by Judy Handley | Oct 21, 2011 | Cape Cod, USA |
Day 362, Year 6: The Question of Importance
Date: Friday, October 21, 2011
Weather: Continued Partly Sunny and Very Windy
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
I know health is at the top of the list of what is really important in life, but I’m having a hard time thinking that right now. A few weeks ago my computer died. It had been my constant companion for the last six years and it was hard to lose it. But I had some warning and had backed up most things on an external hard drive that I brought in North Carolina in June. The new external hard drive is the same brand as others we have that have been so very reliable. So everything . . . all my posted photos from the last six years, my logs, all of the writing I have done since I have been home, and on an on are on that drive and no where else. And this morning when I turned on Mark’s computer, it didn’t recognize the drive. I was sure the problem was in his computer, so I hopped on a bus and went to the only place I could find in Falmouth to have it checked. At the end of the day I was told that Mark’s computer is fine. The new WD external hard drive is dead. And buried with it are six years of my life. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. The logs in their original form and some of the posted photos are backed up elsewhere. But I have spent countless hours getting photos from Year 1 renamed and put into Picasa. And I had completed a summary of the first two years of our journey as well as recommendations to cruisers on provisioning for long-distance sailing, and those Word files are gone. It costs $100 to start investigating whether or not they can retrieve the data on the drive, and as they explained the cost goes up from there depending on the difficulty of retrieval—up to $1,000. I know I can’t pay $1,000, so I am just hoping there is some other way. Mark will be gone with the car the first three days of next week, so it will be late in the week before I can continue to figure out what can be done. I have always had two copies of everything–one on my computer and one on an external hard drive. But since I have been using Mark’s computer which is already overburdened, I thought I’d be okay with the only copy being on the new hard drive for now. Very bad thinking.
On the brighter side of life . . . Yesterday I wrote about Ziggy and his pink furry boots. Well, today Jonah gave Ziggy a run for his money. Jonah usually takes his pants off and naps in only his shirt and diaper, but today it was cool and he wanted to keep his pants on. His diaper didn’t quite do it’s job and he woke up with wet pants. So off they went. When it was time to leave the boat and go to the car, he really didn’t want to put those wet pants back on, so he put on his bright red ladybug boots. As I looked at him in the cockpit, I realized that he was definitely in serious competition with Ziggy for cutest two year-old in a diaper and boots. Jonah had on his fleece jacket which made it even funnier. So he tromped out to the street in diaper, boots, and fleece with no care. Heather immediately sent a post to Facebook, so the battle of the “booties” is on. It’s all about being two.
by Judy Handley | Sep 21, 2011 | Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs Year 6 |
Day 332, Year 6: The New ‘Voyage of Windbird’ Website
Date: Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Weather: Sunny and Warm, Temps in the Low 70’s
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Today felt almost balmy to us after the last few days of cooler weather. Today was a work day at West Marine for Mark and a Granny Nanny day for me. But I spent a little extra time transporting as Sam had another dentist appointment this morning. That meant that Jed took him, but I went in to pick up Heather and Jonah and bring them to Woods Hole. Then I had to take Mark to work at noon and come back to Woods Hole again to pick up Jonah. So I did a little back and forth and back and forth, but it was a beautiful day and I took the beach route on a couple of my runs just to be close to the water.
If you read these logs on our website, then you know that our website has a new look. When the page comes up you see one of four slides that you can click on to go to different parts of the site-About Us, About Windbird, Planned Routes, and Tracking Windbird. You can also go to Sailing Logs by year. Those logs are in chronological order from the beginning of the year to the end. If you scroll down on the homepage, you can read the three most recent logs, and you can subscribe to get our daily logs delivered straight to your email. It’s an easy process. You simply look in the right hand column and scroll down past the photo of Windbird flying her courtesy flags and the slide show featuring recent photos. Below that you will see–Get our Logs via Email. Click on ‘Subscribe’ and follow the directions from there. It just requires that you enter your email address and you will then get an email where you just need to click to verify. After that you will receive our daily logs straight to your email box
by Judy Handley | Sep 21, 2011 | Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs Year 6 |
Day 331, Year 6: Garden Shed Has a Roof
Date: Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Weather: Overcast with Periods of Light Sprinkles, Continued Warming
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
As soon as I sent last night’s log, our son Justin called to tell us all is well with Ziggy. Justin had sent a photo to us of the staples in back of Ziggy’s head, but Mark had not seen the attachment when he read the email on his phone. Once I saw the photo, I felt much better, although staples holding together a gash in the back of a two year-old’s head is never very comforting. So the good news is that Ziggy is fine, but the next time he decides to walk on a rock wall, I hope there is only sand below-no rocks-for him to fall on. This afternoon while Jonah (the other two year-old grandchild) and I were helping Granddad work on the garden shed, Jonah tripped and fell out of the door of the shed face first into the dirt below. He must have had his mouth open as his tongue was absolutely dirt encrusted. But he just got up and wiped his mouth on my shirt and kept going. Tough stuff! And thankfully there were no rocks where he fell.
