Day 1, Year 7: A New Year
Date: Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Weather: Mostly Sunny and Warm, Temp Still in the Upper 50′s
Latitude: 41.38.821 N
Longitude: 070.38.162 W
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, Massachusetts
It’s the beginning of a new year for Windbird. Year 6 has ended and now we are into Year 7. This will be the ‘Year of Living Aboard’ rather than a traveling year. Windbird’s years follow the cruising season calendar, so our move to Fiddler’s Cove yesterday signaled the end of the season for us. Year 6 started when we arrived in South Africa last October. We traveled more than 8,500 miles from South Africa to Woods Hole during the year and saw some incredible things along the way. This next year will focus on grandchildren rather than travel adventures, but grandchildren are pretty incredible as well. And living aboard during the winter should provide some pretty interesting writing material, so I hope you will follow along with us.
Mark started his morning with a walk to the office to find out how to log into the free wireless internet provided here. When he returned, we went about the morning’s big task of taking Windbird out of the slip, turning her around, and bringing her back in again, stern first. Our slip points almost northeast and it is from that direction that we will be getting our winter storms. John, who I think is the yard manager here, suggested yesterday that we turn the boat around to point into the wind, but he suggested that we do it near high tide which was this morning. He, along with two other helpers, came to assist us. If you are a sailor who reads Cruising World, Fatty Goodlander’s article this month is about Med Mooring and it gets right to the issues of backing up a sailboat-in Fatty’s very humorous way. Sailboats just don’t back the way you need them to go. They have a mind of their own and you never know exactly where you’ll end up. We pulled and out, turned to the left, then started backing up. We were right on course for the slip when all of a sudden we turned and our stern was headed toward shore, sideways to the dock. We went forward and came way too close to a fishing boat across the way. At that point Mark told me to try and throw lines to the guys on the dock and have them pull us in. I successfully threw one line, but I knew I could never throw the other one as far as needed. So Mark came out and did it. It all worked because we had three guys from the marina on the dock ready to catch those lines. . The office and yard folks here are incredibly friendly and helpful. In fact, I can’t think of a marina we have ever been in where the people are so helpful. That, plus the beauty around us, gives this location a high rating from us at this point. After the successful turn around of Windbird, Mark hooked up the hose and gave the boat another thorough rinse down. We are very pleased that the AwlCare we applied to the hull is still doing its job. Water beads show that we don’t need to apply another coat before winter. I know we are both happy about that. I cleaned the dinghy and scrubbed the covers of the cockpit cushions. And then we hoisted our signal flags up the back stay in the hopes that the flapping flags will keep the birds away. So Windbird is squeaky clean outside and hopefully the birds will stay away so we can keep her this way.
It was another lovely, warm November day, so I couldn’t resist bringing the boys here for the afternoon. They put on their life jackets and we all scrambled into the dinghy for an explore. Actually, I just put a super long line on the dinghy and we floated about and then pulled ourselves back to the dock with the rope. Sam had a small net and he used it to paddle us about a bit. I was quite impressed with his ability to use a net as a paddle. He quickly figured out how to use it to make us go in different directions. While Sam was doing this, Jonah and I were floating a small mooring ball and just enjoying the sunshine. When it was time for naps, Mark had to take the car in to have new tires put on the front. This was supposed to happen when we had the tie rod replaced, but they could only get one tire at the time and it was not the right kind. The motor for the driver side window also stopped working a few days ago and the garage had a used one that they installed this afternoon. The work on the window motor took all afternoon, so Mark didn’t get home until after 5:30 pm. Jed came and picked up the boys and Mark and I are spending a quiet evening on the boat. We did drive to the little store that is about a mile away. It is the oldest business in the area, dating back to 1840. It has been renovated to look as it did when it was built and I can see that we will be making many stops there over the winter. So at the end of our first full day of living here in Fiddler’s Cove in North Falmouth, and at the beginning of a new year of the cruising life, we are very pleased.
