by Judy Handley | Aug 17, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 300, Year 9: A Little Bit of Everything
Date: Sunday, August 17, 2014
Weather: Mix of Sun and Clouds with a Sprinkle Mid-day
Location: Staying at Heather and Jed’s, East Falmouth, MA
Today was a day with absolutely no focus. I did just a little bit of everything. I took Mark to work at West Marine as it was Falmouth Road Race Day and he wasn’t sure he would find parking. We left early and had no problem driving all the way to West Marine. The Road Race goes right past West Marine and the road is closed closer to race time. But since we were early, we had no problems. I then did some grocery shopping and returned home. I answered some emails, worked in the garden and harvested tomatoes and Swiss chard, then roasted the tomatoes to freeze and made leaf pie with the Swiss chard, made Toll House Squares, finished cleaning the boys’ bedroom, edited and organized photos from the Martin family vacation, and went back into to town to pick Mark up from work. I had hoped to do more garden work, but the mid-day sprinkles put a stop to that idea. One thing is for sure. I didn’t have time to be bored. I just bounced from one job to another and enjoyed the day.
by Judy Handley | Aug 16, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 299, Year 9: Shining Windbird’s Topsides
Date: Saturday, August 16, 2014
Weather: More Sunshine, Warm Day in the High 70’s F, Cool Evening
Location: Staying at Heather and Jed’s, East Falmouth, MA
When your boat has been painted with AwlGrip as Windbird has been, you no longer ‘wax’ the topsides. Instead you put on a polymer coating called AwlCare. The result is the same, however. The topsides look shinier than they did before. And that was our big job of the day. If you are not a boater, you probably don’t know what topsides are. Basically topsides are the sides of your boat. Boats have a bottom and a deck, and everything in between is referred to as topsides. Windbird’s bottom was painted yesterday and once we put the AwlCare on today, she was looking good. Mark did one side of the boat and I did the other. Well, sort of. I could only reach about halfway up on most of my side, so once Mark finished the port side, he came over to starboard and did the top half. Now everything is done up to the rub rail and all we have left if the green sheer stripe above the rub rail and below the toe rail on the deck.
We came home and had a bit of a lazy afternoon. The weather was beautiful, so sometimes Mark sat out on the back deck to read and plan. He is still working on routes from South Carolina to Puerto Rico. When I joined him on the back deck I saw that what I think is a Chinese Flame Tree (Koelreuteria bipinnata) in the backyard is in full bloom. This tree can be a pest as it seeds and grows new little trees everywhere, but as fall approaches, it is stunning. It has little yellow blossoms that form seed pods that look like pinkish-orange Chinese lanterns. The bees were busy this afternoon going from blossom to blossom. I took some photos of the tree and of the garden. It is starting to go from jungle stage to end-of-the-season stage. Tomatoes, zucchini, and cucumbers are still going strong, but everything else is either going to seed or drying up. That, along with the cool nights, tell us that fall is approaching faster than we’d like to think.
by Judy Handley | Aug 15, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 298, Year 9: Planning Day
Date: Friday, August 15, 2014
Weather: More Sunshine, Warm Day (80’s F), Cool Evening (60’s F)
Location: Staying at Heather and Jed’s, East Falmouth, MA
Today was a gift of time since Mark did not have to go to work, so we decided to allow ourselves to start planning for cruising south this winter. The destination will be Puerto Rico which we will use as a home base. But we hope to cruise in the US Virgins to St. Thomas and St. Johns and possibly into the British Virgin Islands. The question is how to get to Puerto Rico. We will leave here and go offshore to the Delaware Bay. There we will head west and go through the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal to the Chesapeake Bay. On November 1, our insurance allows us to leave Norfolk and we will head down the Intracoastal Waterway to Little River in South Carolina. We know this path, so no planning is necessary. It is the trip from Little River to Puerto Rico that we are researching. We can go offshore from Little River out to somewhere between Longitude 67 and 65 and then head south. This makes the trip about ten days. The problem is that you can run into heavy weather. You can usually plan five to seven days out for weather, but ten is a challenge. You just don’t know what the weather might do. Another option is to go from Little River to Ft. Lauderdale by combining travel in the Intracoastal with a few day hops outside and then go across to the Bahamas and down through the islands to the Turks and Caicos, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and then Puerto Rico. Doing it this way in a series of day hops is a much safer bet weather-wise as you can duck in at any point along the way, BUT it is the l-o-n-g way. It could easily be late December or early January before we arrive in Puerto Rico going this way. If we do this, it is the trip that becomes the focus. We would enjoy our time in the Bahamas and we would get to snorkel in the Turks and Caicos—something I’ve always wanted to do. The stops in Haiti and the Dominican Republic are possibilities if the weather is bad, but if not, we could probably do a couple of overnights from the Turks and Caicos to Puerto Rico. Or long-time cruiser Don Street recommends a third option. Go to Florida and across to Grand Bahama Island. Wait there for northerly winds and take off for Longitude 65 and then head south. The