Day 282, Year 11: Happy Birthday to Coco Annabelle
Date: Saturday, July 30, 2016
Weather: Mostly Sunny, High in the Upper 70’s F
Location: At Home in The Studio #8, Falmouth, MA
Happy Birthday to Coco Annabelle! Coco is our youngest grandchild (four months younger than Ollie) and she is our only granddaughter. Coco is a girly girl—loves pink, loves fancy dresses and has her own very definite fashion sense, loves dollies, and loves mothering baby animals. But never fear. She most definitely can hold her own with the four grandsons. She has curly, wispy, white hair and a smile that will take her far in life. We got to see her this morning via Skype video, and she was already in her party dress preparing for her afternoon birthday party. Coco, we love you.
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| 160730 Day 282a Cape Cod, USA–Happy Birthday to Coco |
Lee and Mary Ellen left this morning at 6:30 am. Mark and I got up to say our farewells, but headed back to bed once they left. They are headed to Illinois to visit with family and friends, but were only planning to make it as far as the Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, area tonight. We so enjoyed their visit and are still amazed at how much we accomplished. Thank you, Lee and ME, for everything you did for us.
Mark spent a lot of time on the phone this afternoon with Sam, Windbird’s new owner. Although not all of the paperwork has been finalized, we have all agreed to proceed as if it is a done deal. Sam and his wife Dawn arrived in Little River today and will spend their first week aboard Windbird overseeing repairs and upgrades and just getting to know the boat. We both remember how overwhelmed we were with our first introduction to Windbird and we want to do everything we can to help Sam and Dawn. Mark assured Sam that we are just a phone call away and that he should feel comfortable calling as many times as needed. We are hoping to be able to fly to Myrtle Beach in late August or sometime in September to actually sail with them. We’re not sure Mark will be able to do this, but if he is, we would love nothing more than to personally show them Windbird’s ‘ropes’. Sam, Jonah, and Oliver are doing a sleep-over with us tonight while Heather and Jed are enjoying a night out. When I put Ollie to bed, he said, “Oma, I wish I was sleeping on the boat.” It is going to take time for all of us to get used to the idea that we can’t just drive to Quissett Harbor and spend the night on the boat. But we are so happy that Sam and Dawn chose Windbird. Or maybe Windbird chose them. Sam emailed the other night saying that he was reading our Year 10 logs and discovered that in March of 2015 he and Dawn crossed paths with us. Sam wrote, “On Sunday, March 29th as you were on your way from Warderick Wells to Hawksbill Cay, I landed in Nassau to pick Dawn up and then we flew across to Norman Cay to meet our friends. From there we flew quite low (500-1000 feet) down the Exumas to Staniel Cay, presumably passing right over Windbird along the way. You may have heard or seen us. And as we were over the Exumas Land & Sea Park, I was looking down at all the boats below in that spectacular water, both pinching myself at how lucky I was to fly my own airplane over it and also wishing I that had the time and a sailboat to explore it from the water. That short flight from Norman to Staniel Cay was one of the triggering events that made us decide to look into cruising sooner rather than later. And it turns out we were flying right over our future boat.” It is an amazingly small world.
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| 160730 Day 282b Cape Cod, USA–Windbird at Anchor in the Bahamas |