Day 2, Year 7: Proudly Announcing Another Goldstone Boy
Date: Thursday, November 10, 2011
Weather: Overcast and Rainy, Temperature 60+ degrees F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, Massachusetts
Today we finally got the ‘clearance’ to announce that there will be a third edition added to the Goldstone household in early April . . . and it is a boy. A girl would have added a different dimension to our all boy’s team of grandchildren, but the only thing any of us is really concerned about is that it is a healthy baby. Heather and Jed didn’t want to know the sex for the first two, but they had decided that when Heather went in for the ultrasound today they would go ahead and find out. Sam and Jonah both want a baby brother, so they were delighted with today’s news. Actually, I’m sure Jonah wouldn’t care one way or another, but because big brother Sam wants a boy, Jonah got on that bandwagon. Sam is at the age where he says girls are yucky, so he was especially happy with mommy’s news. And Mark and I are delighted at the prospect of another grandchild.
The outside temperature was already 60 degrees when we got up this morning. We decided to go for a walk to see just where it is we live despite the fact that it was lightly misting on us. We walked for more than an hour and thoroughly enjoyed the walk in our new ‘neighborhood.’ We stopped by Dick and Claire Wiklund’s home, but they weren’t home. Then we walked up to Main Street, down to the little store we visited last night at the corner of Wild Harbor and Main Street, and then back down Wild Harbor to the marina. We miss the long walks we always took when in foreign ports, so we are going to try and walk every morning. Many trees here lost their leaves when Irene came through in late August, but many of the smaller trees and bushes and are now in full color. There are deep red, blazing orange, and bright yellow leaves making the fall season quite beautiful here on Cape Cod.
Mark stayed on the boat this afternoon while I went to pick up Sam and Jonah. We went to their house this afternoon since it was raining. In my absence, Mark got on the computer and searched for job possibilities. We promised ourselves we were going to find jobs to repay the cruising kitty when we returned, but we haven’t looked very hard. Unfortunately Mark is down to working only one day a week at West Marine and that will probably be the case until spring. We didn’t realize that tomorrow is a holiday, so Sam and Jonah don’t go to school. That means Mark and I will both have the whole day and we are going to spend part of the time listing things we need to get rid of on Craig’s List. And we might make a trip off Cape to a Home Depot to buy the aluminum conduit we will use to make the frame for our winter cover. Tomorrow is going to be windy and chilly, a good day for shopping, but then the next four days should be in the 60′s. We will try to get the frame built before it gets chilly again.
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| 111110 Day 2 Cape Cod, USA–Fall Scenes Near Fiddler's Cove |
Day 3, Year 7: Eleven, Eleven, Eleven–111111
Date: Friday, November 11, 2011
Weather: Overcast Turning Partly Sunny, degrees F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, Massachusetts
111111–I’m feeling very binary today. Next year we will have 121212 and then we won’t have these repeating numbers until 010101 (2101). Guess we won’t be around for that one, so hope you enjoyed today and will enjoy December 12 next year. I read on a website today that the number 11 “lends itself to some interesting peculiarities” in the base 10 number system. I was fascinated to see the following examples:
(2 digits) 11 x 11 = 121
(6 digits) 111111 x 111111 = 12345654321
(9 digits) 111111111 x 111111111 = 12345678987654321
I’m just thankful that the temperature is not 11 degrees tonight! The temperature barely reached 50 degrees F today, but it felt even chillier. Right now it is 45 degrees F outside but feels like 36 degrees because of the wind. Tonight it will get down into the upper thirties. Tomorrow it warms up a bit and I like that. Yesterday when it was much warmer, Sam, Jonah, and I sat in the cockpit and watched the sun go down and the full moon. Tonight the moon still looks full. It was so much and yellow that it looked like it was putting out warmth. I’ll take it!
