Day 323, Year 10: Sailing Vacation with the Goldpebbles
Date: Saturday, August 29, 2015
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Temp in the Upper 70’s F
Location: Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, MA

Tonight is the beginning of our sailing vacation with the Goldpebbles. We’re not sure how many days and nights Ollie is in for, but Sam and Jonah should be with us until Wednesday. We had originally planned to meet them in Boston on their way home from Maine and sail home from there. But when we really thought it through, the sailing days would have been too long. We adjusted the plan to have very short sailing days and lots of time to play on beaches and fish. As soon as we set foot on the boat this evening, Jonah exclaimed, “It feels so good to be on the boat again.” This comes from a six year-old that even last year was often reluctant to spend the night. Ollie and Sam agreed with him, but we will just have to see how many days Ollie will stick with us. Tomorrow we sail through the Woods Hole Cut and into Woods Hole. We will not go into Eel Pond, but will anchor out in Great Harbor. Sam and Jonah are very anxious to visit the little island in the harbor called Devil’s Foot. When we kept our boat in Eel Pond, we often took the dinghy out to Devil’s Foot. But we haven’t been back since we moved to Quissett last summer. Ollie has been to Devil’s Foot, but he was too young to remember it. So everyone is excited about tomorrow’s plan. Heather and Jed will join us onboard for dinner giving Ollie a chance to jump ship. But we’re hoping he will stay with us. On Monday we plan to sail down to Tarpaulin Cove, another favorite of Sam and Jonah’s, but another place Ollie doesn’t remember. If he stays with us we might return to Woods Hole on Tuesday so he can see mommy and daddy. So the plans for Tuesday and Wednesday are flexible for now depending on how Ollie is doing. I think as long as we are fishing and find a beach to play on each day, the big boys will be happy, so going a longer distance is probably not necessary. We’ll just see how things go. But Mark and I feel similar to Jonah. “It feels so good to have Sam, Jonah, and Ollie on Windbird with us.” And the full moon rising as we headed out to the boat in the dinghy was just beautiful.

Day 322, Year 10: Friday with the Goldpebbles
Date: Friday, August 28, 2015
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Temp in the Upper 70’s F
Location: Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, MA

Today was Friday and I spent my day with the Goldpebbles. Mark drove me to Heather and Jed’s and then he returned to Windbird. I had the use of Heather and Jed’s van for today, so we were all mobile. I spent the day with the boys and Mark returned to Windbird to check out the dingy motor situation. We have been using Heather and Jed’s Mercury 4-stroke, but today Mark had time to put our old Yamaha on the dinghy to try it out and it does run. It is not perfect and it makes noises we have never heard before, but for now we will use it while we decide what new motor we want. I had a low-key day with the boys and met up with Heather, Jed, and Mark at John Stegeman’s home for a barbecue. John is the head of the lab that Jed works in at WHOI. We had a fun evening and tomorrow we will get ready for our few days of sailing with the Goldpebbles. Ollie is still on the fence as to whether he will be with us, but we are hoping we can convince him to tag along.

Day 321, Year 10: They’re Back . . .
Date: Thursday, August 27, 2015
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Temp in the Low 80’s F, Still Windy
Location: Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, MA

They’re back . . . the Goldstones have returned from Maine. So tomorrow Camp Oma will be back up and running. We made a quick stop to see them on our way home from Boston. Even though the weather wasn’t very cooperative for their visit with Grammy, all three boys were bursting with stories of how much they enjoyed the vacation. On their way to Maine, they stopped to do a little back-to-school shopping and each of the boys wanted to show off their new school shoes. Jonah got blue suede shoes, so bringing up a video of Elvis singing that song was fun to watch. I think the boys are starting to look forward to the return to school, but we have one more week of summer fun, so we’ll focus on that for now. I’m just not ready for this summer to end. Tomorrow the boys want to spend the day at home, but on Sunday we take off with Sam and Jonah, and maybe Ollie, for a three or four day sailing trip. The big boys are looking forward to the adventure, but Ollie is not convinced that he wants to leave mommy and daddy for that long. So we are trying to put together a trip where he can join us on at least two of the days.

Mark’s appointment in Boston today was at 3:30 pm, so we drove most of the way and then hopped on the T (public transportation) for the last 15 miles. That way we didn’t have to fight the worst of the traffic leaving the city at rush hour. The strategy worked, and even though there was some stop and go traffic, we were home earlier than expected. Mark is now ready for his first radiation treatment on Tuesday, September 8, so we don’t have to return to Boston until then. In the meantime, we’ll enjoy these last days of summer.

