Day 377, Year 6: Planning to Move
Date: Saturday, November 5, 2011
Weather: Sunny, Windy, and COOL
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts

“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things: Of shoes-and ships-and sealing-wax-Of cabbages-and kings-And why the sea is boiling hot-And whether pigs have wings.” What Lewis Carroll forgot to mention in “Through the Looking-Glass” was talking about when one should move a boat. And that is what we have been doing today. I feel a little like we are back in Tonga trying to find that weather window for moving Windbird to New Zealand. We certainly don’t have that far to go, but the worries of getting off the dock here, getting through the Woods Hole cut with the current going with us, and then arriving at our new home on a rising tide, all make the planning most difficult. We actually only have to move Windbird about twelve miles from here to Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, but we have to leave here at a time to get us through the Woods Hole cut going with the current and we have to arrive at Fiddler’s Cove on a rising tide just in case their estimated seven-foot depth in the entrance has silted in. AND we have to have the right winds in order to get ourselves off this dock here in Eel Pond. I think it is the latter that worries Mark the most because using our all strength we cannot move the boat away from the dock when the winds are coming from a northerly direction. There is no good time in the next week to move the boat and satisfy all conditions, so we are going to go when the wind conditions are right for getting off the dock and hope everything else works out. At this point, it looks like we will have almost no wind on Tuesday, so we are tentatively planning to move on that day. We had hoped the winds would be more favorable later in the week, but it looks like we are in for another strong n’easter and that would definitely not be the time to move. There are also other factors that we have to include. Jed doesn’t get home until Tuesday night and Heather has to do on-air fundraising sometime on Tuesday, so there is no back-up childcare for Sam and Jonah. We didn’t realize until tonight that our weather window for the week has been almost shut by the northeast winds due on Wednesday, so we will have to talk to Heather tomorrow and come up with a plan for dealing with Sam and Jonah considering this new schedule. I figure we can always take them out of school and have them go with us to move the boat. We could just call it a field trip.

We started our day on the soccer field. Since Heather had to be at work at 10 am, we met at the field at 9 am and made the transfer. Actually only two other members of Sam’s team showed up and there was no coach. Despite that, the three kids plus Jonah had a great time playing their own version of soccer. We thought this was the final soccer “experience” of the fall season, but we were told that next Saturday will be the last one. Heather had packed snacks and hot chocolate for Sam and Jonah, so after we left the field with frozen fingers and toes, the boys really enjoyed just sitting in the car and drinking hot chocolate. We then made a couple of stops in town before heading home, and even though the outside temp was still a bit freezy, both boys enjoyed another hour or so of outside play. This gave me a chance to pull up the green beans that had been so alive last weekend but are now so frozen, and to start preparing the garden for winter. We still have beautiful lettuce that has not yet frozen, and very young kale and Swiss chard. Earlier I had visions of picking Swiss chard in December to make one of our family mainstays called “Leaf Pie”, but the chard is going to have to do a bit of growing and that might not be possible with the onset of cooler weather.

One of the stops in town today was to go by West Marine and pick up the new inverter/charger. Mark is anxious to do the second installation, but he works tomorrow and will have to wait until Monday. Since we don’t know what went wrong with the first installation, we are both a bit nervous anticipating the second installation. Mark has checked and re-checked the directions, so hopefully all will go well.