Granddad spent his whole day working on the shed and it now has a roof, a window, and a door. The only thing missing are the shingles on the roof and the battens on the front and back of the shed. Since Mark works at West Marine tomorrow, further work on the shed will have to happen on Thursday. For now we have a tarp over the plywood roof, and hopefully on Thursday he’ll complete the job. What doesn’t get done on Thursday won’t get done by Mark for sometime as we have found out that we are going to have to have Windbird hauled out of the water next Monday. We need an out-of-water marine survey for insurance purposes. Mark works at West Marine on Friday and Saturday. We’ll move the boat to Kingman Yacht Center on Sunday and then be hauled out on Monday. As long as the boat has to be hauled we are going to have the bottom painted and we’ll install new through-hulls. So most of next week when be centered on Windbird. We have been going back and forth between insurance companies for the past couple of weeks trying to determine whether or not we were really going to have to hauled out. Finally today it became apparent that we are, but we still don’t know what insurance company we will end up with. Our current insurance is through Blue Water who has sub-contracted with a company in London. Because we have been in foreign waters for the past few years, our insurance on the boat has been European-based and very expensive. But now that we are back in home waters, the insurance cost will be much cheaper BUT in order to change companies, everyone is demanding an out-of-water survey. We had hoped to wait until spring to do this so that we would have new bottom paint for summer sailing, but all avenues to this end have been blocked. So out of the water we will come next week. Fun, fun, fun.
by Judy Handley | Sep 19, 2011 | Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs Year 6 |
Day 330, Year 6: Perfect Day for Building
Date: Monday, September 19, 2011
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Warming Up
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
The sun was shining and the temperature was in the mid- to upper-60’s today making it just a perfect day for building-not too hot, not too cold, not too windy. Mark and I went to Heather and Jed’s early and worked all day on the garden shed. I stopped to do my Granny Nanny thing in the afternoon, but Mark somehow managed to get the roof rafters up all by himself. He is ahead of schedule as getting the rafters up was his goal for the day, but he also got about half of the siding on. There’s a place for the door and a window and it looks enough like a house that Sam has started making plans for moving in. After nap, Sam and Jonah went to work with Granddad and Sam actually moved a number of boards from the driveway to the construction site using one of his dump trunks to haul them. Unfortunately it might rain tomorrow. We’ll hope that doesn’t happen and we can get the rest of the siding on and at least get the trim boards and roof plywood on. Mark’s not sure he’ll get the shingles on, but the shed should be under roof by tomorrow evening.
We stayed at Heather’s for dinner and had Indian take-out that was great. Jed had a grant due today that he had hoped to be done writing by Thursday. He was still working on it today, but it is now submitted. So we celebrated the shed progress and the grant submission by ordering out instead of cooking dinner. When we got back to the boat we checked email and got one from Justin with not-so-good news about Ziggy. He fell on a rock yesterday and hit his head. He now has a number of staples in his head I’m hoping to talk to Justin and Jo shortly. I see that they are now on Skype, so I sent a message. I’m very anxious to hear the details of this mishap. These beautiful grandchildren of mine are going to have to stop falling and getting stitches. It makes me a crazy Oma.
