Day 280, Year 7: Still a Cruiser
Date: Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Weather: Partly Sunny
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
We live on a boat, so we are liveaboards. But I don’t think I’ve made the
transition from full-time cruiser to liveaboard. The main way I know this
is because I still prefer to do my laundry in a bucket rather than in a
washing machine. For the past two days, I have been doing lots of laundry
at the town dock. My bright orange bucket from Home Depot is hard to miss,
and it is really interesting to watch the reaction of people when they see
I’m doing laundry on the dock. It is interesting that men will speak to me,
but women look and then turn their heads. I don’t think I look scary, but
they look at me as if I am. Then I think of all the photos I took as we
traveled around the world of women washing their clothes in a stream. I
guess I look like those women to the people in Woods Hole. But that’s okay.
My sheets and towels smell fresh and clean and other than the water, the
only resource I am using is my own energy.
Mark had an infusion of Zometa (Zoledronic Acid) today. Mark has high
calcium levels in this blood due to a parathyroid problem. The calcium is
coming from his bones and the Zometa is a bisphosphonate that will help keep
his bones strong until the parathyroid issue can be brought under control.
He will have another infusion in six months and hopefully by that time the
parathyroid issue will be under control and he won’t need more of these
treatments. So far, so good. He has had no side-effects. So all is well.
Heather, Jed, and boys picked Jed’s father up at the airport in Boston at 1
pm and arrived at the farm in Boothbay, Maine, a couple of hours later.
Heather called late this afternoon to tell us they had arrived and all is
well there as well. Mark and I talked to Alan and Helaine on the phone this
afternoon and decided that they should come ahead tomorrow and we will make
our sailing plans tomorrow night after they arrive. We have tentatively
planned a four-day sailing trip to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, but late
tonight we discovered that this is race week in Nantucket. That means it
will be very crowded in Nantucket harbor. We plan to call the harbor master
early tomorrow morning to see if there might be room for us. But one way or
another, we will be leaving here on Thursday morning for a little sailing
adventure. We might just have to go wherever the winds blow us.