problem is that it is still a seven day trip from Grand Bahama Island, so I really don’t see the advantage to this one. Mark worked on navigation issues today on his computer and I researched Puerto Rico, the US and British Virgins, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. I did what I always do first when planning a trip. I went to Noonsite online and copied all the information there on all those places into Word documents. That way I’ll have the information even if I don’t have internet access. I also found some free cruising guides that I downloaded. I’ll try to read through all of this information over the weekend. We have a few guides, some very old, some fairly new. But as we research, we’ll decide whether there are other resources we need to buy. There is so much on the internet these days that buying guides becomes less and less important. Active Captain is an interactive cruising guidebook on the internet that includes everything from maps, charts, anchorages, moorings, contact information, and up-to-date reviews by cruisers out there using those anchorages. It is totally interactive if you have internet, but if you don’t you simply make sure you have the program downloaded on your computer and you can use it anytime and simply update when you do have internet. It really is fantastic.
Tomorrow we will take time out to go check on Windbird and possibly do a little waxing on the topside, especially along the waterline, with AwlCare. We can continue this once we are back in the water, but it is much easier to do the part near the waterline while the boat is out of the water. We’ll combine a little work with a little more research.
by Judy Handley | Aug 14, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 297, Year 9: Back ‘Home’
Date: Thursday, August 14, 2014
Weather: Sunshine
Location: Staying at Heather and Jed’s, East Falmouth, MA
We drove back ‘home’ from Maine today with a stop south of Boston to have lunch with New Hampshire friends Alan and Helaine Kanegsberg. They were coming to Dedham to visit with friends and since it was on our way home, it was the perfect time and place to get together. Mark picked a Greek restaurant from internet reviews, Kouzina Estiatorio, and it lived up to its reputation—small, no frills, inexpensive, great food. During lunch we learned that Alan and Helaine have put their sailboat, Atlantis, up for sale. That came as a bit of a shock to us, but their reasons for selling the boat make all the sense in the world. The sailboat keeps them tied close to home from May to October and that only leaves six months of the year to do all of the other things on their bucket list. And since many of those things need to happen during the summer months, they decided it was time to move on. They will keep sailing her until she sells, but hopefully they will quickly find new owners to enjoy Atlantis as much as they have.
We stopped by Fiddler’s Cove to take a look at Windbird before heading on to Heather and Jed’s. Since they are out of town and Windbird is out of the water, we will be staying at their house until Windbird is back in the water early next week. Thus their home is our ‘home’ for a few days. It appears from the amount of rain in the dinghy that they didn’t get as much rain here as we had in southern Maine. I just checked Weather Underground and they report that there was only 0.4 inches of precipitation here while we had 3.3 inches in Kennebunkport. But I have to say it seemed like even more in Maine. Whatever the actual amounts of precipitation, Windbird was fine and everything at Heather and Jed’s was fine. They were worried that too much rain might make the ripening tomatoes in the garden split, but the tomatoes and everything else in the garden looked great when we checked this evening. There’s only one problem. It is entirely too quiet here without those three little hooligans running around. We miss them.
by Judy Handley | Aug 13, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 296, Year 9: Cape Cod to Kennebunkport, Maine (by car)
Date: Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Weather: Buckets of Rain
Location: At Home with Brad and Sue Cook, Kennebunkport, Maine
We have had buckets of rain today until just an hour ago it was still coming down with a little thunder and lightning thrown in for drama. When we left Fiddler’s Cove this morning, the marina staff was still planning to haul Windbird out of the water even with all the rain. They were planning to clean the bottom today, let it dry tomorrow, and paint the bottom on Friday. Since the boat will be out of the water and not plugged into an energy source, we shut down the refrigerator and freezer and transported the things to Heather and Jed’s. They were just leaving for a week in Boothbay, Maine when we arrived. And not long after they left, we headed to Kennebunkport, Maine to visit with my sister-in-law Sue and her husband Brad. It rained most of the way here, but just after we arrived, the rain increased to a torrential state and stayed that way most of the evening. It was about 10 pm when it settled down a bit, but the rain didn’t keep us from having a wonderful visit with Sue and Brad. Sue served a great dinner which we also enjoyed. Somehow she always produces great meals which seem to magically appear. One minute she is in the living room talking and the next minute she goes into the kitchen and reappears with the food. Sure wish I had that skill. We head back home tomorrow and are anxious to check on things after the heavy rain. On the way home we are meeting Alan and Helaine Kanegsberg just south of Boston for a late lunch. We called them thinking they might be on their boat in Portland, but they were home in Concord, New Hampshire and planning a trip to the Boston area tomorrow. Thus the perfect opportunity to catch up on summer happenings.