by Judy Handley | Sep 18, 2011 | Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs Year 6 |
Day 329, Year 6: Fast Moving Sunday
Date: Sunday, September 18, 2011
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Still Cool–Daytime Temps in the 60’s
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
There was no time for sitting around today. Mark was one busy man. He spent the first three hours of the day installing our new voltage regulator. We think our old voltage regular probably works just fine, but the Link 2000R that controls the voltage regulator seems to be faulty. We would have just bought another controller, but they are no longer available and the company won’t service old ones. So we bought a Balmar voltage regular to match the Balmar alternator we bought in South Africa. After doing some testing to see if the batteries are now holding a charge with the new voltage regulator, we’ll buy a system monitor. The new regulator is self-controlling through a series of switches on the regulator, but to be able to easily see what is happening we’ll need the monitor. One step at a time, we’ll get there. But the next step is to make sure the new regulator is working. So more on this later when we get it all figured out.
Before noon we headed to Heather and Jed’s. Jed was already working on the foundation for the garden shed when we arrived and then with Mark’s help, they got the gravel tamped down and the foundation blocks in place and leveled fairly quickly. Then it was time to take the tarp covering off the kit that was delivered in late August and start building. This afternoon we got the floor frame built and the plywood floor nailed down and painted. At one point in the afternoon, Mark, Jed, Sam, and Jonah were all pounding nails to secure the plywood flooring. It was really neat to see both little ones pitching in the help. When it was time to paint the floor, Sam and Jonah proved to be very good painters. Tomorrow’s goal is to get the post and beams up and the roof rafters in place. Hopefully by Tuesday we’ll be able to start putting on the siding. It looks like we have a slight chance of rain on Tuesday according to one weather forecast, but another shows clear weather through Thursday. I like that forecast better as that would give us a chance to get the siding on and possibly the roof plywood on before it rains. Mark works at West Marine on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, so getting it under roof by the end of the day on Thursday would be great.
by Judy Handley | Sep 6, 2011 | Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs Year 6 |
Day 317, Year 6: Happy Anniversary to Heather and Jed!
Date: Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Weather: Overcast, Rainy, and Cool
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Heather and Jed were married eight years ago today. But unlike today, it was a beautiful, clear sky Saturday. We invited them to come have dinner on Windbird despite the ugly weather and despite the fact that all the food needed to be grilled. Sam and Jonah were already aboard Windbird as Mark and I picked them up from their first day of school here in Woods Hole and brought them to Windbird for a nap. So Heather and Jed just called for a dinghy ride and both came over after the end of their work days. Mark and I are still learning how to adapt the boat to accommodate little ones. We have been eating out in the cockpit, but tonight we had to move downstairs due to the weather. We didn’t get it quite right tonight, but with a little creativity I think we can have a sit-down dinner with Sam and Jonah. Since there are no chairs, you can’t pull a child closer to the table, so we will come up with some sort of booster seat idea and just pull the settees out so they are closer to the table. But despite the inconvenient eating situation, we were still glad that we could share in the celebration with Heather and Jed.
It was just over two weeks ago when we had a really no good, very bad day facing live-aboard problems and today we were rudely reminded that the problems didn’t go away. Irene just diverted our attention. After Kevin, Claire, and Josh left on Monday morning we started realizing that we really, really have to do something about our smelly holding tank issues. We think we will start by buying a new toilet. The ones we have we bought in South Africa, but neither of them has been satisfactory from the first day. So we’ll start by replacing the one in the forward head (cheaper than buying a rebuild kit) and hope that starts us on the path to solving the problem. The other major issue that we are facing is charging our batteries. We are having to run the engine twice a day now, sometimes for more than two hours each time, just to keep up with our power usage. That is double what would be normal for heavy use, so Mark has been reading and exploring our entire electrical system to try and track down the problem.
When I wrote the other day that fall was in the air, I just couldn’t explain why so many trees dropped their leaves overnight. Today Heather found out from people who have lived here through previous hurricanes that the leaves were killed by salty rain. Evidently it happened twenty years ago during Hurricane Bob. The wind kicks up the seas and the salt spray gets pulled up into the air. The wind blows the salt-laden air inland and the rain then delivers the salt right down on to the trees. I might not have that exactly right, but you get the idea. So we have premature fallen leaves and this rainy, cool weather adds to the feeling of fall. But I’m hoping that by the weekend, the sun will once again be shining. Mark has next Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday off work and we might just get to start building that shed at Heather and Jed’s.