Heather had some very exciting news tonight. She has been accepted as one of 78 women in science that will be going on an expedition to Antarctica in December of next year (2016). Way to go, Heather! The boys are not as excited about this as the rest of us as they are not sure they can make it for a month without momma. But they will be fine and she will be home just in time for Christmas. That will be the best Christmas present ever.

Day 320, Year 10: To Boston, To Boston
Date: Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Temp in the Low 80’s F, A Bit Windy
Location: Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, MA

We traveled to Boston today and, unexpectedly, we will travel to Boston again tomorrow. It’s a good thing we like Boston! Today was Mark’s appointment at Mass General with his oncologist, Dr. Kwak, and his radiation oncologist, Dr. Hong. They had reviewed the scan done last Friday and announced the plan for the next few months. Mark explained to Dr. Kwak that his oncologist on the Cape, Dr. Aviles, had him skip his last treatment due to all of the various side effects he was having. He reported that he was feeling much better, so at that point Dr. Kwak looked at Mark and said, “Then, Mark, I think you will be happy with what I have to tell you. The cancer has grown a bit.” Mark looked confused because the cancer growing is not a good thing. But then she explained that the next step will be five weeks of radiation and then NO cancer treatment for a few months. That is what she thought he would be happy about and he is. This means that we can travel this winter and not have to worry about getting somewhere every two weeks for a treatment. We will have to get scans done every two to three months, but that is not a problem. So once again, Mark is being given the gift of time to enjoy what he loves most . . . sailing. Mark has been living with this cancer for almost four years now. After the first operation and round of chemotherapy, the cancer returned. Mark read that most people in this situation would have three to four years to live. That was three years ago. Then after the second operation and the spread of the cancer to the liver last fall, Dr. Kwak explained to Mark that he could have another year or two. But then the biologic treatment was so successful that the tumor in the liver was no longer perceptible and things looked brighter. Now the biologic is no longer effective and the cancer is growing, so we’ll try radiation again. Dr. Hong is confident that the radiation will totally shrink the tumor in the liver but the swollen lymph nodes in the back of the abdominal area are a bigger problem. Mark asked Dr. Kwak what he can expect now. She explained to Mark that he is still healthy and that his body is putting up a good fight. The cancer is growing slowly and has not spread to other organs, which indicates that he still has some time. But she did add at this point that he should not ask what she means by “some time” as she doesn’t know. She just wants him to continue enjoying life and she’ll deal with issues as they arise. So starting on September 8th, Mark will be living in the AstraZeneca Hope Lodge Center in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston for the next five weeks. I will join him for at least a couple of days each week and he will come home to the Cape on the weekends. He’s done this once before and time passed very quickly. After the radiation treatments, they will wait a month before doing the next scan. During that month we will sail Windbird to South Carolina and fly home from there for the scan. After that we will either sail to Puerto Rico or to Florida and the Bahamas for the rest of the winter. We had eliminated going to the Bahamas because of the cost of flights to and from Florida for treatments, but now that we don’t have to worry about traveling to and fro for treatments, that possibility is once again on the plate. The final decision on where we will spend the winter might be made by the weather. So we’ll just take one step at a time and make decisions as we go. And the first step is returning to Boston tomorrow for a planning scan for the radiation treatment. We had hoped to be here when Heather, Jed, and gang return tomorrow afternoon, but we’ll just have to wait until Friday morning to see them.

Day 319, Year 10: An Easy Day
Date: Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Weather: Gorgeous Day, High Temp 80 degrees F
Location: Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, MA

The weather here is back to beautiful and we had an easy day. I had set this as my day to organize science and art supplies that we keep on shelves in Heather and Jed’s basement. And while I was at it, I planned to organize a few other things on the shelves. It has been a busy summer and things in the basement had gotten to be a bit of a mess. I worked on that and did a few other housekeeping things for H & J. We often use their refrigerator to store a lot of our things, so I decided it was time for a little pay back by cleaning the refrig. It was a perfect day for drying the shelves and drawers outside, so I took advantage of the sunshine and got that job done. Mark did some work on his computer and then I sent him to the garden to pick green beans for us to eat for dinner. He also picked enough cherry tomatoes to roast and freeze another pint. He was able to relax for a change and is feeling much better as a result. I think being away from the boat today was good for him. We ate dinner at Heather’s and decided to take advantage of modern technology and watch a little news on television. It was all about Trump tonight and it was interesting to watch him speak to a large crowd in Iowa. There is so much about him to dislike, but it is also easy to see why so many people are buying his message. It is going to be an interesting political season.