We started our day with another hour-long walk in our new neighborhood. We then slowly got ourselves together and headed north. We could drive 20 miles north to a Home Depot, get the conduit we needed, and then return home. Or we could drive 23 miles further, go to IKEA to get some good chocolate and more bags of Swedish meatballs AND go to Costco just to check it out AND go to Home Depot, all in the same shopping area. It was still totally overcast when we left, so we opted for the longer trip. Thankfully, the sun popped out, still amid numerous clouds, but the remainder of the day was much cheerier. Our reason for going to IKEA was simple-chocolate. We stopped at IKEA on our way home from New Hampshire last week and I picked up a bar of dark chocolate. It was really good and made us realize that our ’round the world supply of chocolate is gone. The chocolate that you can buy anywhere around the world is Cadbury. This is a British product and quite good. (Note: If you buy Cadbury in the US you have to make sure it has been imported from England in order to get the creamy taste.) Anyway. Mark had requested that I stop and buy him some chocolate on the way home from Heather and Jed’s last night. I stopped at the corner store near their house and the only option was Hershey’s. I’ve always loved Hershey’s. Great chocolate, right? Wrong. After we had dinner, Mark opened his milk chocolate bar and I opened my dark chocolate. I took one bite and almost spit it out. It truly tasted like wax with a little sugar added. I’ve been eating dark chocolate from Madagascar and this Hershey bar was a shock. How could something I have always thought I loved taste so bad. Mark can eat almost any chocolate, but his milk chocolate bar also turned him off. So we drove 53 miles to IKEA today to buy a winter’s supply of 99 cent chocolate bars and to have a $2.99 IKEA lunch. Not a bad way to spend a cold and windy day. We then went to the nearby Costco store just to check it out. We are not members and we found out today that a membership costs $55. We went to Costco with my sister and brother-in-law in North Carolina and were amazed with some of the deals on food. All we did today was get a visitor’s pass to look around. I wrote down the prices of those things that we would stock up on and I will have to check prices at the supermarket here to see if it would really be worth it to buy the membership. Then we went next door to Home Depot. I love how they make it so easy to move from one place to spend money to the other. We bought the conduit we need to make our winter cover frame and checked on the price of Christmas lights. We have a huge container of old lights, but some work, some don’t, and none of them are LED. Right now you can get up to $5 off a new string of LED lights if you bring in an old non-working, non-LED strand. You can do this for up to five strands. When we lived in Boston, we strung lights up the forestay and backstay before covering the boat so Windbird could be lit up for Christmas. We hope to do this again. These three stops took us all afternoon, so the sun was setting as we headed home. Neither Mark nor I are big on shopping, but we enjoyed our slow-paced window shopping. Mark got to play on new computers at Costco, and that made his day.
Tomorrow we will pick up Jed, Sam, and Jonah at 8:45 am to take Sam to his last soccer game of the season. Heather has to be at work at 8 am to do fundraising, so she will take their van. After soccer, we will come home and start building the winter cover frame. And surely we can find some time to eat some of that chocolate!
Day 4, Year 7: Messing About on a Saturday
Date: Saturday, November 12, 2011
Weather: Still Very Windy; Temps from low 40′s to low 60′s
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, Massachusetts
I’m not sure we accomplished anything much today. But it was a nice, relaxed day doing a little of this and a little of that. The wind here in the marina is incessant and we see little relief until Wednesday. It is not quite so windy away from the water, so we enjoyed the few hours in town. We went to Heather and Jed’s before 9 am to pick up Jed and the boys and go to the soccer field. The field is right across the street from the beach, so the south winds we are getting blew right through the field. It was chilly, but not as chilly as last week. After soccer, we took Jed, Sam, and Jonah to downtown Falmouth to meet up with Mommy at the library and playground across the street. Mark and I then went to the supermarket to do a little stocking up and then back to Heather and Jed’s to sort through some of the things that we have stored in their basement that need to be sold. Mark took photos and on Monday morning we will start listing these things on Craig’s List. We had lunch at H & J’s and then we came back to Windbird. I continued my update of our Year 1 logs (a never-ending job) and Mark bent the conduit piping that will become the “roof rafters” for our winter cover. Mark also fixed dinner tonight so I could keep working on those Year 1 logs. So, the day was just a mix of this and that, but it was relaxing. Since I didn’t keep the boys yesterday because of the holiday, I have felt all day like it is Sunday. But when I check the calendar, it tells me that tomorrow is Sunday. Mark works at West Marine and I am going to be keeping Sam and Jonah while Heather and Jed do some off Cape shopping and then go to a public radio event in the late afternoon. Ira Glass, host of This American Life, is speaking in Woods Hole. This American Life is a public radio show that presents stories of everyday people and Ira Glass has sometimes been called the American storyteller. He is a fantastic speaker and we know Heather and Jed will enjoy the show.
