Day 337, Year 8: Soggy Sunday
Date: Sunday, October 6, 2013
Weather: Overcast with Rain All Day, High Temp in the 60’s
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts

Today was just a slow, soggy Sunday—quite a change of pace from our normal frenetic activities. We had a late morning breakfast at The Fishmonger with Susie and Jim, took a leisurely walk around the pond with them, and then saw them off at the 1:30 pm bridge opening. It rained during the night and drizzled all day, but it didn’t rain hard enough to keep us inside. At the same time, I’m sure the sail back across Buzzard’s Bay was not much fun for Jim and Susie. But we certainly enjoyed the time we had with them.

Mark and I spent the afternoon doing little jobs. I sorted through our array of spices, made a list of what I need to buy, and filled the seven spice containers I reserve for Windbird’s own curry powder mix (2 TBS cumin seeds, 2 TBS turmeric, 2 TBS mustard seeds, ½ tsp ground coriander, ½ tsp cayenne pepper, and 1 tsp salt)—makes a great veggie curry. Then I got out the FoodSaver vacuum packer and packed up some of the granola we made last week as well as other odds and ends that had been waiting for a time when we were hooked up to shore power to be processed. I can use the vacuum packer when we are on the mooring, but it takes a lot of power. So I save those jobs for when we are ‘plugged in.’ Mark spent a great deal of his afternoon staring at his computer screen learning more about Polar Navy chart navigation software. He paid $49 for this and he is finding it quite satisfactory. It includes access to the ActiveCaptain cruising guidebook online that has a wealth of up-to-date information on anchorages, marinas, and navigational hazards. It doesn’t do everything MaxSea has done for us for the past seven years, but once he found out that the new MaxSea requires buying all new charts, that option became way too expensive. We have charts of the whole world already, but they have made sure that you can’t use the old ones with the new software. Then Mark and I worked together to go through the two file boxes we keep on Windbird. They are supposedly filled with very important financial and health information, but what we found is that half of the stuff was old and no longer needed. So now we have one full file box and one empty one ready to be filled. Next we will have to start going through the two file drawers that are dedicated to boat information. But that is for another day. After the file clean-out, I called my sister Patsy to check-in while Mark sent out a batch of emails for his consulting job. So even though it was a s-l-o-o-o-w day for us, we still got a lot of little jobs done.

Tomorrow and Tuesday could be more of the same soggy weather, but by Wednesday the rain should subside. We are supposed to have some fairly heavy NE winds this week, but at this point next weekend looks clear. It is a four-day weekend for school children, so nice weather would be welcomed by all.

131006 Day 337 Cape Cod, USA–Reveille in Eel Pond