Tomorrow morning we head to Boston to meet with Mark’s oncologists at Mass General. Dr. Kwak and Dr. Hong will have reviewed the CT scan done last Friday and will be sharing the results with us. We have put off making plans for the winter until after tomorrow’s meeting, so this is a biggie.

A couple of people commented on a photo I posted last night. It showed Mark in the dinghy with a 4 hp Mercury motor. That motor belongs to Heather and Jed and we are using it until we decide what we are going to buy for a new dinghy motor. If we get bad news tomorrow and are not going to be sailing this winter, we’ll not buy anything. But if we are going to be cruising for the winter, we will either use our old Yamaha which has been repaired once again, or we will buy a new motor. We haven’t even had a chance to try out the old Yamaha, so we’ll keep you posted on that one.

Day 318, Year 10: Old Neighborhood, New Neighbors
Date: Monday, August 24, 2015
Weather: Cloudy AM, Gorgeous PM, Temp Upper 70’s, Wind SW 8
Location: Back in Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, MA

Two months and one day after the “Big Blow” that sent us flying into shallow water with a rocky bottom, we are back in Quissett’s outer harbor just a couple of moorings from the one that we drug. So we are back in the old neighborhood with a repaired bottom that looks as good as new. When we arrived this afternoon and picked up the mooring, we saw that we have a new boat in the neighborhood.

150824 Day 318a Cape Cod, USA–Old Neighborhood, New Neighbor

We are right next to Rhodora, Bob and Beth Lux’s Bermuda 40. The last time we saw Rhodora was sometime in the 1990’s when they had her stored in their front yard. Bob and Beth did a six-year circumnavigation in the 1980’s and have since then sailed across the Atlantic making sure they visited the chilly waters of Greenland and Iceland. This summer they went to Bermuda and back just because they had never done that! So it feels great to have such wonderful neighbors. In a few days we might be moving back into the inner harbor, but we won’t be far away. We’ll look forward to visiting with Bob and Beth when they come down from Bow, New Hampshire on the weekends.

Early this morning, Windbird was cradled in the slings of the travel-lift so that bottom paint could be applied where the blocks and supports had been. Around 1 pm she was put in the water and Mark drove her around to the fuel dock. We gathered our dinghy and kayak with the help of marina personnel and got them attached to Windbird. Then we filled the fuel and water tanks and pumped out the holding tank. One minute before 3 pm, we pulled away from the dock and were on our way back home to Quissett Harbor. We want to thank the staff at Fiddler’s Cove for doing such a great job on the repairs. And they all do their work with a smile and a friendly helping hand which makes life on the hard so much more pleasant. Our insurance company, Blue Water, also came through. We got the money for the towing costs, the repairs, and for a new dinghy motor a couple of days ago. I still can’t believe how much the TowBoat US costs were for towing, but thankfully they were there when we needed them. Now we just have to hope that this is a quiet hurricane year. I’m not sure I have the nerve to go through any more ‘windy’ adventures this season!

150824 Day 318b Cape Cod, USA–From Land to Water

Day 317, Year 10: Connecting with Friends
Date: Sunday, August 23, 2015
Weather: Overcast with Periods of Rain, Temp Around 80 degrees F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, MA

Today was all about connecting with friends. We spent the early morning hours doing a little boat cleaning (inside this time) to get ready for our sail from here to Quissett tomorrow. We then drove two cars to Quissett Harbor and left Heather’s car for us to use when we arrive by sailboat tomorrow. While there, we picked up our friends Bob and Beth Lux from the Concord Yacht Club. They sailed their boat down this past week and needed a ride to Enterprise to pick up a rental car to drive home. They will be leaving their boat here until mid-October and we hope to connect with them on other weekends when they come down for a sail. They invited us to go have coffee, so we did and really enjoyed reconnecting with them. Then we were off to Heather’s to can the chicken mineral broth I made yesterday and do a little prep for dinner. By 5:30 pm we were back at Fiddlers Cove Marina to have dinner in the clubhouse with Bruce and Jane Woodin. Mark did a fantastic job of grilling the filet mignons. They were delicious and we had a great time catching up on the happenings in both our lives. It was a wonderful day connecting with friends.