by Judy Handley | Aug 12, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 295, Year 9: Quissett Harbor to Fiddler’s Cove Marina
Date: Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Weather: Partly Cloudy, Temp in the 80’s
Latitude: 41 38.864 N
Longitude: 070 38.187 W
Location: Face Dock at Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, MA
Today we made the move from Quissett Harbor to Fiddler’s Cove Marina and the theme of the day was ‘alarms’. We left Quissett at 6:05 am and by 6:20 the high water alarm was screaming. Mark ran down to the engine room. I gave him a few minutes and then went down to ask, “Is it an emergency?” His answer was a quick, “Maybe.” Great! But without words, the tone of his voice told me to get back up into the cockpit to handle the boat and wait for a report. We did not have any sails up as there was very little wind and we had a strong adverse current. So were moving quickly back to where we started. I was able to change our direction so we were drifting out into Buzzards Bay instead of toward shore, so I then relaxed and waited for the next report. After 15-20 minutes of waiting, Mark reappeared and reported that the problem was not a true emergency and that he would have it under soon. A rusty hose clamp had given way and water was gushing from the engine into the bilge when the engine was running. With the engine off, we were no longer getting water in the bilge, but Mark was having a very hard time getting the hose back onto the engine fitting. By 7:15 am I got the go-ahead to start the engine and head toward Fiddler’s Cove. We had an 8:30 ‘date’ at Fiddler’s with Heather and Jed. They were delivering the boys and the van to us there and then heading to Woods Hole as Jed had a 9 am meeting. We made it with about 5 minutes to spare. Whew! Sure glad Mark suggested we start out early. You just never know what issues you are going to encounter.
Mark’s fix on the hose lasted until we got into port, but then it came off again and he needed peace and quiet to work on it. So I took the boys for a walk. We took water, chips, and books and planned to explore and snack and read. We found a picnic table by the water with a grassy area for Ollie to run in while we read. It seemed perfect. But eventually all three boys ended up running in the grass and then Sam found some old dock posts to climb on. Of course, the other two joined him and I was taking photos of them when I realized that Sam was up on a post with beautiful green leaves surrounding him. ALARM. Through the lens of my camera, those green leaves looked a lot like poison ivy. I ran over to the posts to check out the greenery, and indeed, it was poison ivy. I panicked. Heather, Jed, and boys are headed to Maine tomorrow for a week’s vacation with Jed’s family. Three little boys itching from poison ivy would be no fun at all. So I rushed them back out to Windbird, had them all take off all their clothes, and started dumping buckets of salt water on them. Mark came to help and I ran into the boat to find a bottle of castile soap that has been in the cabinet for years. Either Heather or Justin brought it aboard and it has been there ever since. Today I was glad that I had kept it as it is the perfect thing to wash off the oils of poison ivy. Combined with the salt water, hopefully we have averted a miserable vacation. BTW–Castile soap is olive oil and sodium hydroxide (lye). In order to get Jonah to let me put the soap on him, I had to tell him it was magic soap. And sure enough, when I looked up Dr. Bonner’s Pure Peppermint Castile Soap on the internet tonight, it is advertised as ‘magic’ soap. So let’s hope it works.
The weather report for tomorrow looks miserable with heavy rain and wind. I doubt that they will really haul the boat out of the water tomorrow if the forecast holds true, but we are continuing to prepare for that. In any case, Mark and I will leave in the morning and head to Kennebunk, Maine to visit my sister-in-law Sue and her husband Brad. We will let the crew here at the marina deal with Windbird. Hopefully she will be hauled tomorrow or Thursday, have the bottom painted by Friday, and sit on land for the weekend to dry. Then early next week, she will be back in the water. In the meantime, we will stay at Heather and Jed’s while they are out of town.
