by Judy Handley | Feb 16, 2022 | 2022 Life Logs |
2022 Life Logs, Day 47: More of the Same
Date: Wednesday, February 16, 2022
Weather: Overcast, Warmer, and Windy; High Temp 43, Low Temp 40 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
It’s the same old story here—editing, puzzling, editing, walking, editing, playing outside with Shadow, editing, watching the Olympics. I do take time to cook a little, clean a little, but for now, life is mostly spent editing the chapters of The Voyage of Windbird. Today I was back at the beginning of the book working on Chapter One: Getting Ready. It begins, “People often ask how long it takes to get ready to sail around the world. That’s a tricky question. It took four years after buying the ‘just right’ sailboat to do the final preparation. It took all of the thirty-two years that Mark and I were together prior to sailing out of Boston Harbor to get to the place where we were financially and mentally prepared to live the sailing dream.” I have often talked about the fact that Mark I both retired on Friday, October 14, 2005, and sailed out of the Boston Harbor only four days later. When I say that, people ask if it really only took four days to get ready. I chuckle. We had spent a lifetime in preparation, and the last four years really focusing on the task. I’m not sure what we did those last four days, but they were inconsequential.
February’s full moon, aptly called the Snow Moon, rose at 4:56 pm this afternoon. At 5:15 pm Shadow and I went out to play fetch with a tennis ball. We wandered down to the dock to see the bright spot of red, orange, and pink in the sky accompanying the sunset.
That was definitely the brightest spot in the overcast sky today. But the real shocker was the low tide. There was literally no water under the dock.
I know the lowest tides do occur during first quarter and last quarter moons, but this one was the lowest I have ever seen here.
It is time to turn my attention to the Olympics for the evening. Last night I stayed up way too late watching the women’s figure skating short program. So far tonight I have been watching the men’s aerials in free skiing. As I watch these Winter Olympics, I keep asking myself how in the world people can do such things. I am in awe. Today I was rewriting the Preface of my book and noted my opening quote by Henry David Thoreau. It certainly applies to Olympians. “What people say you cannot do, you try and find you can.”
by Judy Handley | Feb 15, 2022 | 2022 Life Logs |
2022 Life Logs, Day 46: Editing, Editing
Date: Tuesday, February 15, 2022
Weather: Sunny and Cold; High Temp 26, Low Temp 18 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
The winds come back from the south tomorrow bringing slightly warmer weather. This old body looks forward to that. Seems like the really cold weather makes my bones creak!
My part-time neighbor, Andrew, drove down from Larchmont, New York yesterday to trailer his boat back home with him. He and his family will not be coming to spend the summer here this year, so he wanted to get his boat back in the Long Island Sound. He rented a truck, but it didn’t come with a ball for the hitch. He was out before 7 am this morning to find 2 ½ inch ball. I got up early with Shadow and stayed up so I could see Andrew before he left for Larchmont.
I got a text later in the day telling me the trailer had a flat tire about 40 minutes out. Luckily he and the boat were fine, but it took him much long to get home than he had expected. After Andrew left, I drove to Mashpee for my every two-month check in with my chiropractor. Then it was home to edit, puzzle, walk, edit some more, puzzle some more, and then just edit, edit, edit. I think that will be the story of my life for the next few weeks.
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.”
That was definitely the brightest spot in the overcast sky today. But the real shocker was the low tide. There was literally no water under the dock.
I know the lowest tides do occur during first quarter and last quarter moons, but this one was the lowest I have ever seen here.
