by Judy Handley | Aug 16, 2013 | Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs Year 8 |
Day 286, Year 8: Tomatoes and Grandkids
Date: Friday, August 16, 2013
Weather: Another Beautiful Day but Feels Like Fall
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Last summer I traded a 10 gallon stainless steel pot for a 25 foot row of tomatoes to be delivered this year. Heather chose the variety and Carrie of Peachtree Farms tried to grow them. But they just didn’t grow. The total take from the 25 foot row was about 10 pounds of tomatoes. Carrie is going to continue the deal for next year, but we’ll let her choose the variety this time. The variety Heather chose was a new Burpee Italian Roma. They were supposed to super-sized and I thought have no seeds. But I processed the few we got today and they certainly did have seeds. I think we’ll have to contact Burpee about this one. But it has been a very strange year for gardening for us. Nothing has really grown as it should have. I went to a local farm today to try and buy tomatoes, but they had none that are locally grown. Their tomatoes didn’t grow either. I suppose the weather has something to do with this—first we got too much rain, then it was too hot, and now it is cooler than it should be.
Sam and Jonah came to spend the night with us tonight. This is only the second time Jonah has done an overnight without mommy and daddy, but he did great tonight. Now we just have to add Ollie and we’ll have the whole gang. He is still too attached to momma, but by next year I think he’ll want to come with his big brothers. The boys brought the chapter book they have been reading at home for us to finish reading to them tonight. It was Misty of Chincoteague and it sure brought back fond memories of reading to Heather and Justin. We read Misty before we moved to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, so when we made our first trip to Assateague Island to see the wild ponies, it was like watching the book come to life. Yesterday Heather was talking about going to Assateague to see the ponies when she was little and Jonah said, “Momma, are they real?” The first time we saw the wild ponies, Mark was in an interview at Salisbury State. I drove over to the coast with Heather and Justin and we had stopped at a MacDonald’s for lunch. As we drove on to the island of Assateague we were greeted by a beautiful pony and Justin just had to offer him some of his French fries. Ponies aren’t picky. He ate the French fries and wanted more! Sometime Heather and Jed are going to have to make a trip to Assateague so that their boys can see the Misty series of books come to life as well.
by Judy Handley | Aug 15, 2013 | Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs Year 8 |
Day 285, Year 8: Fishy, Crabby Kind of Day
Date: Thursday, August 15, 2013
Weather: Beautiful Day, Breezy, Still a Tad Cool (low 70’s)
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
When Sam wrote in his journal this afternoon, he wrote that today was “a fishy kind of day.” And I’m adding the “crabby” part. It was another wonderful, laid-back summer day. The only plan was to go to Stoney Beach here in Woods Hole. After today, I have only three more Camp Oma days with Sam and Jonah, so we wanted to get in at least this one more beach day. It has been cooler this week and it almost feels like fall. But the sky was blue and the sun was shining brightly, so it was perfect beach weather.
I picked the boys up on ‘the hill’ here in Woods Hole. The public radio station is up on the hill, so that is where Heather parks. There is a big climbing tree there, so we spent a bit of time climbing and then walked down the street to get in the dinghy and go out to Windbird. As we walked across the bridge, Sam and Jonah noticed that there was a very large dead fish lying on the rocks. This is not a common sight here, so we speculated on what could have happened to this fish (probably a Striper). I didn’t have my camera with me, so the boys wanted to go out to the boat to get Granddad and the camera and come back and take photos so we could try to identify the type of fish. Unfortunately, by the time we got back the tide had risen and the fish was far enough under the water that it was not possible to get a get a clear photo. So this was our first ‘fishy’ encounter of the day.