Day 5, Year 7: New England Thanksgiving a Little Early
Date: Sunday, November 13, 2011
Weather: Windy but Unseasonably Warm; Temps in the low 60′s
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, Massachusetts
Mark works with a woman named Sue at West Marine. She and her husband are die-hard Cape Coders. They have a boat that they keep on Martha’s Vineyard in the summer and they dig for clams in the summer, get oysters in the fall, and know friends who give them Vineyard venison. All summer long, Sue kept us supplied with little neck clams. This fall she gave us venison and now the oysters are coming. Today I had planned to fix a venison roast for dinner tonight at Heather and Jed’s. Late morning Mark called and said he would be bringing home oysters. In the early afternoon Heather picked salad greens mixed and young dill out of the garden. The result was a fantastic meal that was like an early traditional New England Thanksgiving Dinner. We had oysters on the half-shell with a garden salad for starters. That was followed by the venison roast and all the trimmings. The roast was so very tender and tasty and the oysters were delicious. Our thanks to Sue and her husband for sharing their bounty with us
Day 6, Year 7: Stuck in the Mud
Date: Monday, November 14, 2011
Weather: Still Windy and Unseasonably Warm
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, Massachusetts
I feel a little like I am walking in sticky mud. Every time I try to take a step forward, my shoe gets stuck in the mud. Settling into life as a non-cruising live aboard is tougher than I thought it would be. For six years we have traveled the world and every day was an adventure. When you are not traveling, life is quite different. We are trying to figure out life as land lubbers, but right now I think we both feel a bit lost. Slowly we’ll find our rhythm. But for me that is going to mean that I have the time to write down all of the “articles” swimming in my head from our past experiences. There are so many things I want to share about our last six years. I started writing and then lost everything I had written when my external hard drive crashed. That was a real set-back and I’m still stuck in that mud. I’m also trying to get our photos from our first year transferred from one online data base to another and trying to get our Year 1 logs in the same format as the other five years. I spend at least three hours a day just working on those issues. At the same time, I know you can’t spend all your time thinking about yesterday. A high school assistant principal once said to me, “Judy, if you are still thinking about what you did yesterday today, then you haven’t done anything worthwhile today.” Maybe the real problem is that there are just not enough hours in the day. Mark just looked across the table and said, “Only four or five weeks and the days start getting longer again.”
Day 7, Year 7: Getting Unstuck
Date: Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Weather: Still Warm with Temps in the 60′s
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, Massachusetts
Life is good. How could it not be with such beautiful weather in November? This weather is certainly a gift. And having grandchildren is a gift. Both Jonah and Sam were “on” today. Jonah is a singing and dancing imp constantly entertaining us with his antics and Sam could win an Oscar for his descriptions of characters in the “Cars” videos. As far as I can tell Lightening McQueen is the pivotal character in both. After nap today I got an hour-long presentation from Sam of the different characters. It was quite an impressive show and I’m going to have to watch Cars I and Cars II so I can be in the know. I have seen the one scene in Cars I were all the tractors are asleep in the field and Lightening McQueen (a fast, red car) and Tow Mater (a rusty old tow truck) go roaring into the field and drive right up to the sleeping tractors. The tractors startle, rear up, and fall over backwards. Jonah has this one down pat and can fall backwards just like the tractors. I wrote last night about being stuck in the mud, but it is impossible to stay stuck with grandchildren constantly pulling you forward.
