Day 347, Year 9: Progress . . . One Baby Step at a Time
Date: Friday, October 3, 2014
Weather: No Change–Overcast and Drizzly, High in the mid-50’s F
Location: Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, Massachusetts

Progress is being made . . . one baby step at a time. We are working to get Windbird ready to sail south but the weather is not going to allow us to head out until at least next Sunday. So we are happy to just get one little thing done each day. Today it was getting the Dorade boxes put back on the boat. This entailed cleaning the stainless cowl vents and getting them reattached to the wooden boxes. Once that was done, Mark screwed the Dorade boxes in place. So one job done. Mark spent a lot of time on the phone again today trying to arrange for his first chemo treatment. His Mass General oncologist, Dr. Kwak, called this afternoon and will arrange for the first treatment at Mass General next week and she is also working on finding a doctor in Myrtle Beach that will accept Mark as a patient and get him into chemo treatments the minute we arrive there. More work needs to be done on that, but one little step at a time, it will be done. Dr. Kwak reiterated to Mark today that she really wants him to be able to sail south this winter, no matter how difficult it is to find doctors who will go along with our traveling chemo plan. And we went back to our storage unit and threw out more things. We took boxes of things to the Swap Shop at the local dump and also threw bags of things away. It is an emotionally painful process, but we are getting the job done. At one point we left storage to come back to the boat to check in with Herb Hilgenberg on Southbound II on the Ham radio. Herb has been giving weather advice to sailors for many years, but to our surprise, he retired last June. We read in one place that someone has taken his place, but when we tuned into 12.359 at 1930 UTC (3:30 pm EDT), there was only static. So I guess we’ll get no weather advice there. We’ll just have to keep gathering info for ourselves and make our own decision about the best time to leave here for Norfolk.

Tonight we went to Heather and Jed’s for Heather’s birthday dinner. We picked up sushi and a birthday cake and Jed supplied the sake direct from Japan. He had gifts for everyone and after dinner we looked at some of Jed’s photos from his trip. Mark and I got a Japanese food for which none of us had a name. It is like a dumpling but the covering is slightly sweet and a bit squishy. Inside the dumpling is a red bean paste, again slightly sweet. Whatever it is called, it is good. Anyone out there know the name for these little delights?

141003 Day 347 Cape Cod, USA–Heather's Birthday Dinner