Accolades for Cathy

Cathy was away most of last week.  She went to Mobile AL for a conference where she gave two papers.  This morning she flew off again, this time to Portland to take care of some business back there and to see friends. 

Yesterday she came to the boat show and came along on one of my Discover Sailing sponsored 45 minute cruises on the Catalina 44.  I had eight passengers on that trip, plus Cathy.  Two of my passengers were repeat customers from the previous day.  They were a couple from Michigan.  They told me they'd had so much fun the first time out that they came back for another trip, and they brought another couple of friends with them.    

After we left the dock and set the sails, I got everyone's attention and made the following announcement: 

"We have a special guest onboard.  Cathy Tortorici.  She works for the federal government agency known as NOAA.  Cathy is a NOAA Branch Chief in their Porltand Oregon office.  There she is responsible for, among other things, salmon protection and recovery, which is a hugely important issue in the Pacific Northwest.  Six months ago, when the BP catastrophe was at it's height, Cathy was one of the senior people asked to come to this region to help manage NOAA's response to the mess.  Now she's involved in that plus many other Gulf region issues.  I can't keep up with it all.  So here we have this smart and accomplished woman, who despite being smart and accomplished, was foolish enough to marry me."   

With that, all my passengers broke out into applause.