We continue to have our daily morning walks, work on boat projects, and Mark is working on the newest project which is listing items for sale on Craig’s List. We have so many things that need to be sold that the advertising could become a full-time job.
Day 8, Year 7: Crazy in the Rain
Date: Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Weather: Overcast and Raining, Temps Cooling Down
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, Massachusetts
Our beautiful weather has turned into rain and the temperature is going down, but by the weekend we are supposed to have nice weather once again. That’s good news. This afternoon Heather came home early from work and I suggested that she go shopping for clothes. You can hardly tell she is pregnant, but her size 2 jeans are just not making it. A rainy afternoon seemed like a perfect time to get away and shop. Jed was not going to get home until late because he is at a conference in Boston and Mark and I were glad to stay with the boys until Heather could get home from shopping. But instead, we waited until Sam and Jonah got up from nap and then we all took off on a shopping adventure in the rain. The closest shopping is either 30 minutes north to Hyannis or an hour north to an outlet mall that is off Cape. We chose the outlet mall and away we went. The outlet mall is a huge outside mall, but it does have covered walkways. The boys had a ball in the rain, played hide ‘n seek under the clothes racks in the stores, and ran the mazes provided by rows of shoes at Bass. They even rode on a little carousel in the rain. We were being a little crazy and having fun, but at one point we had a bit of a scare. After leaving the Bass outlet store, we had a huge plastic bag of clothes and boots. I left it on a bench under the covered walkway where Mark was watching the boys run races while I went into a store where Heather was shopping. I made sure to tell Mark to watch the bag, but when you have a two little guys running around playing in the rain, it is easy to forget. Eventually Mark brought the boys in to the store and when we left, Heather asked for the bag so she could put more purchases in it. Mark had forgotten about it and left it outside when he came in the store and the bag was no longer on the bench outside. The security office wasn’t far away and luckily they had picked it up. Whew! We were about to have to go back to Bass and repurchase-not fun and not cheap. We ended the evening at a restaurant and both Sam and Jonah were fantastic dinner dates. We read and sang our way home making it a perfect ending for a rainy afternoon and evening outing. Who says shopping can’t be fun!
For six years now, I have written these logs every night, sharing all the things happening in our lives. And as in any of our lives, there have been ups and downs–good news and other news that is not so easy to report. It was not easy to report the death of my brother when we were in India last year and tonight it is not easy to report that his wife, my saint of a sister-in-law Conda, has been diagnosed having brain tumors. One hesitates to talk of such private things in such a public forum, but I mention it here because I hope each of you reading this log will send positive energy and thoughts to Conda to help her through what is going to be a very difficult battle. Conda, we love you. Stay strong.
Day 9, Year 7: Mad (at a) Dog
Date: Thursday, November 17, 2011
Weather: Overcast with Drizzle, Freezing Tonight
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, Massachusetts
Okay. I’m not talking about cheap wine. I’m mad at a dog-a greyhound to be specific. On October 29 we booked our bus trip to New Mexico via Greyhound on the phone. Mark talked and I wrote down the schedule and confirmation number. We were told that the tickets would be coming in the mail. We waited, and waited, and waited, and finally at the end of last week I got on the web and found that tickets my mail take at least ten working days, not counting holidays and weekends. That meant that Monday of this week would be the arrival date. No ticket. Tuesday, no ticket. So we looked up numbers to call to check on this. After hours of trying to reach someone other than a computer, tonight Mark talked to a man who said our reservations had been cancelled because we didn’t pick our tickets up at our local Greyhound station. I remember vividly Mark giving Heather’s address to the woman with whom we booked our trip. She definitely told him the tickets would come by mail. By the time we found out that our reservations have been cancelled it was too late to reach Customer Service tonight. So we will try at 7 AM as the gentleman we did talk to suggested. Greyhound certainly took our money and we certainly have no tickets and the current price of the same tickets is much higher than we paid. We have no idea what Customer Service is going to tell us. We have been searching all evening trying to compare current bus ticket prices with air and train tickets, but the bus still comes out cheaper even though it is now $300 more than when we booked in October. If Greyhound tells us that they will not refund our money, there is no way we can afford to go to New Mexico for Christmas. If that happens I am certainly going to be more than mad at the dog, I will be on the war path with Greyhound.
