by Judy Handley | Feb 14, 2022 | 2022 Life Logs |
2022 Life Logs, Day 45: Happy Valentine’s Day
Date: Monday, February 14, 2022
Weather: Snow Overnight, Partly Sunny, Cold; High Temp 29, Low Temp 10 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Here’s hoping you had a Happy Valentine’s Day.
Valentine’s Day was a white one here. The ground was barely white when I went to bed last night, but when Shadow and I stepped outside early this morning, we stepped in a winter wonderland. Thankfully it was not nearly as much snow as we got in raging blizzard two weeks ago, but the trees and bushes were laden with snow and looked beautiful. Snow is not the only thing that fell overnight. The temperature dropped from the 50’s yesterday to the 20’s today. Tonight is supposed to go down to 10 with a strong wind. It is going to be cold night.
I started the editing process on book one of The Voyage of Windbird. I was in a slash and burn mood and cut a lot of material from the first two chapters. One chapter became a Prologue and Chapter 3 became Chapter 1. Writing a book is one thing. Finishing it through the editing process is another. But I knew this to be the case, so I’m not discouraged. I think it is a good thing that I stepped away for a few months. It seems easier now to cut things that once seemed so important, but now not so much so. I continue to work on a jigsaw puzzle and today took Shadow out to play in the snow to give myself breaks during the day. If I am going to play outside tomorrow, however, I am going to have to wear heavier gloves. My fingers were freezing today even when I had not been outside very long. That wind is a killer.
by Judy Handley | Feb 13, 2022 | 2022 Life Logs |
2022 Life Logs, Day 44: The Super Bowl Won
Date: Sunday, February 13, 2022
Weather: Overcast, Snow in PM; High Temp 52, Low Temp 29 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
I did not intend to watch the Super Bowl this evening, but the Super Bowl won. I tuned in about 25 minutes before the game started, got sucked in by the ads, and heard the announcers talking up the LA Rams as the favorite. That made we want to see what the Bengals could do to stop them. Plus, I was curious about the Bengals’ 25-year-old quarterback, Joe Burrow, started watching the game, and just couldn’t stop. It was a good game right down to the last minute. The Bengals definitely gave the Rams a run for their money and gained a new fan tonight. I’d like to see the Bengals get to the Super Bowl again next year. But for now, it is back to the Olympics.
I went to Heather and Jed’s for a short visit in the early afternoon. Sam and Jonah had a great time on their Scout ski weekend. Jonah got a video of Sam snowboarding over jumping ramps. I think watching the Olympics last week must have given him new horizons. Frightening to watch, but he did a great job. The Goldstones leave on Friday for a week of skiing and snowboarding during school winter vacation week. They will all get to practice their Olympic talents.
Writing and editing took a back seat to Sunday fun. I started a new puzzle today. This one is 1,000 pieces and features scenes from ancient Greece. I finished my puzzle featuring scenes from Prague on Friday night and ordered the new one immediately.
I get all of my packages delivered to Heather and Jed’s, and the new puzzle was there when I went to visit today. Thank you, Amazon. When I got home, I dove in. I already have the borders done and can now take breaks between editing and piece together a bit of ancient Greece.
by Judy Handley | Feb 12, 2022 | 2022 Life Logs |
2022 Life Logs, Day 43: Taking Time to Reorganize
Date: Saturday, February 12, 2022
Weather: Sunny Day, SW Wind; High Temp 52, Low Temp 29 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Finishing the writing project yesterday that I have thought about since 2011 and have been actively working on for the past two years was a milestone for me. But this morning, I felt like I had a ‘day after’ hangover. I woke up feeling a lost. I just couldn’t start the editing process today and I certainly was not ready to start writing the second book. So, I pulled out Windbird’s Captain’s Logs, the official logs kept to record the technical details of each day. I started going through them day by day, recording number of days sailing versus number of days at anchor or at a dock. And as long as I was putting information into a spreadsheet, I also added other information like number of hours sailing each day versus number of hours motoring, engine hours, and log and trip miles. I did not get very far because those logs were not kept with the detail that developed as our voyage progressed. At that point, only Mark made log entries and Mark was a lot of wonderful things, but not a detailed record keeper. I can’t wait to continue this project and see when things changed. I know our logs became a meticulous record of our voyage later on. I just don’t know when that happened.
Near noon, I went to water plants for friends who are out of town and ran some errands in town. I stopped by Heather’s, but no one was at home. Sam and Jonah are on a ski/snowboard weekend trip with Scouts and Heather, Jed, and Ollie were out on a bike ride. I’ll have to return to see them tomorrow. When I got home, I took Shadow for a nice long walk. It was beautiful out and warm enough to just wear a windbreaker.
Tonight, I am watching the Olympics, the Men’s Giant Slalom, and Ice Rhythm Dancing. One of the male ROC dancers was so smooth on the ice that I thought I was watching Kevin Bacon dancing in Foot Loose, not dancing on the ice. During the Giant Slalom it was snowing so hard I could barely see the skiers. We are supposed to get snow tomorrow, but hopefully not that much.
by Judy Handley | Feb 11, 2022 | 2022 Life Logs |
2022 Life Logs, Day 42: VOW Book One Done
Date: Friday, February 11, 2022
Weather: Sunny Day; High Temp 50, Low Temp 41 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
I did it. Tonight, I finished writing the last chapter of the Voyage of Windbird (VOW) book covering the first year of Windbird’s trip around the world. Woohoo! But I am just getting started. I have two more books to write to complete the journey. I am delighted to have one book done, but I am not celebrating because the hard work of editing begins now. When that is done, I will celebrate.