By this time, it was time for Granddad to catch the bus to work and for Sam, Jonah, and I to get to the beach. We can walk or drive to Stoney, but today we drove so we wouldn’t have to carry all of that beach gear. When we got there, Sam grabbed the huge bag of gear and took off to the beach. When did he get big enough to be the one carrying the gear? These little ones grow up so quickly! And I feel so blessed to be able to be here for part of the year to watch this. At Stoney Beach, we played in the water for a while and noticed that there were hundreds of baby shrimp or fish in the water all around us. This was our second ‘fishy’ encounter. We also discovered that there were jellies in the water that could sting us, so we had to be careful. This eventually drove us out of the water and up on the rock jetty to try and catch crabs. We learned how to do this the last time we were at Stoney, so Sam went to get the long pieces of beach grass that we use for ‘fishing poles’ and to get a rock to smash the periwinkle snails to give us our bait. There were two other children out on the jetty doing this already and we became partners in crime. Benjamin is five years-old and his sister Margaret is eight. They live near Boston but spend their summers on the Cape and both seemed to be quite knowledgable about sea life. We were watching minnows in the water and Margaret said they were Silverside minnows—just larger than usual. This was our next ‘fishy’ encounter. And then we started fishing for crabs. This was the ‘crabby’ part of the day. I caught the first and only one of the day. He was an Asian shore crab, an invasive species that seems to be taking over the rock jetties, but they sure are pretty. I worry about myself when I think I can spend almost two hours threading grass through snails and jigging for crabs, but I can and it was fun. Sam and Jonah loved it, but sooner that we would have liked, it was time to head back to Windbird for lunch and Jonah’s nap. We jumped in the water for one last swim and ran into a school of one inch long green fish that had come to shore and were literally jumping up out of the water. They looked like the blue-green chromies we might see on a coral reef, but there must be a northern counterpart. This was our last ‘fishy’ encounter of the day and then it was back to Windbird.
Tomorrow night Sam and Jonah are going to spend the night on Windbird and then on Saturday Mark and I will drive to Portsmouth, NH, for a birthday party for my good friend Sue Wolowitz. We will be back here for Mark to work on Sunday and then back to Portsmouth on Monday and Concord on Tuesday. So it will be a crazy weekend of driving, but a good time with friends. And by Tuesday night we should be back here on the Cape with a U-Haul full of our belongings from the New Hampshire storage unit—soon to become the Cape Cod storage unit.
by Judy Handley | Aug 14, 2013 | Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs Year 8 |
Day 284, Year 8: Free and Easy Day
Date: Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Weather: Beautiful Day, West Winds, A Tad Cool (low 70’s)
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
My first instinct was to name this log, “Living Like Normal People”. Then I had to figure out why I thought that. My answer was that we have lived a full summer and had very few days when both Mark and I have been at home together with no set agenda. Then I renamed the log appropriately—free and easy. We each had a list of things we wanted to accomplish, but the world was not going to end if we did nothing. So we moved Windbird back out to her mooring and just relaxed for a bit. Mark had a number of phone calls he had to make for his consulting work and after that we headed into town to tick off some of the other things on the list—dropping off old books at the library, doing a bit of shopping at West Marine, sending a huge fender (12 by 60 inches) back to the company for repairs, buying parsley to plant in Heather’s garden to attract swallowtail butterflies, and doing a number of other small chores. Going to the UPS store to send the fender took us close to Heather’s house, so we stopped by to say hello. It was nap time for Ollie and Jonah, so we took Sam with us to the UPS store and to the nursery to buy the parsley. When we got back, Sam worked with me in the garden until it was time for Jonah and Ollie to get up. Mark and I had some time to play with Ollie which we always enjoy immensely. He is just such a happy baby with lots of giggles to keep us all smiling. He loves dogs and has a new stuffed doggy that he hugs and kisses. Heather and Jed have never had a pet, but they might have to break down and get a real dog for Ollie.
After this week, we have only two more weeks before school starts. Yikes! I cannot believe how quickly the summer has flown by. We are having lovely weather right now, but the daytime highs are in the low 70’s and that is just a few degrees cooler than Mark and I like. It looks like it will heat up a bit by next week, but as Mark has noticed, the geese are starting to fly south. There is a hint of fall in the air so we have to hurry up and enjoy these last days of summer.
by Judy Handley | Aug 13, 2013 | Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs Year 8 |
Day 283, Year 8: Mudflat Mania!
