3,000/day.
http://www.tallshipformidable.com/

I often, on visiting, (you are bookmarked), worry that I have already entered and forgotten. I hope your software is configured to simply reject second entries, and not to disqualify innocent double-dippers. Some months I have elected to not enter, unsure if I have done so already, and unwilling to be booted out of your system. All your prizes are lovely; there are none I would not enjoy. Maybe you can interest a sponsor who sells food items, like maple candy or such. Maybe my favorite would be t-shirts, in huge sizes, which make wonderful nightshirts.

Whoever is setting up your site has made it a joy to visit. And I like your Yankee humor, with your tongue firmly planted in your cheek. Even here in the Midwest, I absolutely consider myself Yankee! I was born, and spent my first fifty years, on the shoreline of northern Indiana, where, during WWII I shrank beneath the covers of my wee bed at night, listening to the eerie calls of the foghorns on the great oreboats that plied the Great Lakes, hauling their prize in ever-greater tonnage, to the fiery steelmills along the shore. During the war the blast furnaces continually illuminated the night sky with the orange glow that destroyed the dark, and the pouring of hot ladles of tons of molton iron created flashes like red-gold lightning.

Now I live in Crawfordsville, some hundred miles south, in a whole new world. Here lies Wabash College, the heart of our small town, established in 1832, incredibly early for central Indiana. Here lived General Lew Wallace, who wrote Ben Hur here, and whose home is now a museum. I love it here, where I have lived ten years, and I plan to stay. But. . . .every so often I remember the scent of the lake, and I miss it. So when the birds begin to square off over preferred nesting sites, and the sun grows strong, giving the soil its heavenly scent, and the Sandhill cranes, in their majestic thousnad-strong formations, fly north, I itch to join them. A few times a year we make the drive, and we sit on rocks on the shore, smelling the spawning perch, quietly listening to the slosh of water on shore, refilling our souls.

So I can absolutely understand why you love your land. Thank you for sharing a bit of it with us, and please, don't let a few sourpusses spoil your day. I will look forward to your newsletter, and, yes, chance to win a bit of fun, each month.
Nora in Crawfordsville, IN