As soon as I finished the last chapter tonight and looked at the word count, I realized that I need to go back and do some serious editing. I wrote 13,982 words to say something that could have been said in 71 words, something like this: “We left the Vava’u Group of Tonga headed to New Zealand. On the first night out, we lost both our autopilot and our windvane steering. Knowing we did not want to hand steer for 700 miles, we sailed to Nuku’alofa in the southern group of Tonga’s islands. We ordered a new autopilot from New Zealand, received and installed it, waited for the weather, and finally completed our sail to New Zealand.” That does tell you what we did, but it certainly doesn’t tell the story. Yet no one is going to read a book with chapters of 14,000 words. Most nonfiction books contain 50,000 to 75,000 words in total. My eighteen chapters total 182,273 words. Just the chapter on the Galapagos is almost 20,000 words. Cut, cut, cut.
My new goal is to complete the editing process by mid-April. I am estimating that at best I can get through two or three chapters a week. I’ll know more about the timing at the end of next week. Maybe it will go faster than I think. I can hope. I really want to get the second book started before summer. It will cover the middle years of the voyage and then the third book in the trilogy will cover our adventures in the Indian Ocean, around South Africa, the trip home and beyond.
I’ve done it again. I just wrote 375 words to say what could have been said in 6 words. “Book one done. Editing begins now.”
by Judy Handley | Feb 10, 2022 | 2022 Life Logs |
2022 Life Logs, Day 41: Writing, Writing, Writing
Date: Friday, February 11, 2022
Weather: Mix of Sun and Clouds, Windy in the PM; High Temp 49, Low Temp 33 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Physically I spent my day here in East Falmouth, but mentally I was in the Northland of the North Island (Te Ika a M?ui) of New Zealand. Te Ika a M?ui, the M?ori name for the North Island, translates as the fish of M?ui, a superhero demigod in Polynesian and M?ori mythology. The M?ori came to New Zealand from further east in Polynesia in huge canoes called wakas. An unbelievable feat in human history. Windbird sailed more than 13,000 miles from Boston to get there. Not as amazing as crossing the Pacific in a waka, but today as I wrote about our arrival in New Zealand it seemed almost surreal to me. Did we really do that? Yes. Mark and I did it and enjoyed every minute of it. When we left Boston, I don’t think we had any idea what to expect. We had some really challenging weather and boat issues in the beginning plaguing us all the way to the Caribbean. But once we arrived in St. Martin, things started turning in our direction. I was loving doing the research on where we were going and what we were going to do when we got there, and Mark really loved the technical challenge of figuring out how we were going to get there. We joked that I told him where to go and he got us there. He was the Captain and I was the Admiral. It took us 393 days to get to New Zealand, but most of that time was spent at anchor enjoying the beauty of the South Pacific. My good friend Alan Kanegsberg keeps asking me to add up the days spent traveling versus the days at anchor. When I finish writing the final chapter of the first year of the Voyage of Windbird, I am going to do that. And I have high hopes that tomorrow is the day that I will complete that final chapter. So, stay tuned, Alan. And hopefully Alan is recovering quickly from the hip replacement he had this Tuesday. It’s only been two days, so I doubt he is out jogging, but hopefully not in too much pain.
Today I truly enjoyed writing about our explorations of the very northern most part of the North Island after we arrived. New Zealand is a beautiful country from top to bottom and I am so jealous that my friend Lynne Kirwin is living there now. Lynne sailed to New Zealand with her first husband, gained citizenship, divorced, and lived in New Zealand for about 15 years before she met Ed. Then she spent 17 years sailing around the world with him. The year after Ed died, she split her time between the US and NZ, but when she went back in the fall of 2019 she didn’t get to come home in the spring of 2020 due to Covid. She will have been living there for more than two years when she comes home this summer to visit family and friends, which will hopefully include a trip to Cape Cod.
On the Olympics scene, last night I stayed up late to see Nathan Chen’s free skate performance. I loved watching him skate to Elton John’s Rocket Man. It was definitely a Gold Metal performance. I watched the men’s half-pike snowboard competition tonight and was terrified watching the young snowboarders try to fly. They go so high. I was disappointed that Shaun White didn’t metal, but he did come in 4th. I loved hearing that the teenager from Japan who won the Gold was a baby when Shaun won his first Gold. It was time to pass the torch.
Valentine’s Day was a white one here. The ground was barely white when I went to bed last night, but when Shadow and I stepped outside early this morning, we stepped in a winter wonderland. Thankfully it was not nearly as much snow as we got in raging blizzard two weeks ago, but the trees and bushes were laden with snow and looked beautiful. Snow is not the only thing that fell overnight. The temperature dropped from the 50’s yesterday to the 20’s today. Tonight is supposed to go down to 10 with a strong wind. It is going to be cold night.
