Shipwrecked..The Marianela!

  I've been shipwrecked!  Yep!  My pirate ship, the Marianela, has been sent reeling by a hurricane and tossed ashore in a heap of masts, planks and sails.  The hillside is strewn with ship parts!  Down one particular pathway, the name of the ship has been nailed above a bamboo door that has to be drawn up by chains.  After the ship wrecked, we had to salvage the name boards as the "Marianela" WILL sail again!

  Yes, all of this has to do with the Clue Hunt on the Bayou!  This is the seventh year that we have hosted the event and, I must say, that this is one of my favorites.  After all!  I get to be a pirate!  So much time and effort has been put into, not only the clues, but the props.  There is a shipwreck, a full-sized cannon and a swamp witch shack all in the yard. (Our props are life-sized!)  The first run of the hunt was tonight and it was a huge success.  We did discover a few "bugs" that will need to be corrected before the next run but the team was still happy and did not seem to mind.

  Now, an interesting tidbit about the name of our ship.  I found the name on an old book when I was dusting the bookshelves.  Son told me that we needed to "fill his bookshelf prop with 7 inch tall books" so I was on the lookout for any such.   When I found the book entitled "Marianela", I knew that was our ship's name.  "Marianela" is a book by the author, Benito Perez Galdos.  I had no idea of the content of the book nor had any knowledge of a "real live" Marianela. The name just struck a chord and I was hooked.  After I painted our ship's beautiful name on some old boards and hung it above a gate, I found out there really is a Marianela!  This is the part I find interesting...a young cousin who is a talented ballerina across the ocean somewhere made mention of another quite famous ballet dancer named Marianela!  How ironic is that?  I find a book that I was previously unaware that I had, immediately decide it is a ship's name, paint a sign and then get a message about a real person by this name.  Ok...so maybe it is not that spectacular of an event but, hey, it was sort of weird that it all came together within just a couple of days!  Marianela...the ballet dancer...Marianela...the pirate ship!