Day 316, Year 10: Boat Work and Cooking
Date: Saturday, August 22, 2015
Weather: Overcast with Heavy Early Morning Rain, Cooling Down
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, MA

Note: I need to correct a couple of things I said in last night’s log. I said that the repairs had been completed on Windbird’s split ‘keel’. Sure glad the keel wasn’t split! What I meant was split ‘rudder’. I also said the new strap to protect the prop goes from the back of the bottom of the keel to the rudder. If that were true, the rudder would have trouble moving. What I meant to say was that it goes from the keel to the skeg that holds the rudder. Sorry for the confusion.

Now to today. It was raining so hard this morning at 7 am that there was no way I could sleep with the rain pounding on the hatch above me. So I got up, went out in the cockpit, and put the rubber mats that we step on when getting into the boat on top of the hatch. That stopped the terrible noise, but now I was soaked and there was no way I was going back to sleep. So I left Mark (alias ‘Sleeping Beauty’) in bed and headed straight for Heather and Jed’s. I ate breakfast there and got the Chicken Magic Mineral Broth burbling on the stove. On Thursday I made the veggie version and we roasted an organic chicken for dinner. Today I used the carcass of that chicken to make the chicken broth version of Magic Mineral Broth. I canned the veggie version, but will have to wait until tomorrow to can the chicken broth as I have to let it sit overnight so I can skim off the fat. I have no idea if this broth is worth all the trouble it is to make and can, but I know that in the spring of 2012 when Mark was going through his first chemo treatments, things were going downhill until I bought Rebecca Katz’s cookbook, “The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen” and started using her magic broth. Mark’s blood chemistry made a u-turn and his doctors have been amazed ever since at his ability to just keep on going. I haven’t made broth since last winter and I ran out of the canned supply in early summer. So making the broth is long over-due. I really think it makes a difference, so I’ll keep on making it.

150822 Day 316 Cape Cod, USA–Making Magic Mineral Broth

Mark actually got up soon after I left and he worked on boat projects all morning. So I totally failed at getting him to rest today. He had taken the two small winches that sit on the cockpit cap rail apart so I could easily varnish around the edges. So this morning he put them back together. He also worked on cleaning and polishing the outside of the cockpit coaming. Around noon I went out to pick him up and bring him to the Heather and Jed’s. So he got a little rest this afternoon but then he went out and packed all of our books that didn’t sell at last week’s yard sale into the wine boxes I picked up at the liquor store this morning. The books were in plastic bins, but in order to drop them off at the library as a donation for their annual book sale, we needed to transfer them to the boxes so we could keep the plastic bins. Later this afternoon we delivered the boxes to the library. So that job is done.

When we got back to Heather and Jed’s I continued working on my cooking projects. I cooked dinner for tonight, so we stayed and ate there. We are now back on the boat but will return to Heather’s to can the chicken broth late tomorrow morning. At 11 am we will drive Heather’s car and our car to Quissett. We’ll leave Heather’s car there so we’ll have something to drive when we arrive back in Quissett by boat on Monday. Then we will pick up friends from the Concord Yacht Club, Beth and Bob Lux, and take them into Falmouth to a rental car agency. They sailed their boat from New Hampshire to here this week and are going to leave the boat on a mooring in Quissett for the fall. But they need to get back to work on Monday morning, thus they are renting the car to get home. We are so glad they called us and that we are going to be able to help out. After we deliver them to the rental car agency, we’ll head to H & J’s to can the chicken broth. Then it is back to Fiddler’s Cove. We invited Bruce and Jane Wooden to dinner tomorrow night. We’ll cook and eat in the club house as climbing the ladder to get onboard Windbird is not something you want to ask guests to do!

Day 315, Year 10: Day Trip to Boston
Date: Friday, August 21, 2015
Weather: Mostly Overcast with Rain in the Evening
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, MA

The short story is that we spent the day driving to and from Boston and sitting in the waiting room at Mass General Hospital. The longer story is that Mark had a CT scan today and this means arriving an hour early at Mass General to drink Barium ‘cocktails’ and then waiting for at least an hour for the scan. So two hours driving to Boston, two hours in the hospital, and two hours home—plus a little for a couple of stops along the way. Mark’s appointment was at 12:50 pm for ‘cocktails’ and 1:30 pm for the scan. But we didn’t leave the hospital until 3 pm. There was a longer wait today than usual. We were absolutely shocked that there was very little traffic all the way home—not even a Friday evening back-up of cars trying to get onto the Cape. We crossed the Bourne Bridge at 5:15 pm with no delay. Unbelievably lucky. We’ll find out the results of the scan on Wednesday when we drive back to Boston to meet with Mark’s oncologists there. Once we know the results, we can make plans for the winter. If the results are great we might sail to Culebra, Puerto Rico, for the winter. If they are mediocre, we might sail to South Carolina and on to Florida. If the results are not good, we’ll have to make some tough decisions.