Date: Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Weather: Overcast Skies with Rain Mid-afternoon
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Mudflat Mania! That’s the name the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History gives their guided ‘marsh mucking’ adventure at low tide. ‘Marsh mucking’ is Sam and Jonah’s name for it. Whatever you call it, we had a fantastic time doing it today along with a hundred other people. It was totally overcast and the guides kept saying that this is the perfect weather as the hot sun was not beating down us. It is about a fifteen minute walk through the marsh to get to the mudflats and then we spent well over an hour mucking about. The guides are volunteers and they are wonderful. They quietly teach the children the tricks of the trade and impart a great deal of knowledge. And there were lots of them. One guide was displaying the moon snails she had found. When we asked how she found them, she told us to look for the trails in the sand in shallow water and at the end of the trail to look for a hump of sand. She then said to scoop the hump of sand up with your hand and that you will usually have a moon snail. Sam became a moon snail maniac and collected them like crazy. Jonah and I were a little slower to catch on, but we finally found a few without Sam’s help. Before the moon snail mania, Sam and Jonah were both catching big green crabs and collecting them in their buckets. And before that it was hermit crabs. Collecting hermit crabs is something that they can easily do out on Devils Foot Island in the harbor here in Woods Hole and they have learned to catch green crabs at Woodneck Beach which is close-by, but the moon snails were new to them so they spent most of their time collecting those. I loved the way they would take off to show the guides what they had found. They are both very independent and all I have to do is hold the extra equipment, keep visual track of them, and take photos (not so easy while holding shovels, nets, and buckets). I was taking a photo of a crab they caught in a net and I noticed a small shrimp in the net as well. The boys were delighted with that find. At another point, a pre-teen boy yelled out that he had found a pregnant shrimp. Indeed, in his net he had a clump of babies. I don’t think the mother was pregnant any longer! I learn along with Sam and Jonah and I love it.
Around noon it started sprinkling rain so the whole group started heading back. We were among the first to leave the mudflats but almost the last to return as Sam and Jonah wanted to stop at every by-way and do a little exploring. We found a miniature Stonehenge that is a solar calendar for the seasons. We found an old red cedar forest being taken over by oak trees. And we just generally enjoyed our walk back. After cleaning up a bit and eating lunch in the car, as it was now raining too hard to enjoy lunch at the picnic tables, we headed into the museum. It was almost time to head home so Jonah could get a nap, but we stretched it a bit and explored some of the things we had not seen there last week. Their indoor tide pool is not a touch tank which was a bit disappointing, but the huge blue lobster and the moon jelly tank were both great. We watched a bit of a film about great white sharks, made paper helicopters to fly in a forced-air column, and on and on. I promised the boys we would return on a day when we don’t have a program to attend and just enjoy the museum at their pace. The museum is a wonderful resource and I’m so glad that both Sam and Jonah really enjoy it. We might have to bring Ollie with us next time as I think there are lots of things he would enjoy as well.
While I was out and about with Sam and Jonah, Mark was back on Windbird working on boat projects. He installed a new thermostat for our refrigerator, but unfortunately he doesn’t think that is going to solve our problems. If it doesn’t, we will need to install the new compressor that currently sits under the port side of our main cabin dining table. Mark was hoping to return the compressor and save $600+, but at this point, it’s looking like we’re going to need this compressor. Mark also worked on his consulting job and gave more thought to prioritizing boat jobs. Again I say, so much time and so little to do. But in between jobs, Mark took time to watch a mother Mallard and her new clutch of baby ducklings. Seems late in the season for new ones, but Mark sure enjoyed watching them. One little guy took off and jumped in the water. He swam out to Windbird and then went back to mamma and her other babies on the dock. So cute.
by Judy Handley | Aug 12, 2013 | Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs Year 8 |
Day 282, Year 8: Trip to Hyannis
Date: Monday, August 12, 2013
Weather: Mix of Partly Cloudy and Overcast Skies, Sprinkles
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Dealing with all the ‘stuff’ we have had in storage for ten years is a huge job, and one that could have been avoided had I not been so stubborn. I was adamant that things had to be kept, and now I’m having to deal with that decision. Here are some examples. Mark had many suits, some of which had hardly ever been worn. Now those suits have been in storage for ten years and he certainly doesn’t need them anymore. But in our search of consignment shops for resale of used clothing, we are finding none that will take men’s clothing. Now we know those suits will go to Goodwill. Women’s clothing can be put on consignment, but the only shop I can find here on the Cape requires an appointment (the soonest opening on August 31st) and only eleven items can be taken from one appointment time. Then you have to wait another month for another appointment time. This takes a lot of patience and time for not much return. Today we were trying to find a home for two huge boxes of broadcast journalism books that belong to Mark. We tried used book stores in New Hampshire and no one wants them, but we thought possibly Tim’s Used Books in Hyannis might take them. But no. The advice was, “Sometimes you just have to throw old books away. Take them to the dump.” Yuck. I hate doing that, but it looks like that is the only alternative as I’m not sure that even the public library will take these books—too specialized. The same book shop in Hyannis did take some of my old education books, but the total take was $8.00—not enough to pay for the gas to drive to Hyannis. I’ve searched and searched for possible consignment shops for a bedroom set that we have tried in vain to sell on Craig’s List. I am persistent and I think I have possibly found a furniture consignment shop half-way between here and Boston that might take the set. It is painfully obvious that none of this stuff should ever have been put in storage. It should have been sold or given away when we moved aboard the boat. But it wasn’t and I couldn’t, so we will now deal with it the best that we can. The bottom line is that we are spending almost $500 to move this ‘stuff’ from New Hampshire to the Cape just so we can slowly throw it away. Mark’s idea of having someone come to the storage unit in New Hampshire and just take everything to the dump for us is probably the sanest idea, but I just can’t do it. So on goes the saga. The big move will happen on Tuesday, August 20. Then at least the ‘stuff’ will be close-by so it is easier to deal with.