Mark went to the hospital for a stress test early this morning. He’s been very short of breath on our morning walks and decided he should have things checked out. His blood pressure is great, the EKG looked good, but he was a short-timer on the tread mill. The cardiologist thinks there is no problem with his heart, but they are doing a different kind of stress test next Tuesday to be sure. In the meantime, they prescribed an inhaler thinking that the shortness of breath might be caused by asthma. And now I am wondering if the down comforter we are sleeping under and that has been stored on the boat as we circumnavigated might be the culprit. His problems started right after we started sleeping under the comforter. I think we’ll freeze if I take away the comforter tonight as the temp for those of us at the water’s edge is supposed to dip below freezing for the first time this fall. But things will warm up a bit tomorrow and I will switch to polar fleece blankets for a few days to see if that makes a difference. In the morning we will walk after Mark uses the inhaler and that will give us a chance to see if it really makes a difference.
As I sit here writing this log, I can hear the wind picking up outside. So it is going to be a windy night as well as a freezing one. I’m just happy that the forecast calls for warming temperatures over the weekend and into next week. I hoping for the warmest New England Thanksgiving of the century!
Day 10, Year 7: Farewell Oceanus
Date: Friday, November 18, 2011
Weather: Sunny Day, Warming Slightly
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, Massachusetts
It has been a good day. On our early morning walk, Mark was once more in the lead with me trailing along behind. He is now using an inhaler and he’s not 100 per cent better, but he is sure better than he has been in the past few weeks. So we are thinking the doctors are right when they say he might be asthmatic. Better that than a heart problem.
It was chilly last night, but it warmed up a bit today. When I picked up Sam and Jonah at 1 pm, Sam had an extra bag with him. It contained a stuffed goldfish affectionately known as Swimmy. Swimmy goes home with a different child each weekend and that child gets to write about Swimmy’s weekend experiences. Sam happens to have an identical stuffed goldfish named Guppy, so Swimmy will have company this weekend. And Swimmy picked a great weekend to come with Sam as s/he got to go to the farewell party for research vessel Oceanus this evening and gets to go to the Yale-Harvard football game tomorrow. Right after nap, we headed to Woods Hole for the retirement party for R/V (research vessel) Oceanus. Oceanus has been one of WHOI’s (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s) main research vessels for the past 36 years. She is still in tip-top shape, but she is being retired and a newer model will replace her. Oceanus has been on almost 500 scientific missions from here to George’s Bank, to the Red Sea, to the Sargasso Sea, and to the Angola Basin. She is 177-feet, not a big ship, but she has proven time and again her sea worthiness and it was quite moving to hear the different people talk about their experiences aboard Oceanus over the years.
The success story of the day was our call to Greyhound this morning. At least we hope it is a success story. After much waiting again this morning, we finally reached a real person in Customer Service. She could not tell us why our tickets were canceled but she rebooked us at no additional charge. This time we are supposed to pick up our tickets just prior to leaving South Station in Boston for Albuquerque. We are supposed to call 48 hours ahead of time to get our confirmation number. I must say that I am a bit nervous about this arrangement since they canceled our first tickets for no apparent reason. But we will have to trust that this is going to work. So our trip to New Mexico for Christmas is once more a go.
Tomorrow we hang out on Windbird waiting for the heater/air-conditioner repairman to arrive. We are hoping the replacement relay for the starter will do the trick. We are currently heating with one, sometimes two, electric heaters, but the reverse-cycle heater should be much more efficient. Luckily, it looks like we should have mild weather through Thanksgiving. What a gift. I am definitely thankful.
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| 111118 Day 10 Cape Cod, USA–Farewell Oceanus |