50 First Dates

It's about the connections.
 
Huh?  That's a movie title.  In short: 

Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore create a heart-warming romantic story about a couple who overcome an unusual and very difficult obstacle to create a relationship.

Is that all I'm going to say?  Yep.  I don't want to give it away.  But I do think you'll enjoy it.

So why do I bring it up here, on a sailing and liveaboard blog?

I won't be revealing anything important if I tell you that we have a tenuous personal connection to this movie.  Kind of like, you have to see Sleepless In Seattle if you live in Seattle, we needed to see 50 First Dates.  (Except that when I first heard of the movie, it was by word of mouth, and somehow I got it as 51^st Dates, which is not the same thing at all.  But I digress.)

s/v Lea Fortis, across the dock from Eolian

That connection is this: The final scenes in the movie were shot aboard s/v Lea Fortis, a Force 50 that used to be tied up across the dock from us, in the spot now occupied by s/v Ghost (coincidentally, another Force 50).  The movie company chartered the boat for the summer and took her to Alaska to film those scenes.  I don't know what it cost them, but it was a lot.  In addition, the boat came back with some pretty substantial damage - enough to quell any slight inclinations I might have had at chartering out Eolian for anything similar.  I presume that the cost to repair that damage was above and beyond the chartering fee.  All I can tell you is that owner seemed to be happy with the deal he had made, afterwards.

See the movie.  You'll enjoy it, and then you can think about what it costs to make a movie, and why.

50 First Dates