We have heard from some good sailing friends in the past couple of days. Ed and Lynne of Constance, who crossed the Indian Ocean with us, are currently traveling in a small camper van out West. They emailed from Spokane, Washington, and were headed to Idaho to meet up with good friends of theirs that we met in Thailand. Lynne remembered that we once built a cabin in the mountains of Idaho and she was curious about where it was. Their friends have a family cabin on Lake Couer d’Alene. This is a sixty mile-long lake running north to south and our cabin was about twenty-five miles from the southern tip of the lake. So they will be in the right area. Then we got a call from Chris and Geoff of Shambala. These are sailing friends from Australia that we met in South Africa and whom we saw while we were in South Carolina. They have since sailed to the Bahamas and to Cuba and are now in Washington, DC, headed for Canada. We hope to see them on their way north or on their way back south to North Carolina where they will winter the boat. We sure miss our cruising friends and relish every opportunity to see them.
Tomorrow is a special Camp Oma day. Sam, Jonah, and I have looked forward to exploring the mudflats adjacent to the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History for most of the summer. Tomorrow is the day. The program is called Mudflat Mania! and we will become the ‘maniacs.’ Tomorrow night’s log should be full of fun things we discover in that mud.
by Judy Handley | Aug 11, 2013 | Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs Year 8 |
Day 281, Year 8: Falmouth Road Race
Date: Sunday, August 11, 2013
Weather: Another Beautiful Summer Day
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Another year . . . another Falmouth Road Race. Each year this day is quite exciting here in Woods Hole. This little village becomes home to 12,000 runners for just a couple of hours. And then as soon as the last runners leave the starting line, things go back to normal. Sam, Jonah, and I were up early and played on the dock while waiting for the ‘adults’ to get up. I guess I’m not an adult! While playing we watched runners gathering for the race. There was one group that gathered very close to us and Jonah noted that some of the women had on tutus, worn over their running shorts, and other women had on what looked with running skirts. Strange. This definitely got our attention, so we watched for a bit and when Jed and Oliver came out to join us, Jed put the clues together and announced that the group was a wedding party. Sure enough, here came the bride in running attire, as was the entire wedding party. We watched the ceremony and clapped heartily when the young man and woman were pronounced man and wife. Then the wedding party headed to the starting line and there was a special start time just for them. It will certainly be a wedding to remember.
We all headed to Woods Hole’s main street to watch the runners up close and personal. It was a beautiful day—lots of sunshine, warm but not hot, almost no humidity, and a nice breeze. It was a perfect day for running a race. After all the runners left Woods Hole headed to Falmouth, Mark headed to West Marine to work and the rest of us went back to the boat. Heather had hoped that Ollie might take a nap, but no such luck. Jed was taking Jonah and Sam to the beach for an hour, but after only a few minutes he returned carrying Sam. Sam was barefooted and stepped on a piece of glass in the parking lot. There was blood everywhere, but actually the cut was not all that big—just deep. So instead of the beach, we all had lunch and then Heather and gang headed home. My, oh my, can those boys ever make a mess! There was yogurt, blueberries, chocolate, and greasy fingerprints from eating bacon all over the cockpit. So I spent a bit of time cleaning up—little price to pay for such special times with the grandchildren.