The bottom repairs on Windbird were completed this morning and we will go back in the water on Monday. The split rudder has been epoxied back together, wrapped in fiberglass with more epoxy applied, given three coats of InterProtect and then has bottom paint applied. The bottom of the keel just needed epoxy and InterProtect—no fiberglass. And a new strap has been installed going from the back of the keel to the skeg that holds the rudder. This is to protect the prop from catching crab or lobster pots or fish nets. The idea is that the line from the pots of the net will just run along under the strap. After sailing through the crab pot infested waters from Marathon in the Keys to Fort Myers Beach this winter, we swore we would get that strap installed. So now it is. As I mentioned in last night’s log, further varnishing has to be delayed due to the weather. So we installed the dodger this morning and put up the bimini tonight. Windbird’s cockpit is once again covered so Mark can be protected from the sun.

150821 Day 315 Cape Cod, USA–Boat Work Completed

Tomorrow will be another cooking day. We will head to Heather and Jed’s in the morning to continue the Magic Mineral Broth process. I made the veggie broth yesterday but just left it in the pot in the frig. Tomorrow I will make the chicken bone broth and on Sunday I’ll can the lot. I also have some other cooking projects for tomorrow, so that will be my day. I’m going to sit Mark in front of a fan and make him rest. That is not an easy thing to do, but I’ll give it my best effort.

And last, but certainly not least, we send happy birthday greetings to Mark’s sister, Mary Ellen. ME, we hope you had a wonderful day!

Day 314, Year 10: No Time to Relax Today
Date: Thursday, August 20, 2015
Weather: Partly Cloudy, Hot and Humid
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, MA

Today was a busy one with no time to relax. So much for vacation!

I started my day by sanding the cap rail and prepping it for the first coat of Epifanes Clear Varnish. I stopped long enough to drive Mark to the oncology center for his treatment and hurried back to get the varnish on before it got too hot. When we left, Scott was applying another coat of InterProtect Epoxy Primer on the rudder and the paint crew was delivering supplies they would need to paint the bottom. Scott explained that they would paint everything except the areas where he still needs to apply one more coat of epoxy. So the bottom work might really be completed tomorrow.

150820 Day 314 Cape Cod, USA–InterProtect Applied to Boat Bottom

When I returned from the oncology center, I applied the coat of varnish to the cap rail and was just getting ready to climb down the ladder when Mark called. He had just met with Dr. Aviles and the doctor made the decision to not have Mark get a treatment today. Mark has so many different issues, most of them skin-related side effects due to the treatment, that Dr. Aviles decided his body needs a rest. This is the first time this has ever happened, but since he is getting a scan tomorrow, Dr. Aviles thought it was a good time for a break. So I drove to pick Mark up and then he went with me to Hyannis to Whole Foods. It is the only store on the Cape that has all the different ingredients I need to make Magic Mineral Broth, and I really needed to make the broth. About $200 later, we headed back to Falmouth to Heather and Jed’s where I spent the rest of the day cooking—making broth, roasting chicken, beets, acorn squash, and tiny tomatoes, washing various greens, and on and on. I could do all of this on the boat, but it would take much, much longer. Thankfully we had the availability of Heather and Jed’s kitchen this afternoon. We ate dinner there and got back to the boat after dark.

I had really hoped to be able to apply another coat of varnish before we leave for Boston in the morning, but the weather report calls for rain. And rain and varnish don’t mix. So once we returned tonight, we took the tape off from around the edges. There is rain in the forecast every day through next Wednesday. Since there’s no way to know if we’ll really get the rain, I have to assume that we will and put off additional coats of varnish until late next week. In the meantime, we have to sail the boat back to Quissett on Monday and Mark really should not be out in the sun. So we’ll put the dodger and bimini back up on Saturday. Some sunny week in September, we’ll take it all down again and I’ll put on more coats of varnish.