Life After Windbird, Day 10: Ed and Lynne Arrived
Date: Monday, August 22, 2016
Weather: Much Cooler with Wind from the North
Location: At Home in The Studio #8, Falmouth, MA
Hurray, hurray! Today our wonderful friends Ed and Lynne arrived for a short visit. They really want to be back home in Nyack, New York, by Wednesday afternoon for the sailing club races, but we hope we can convince them to stay tomorrow night and drive home on Wednesday morning. In the meantime, we will just enjoy visiting together. Ed has been undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer since the spring of 2015 and he is defying the odds and staying strong. This summer he has been able to once again play golf and go sailing, both of which he has enjoyed immensely. We met Ed and Lynne in Malaysia in December 2009 and sailed across the Indian Ocean in Windbird and Constance in 2010. Over a period of nine months, we sailed side by side to India, the Maldives, Chagos, Madagascar, and South Africa. It was a magical time and we become bonded forever. The hard thing to face is that both Mark and Ed are now battling cancer, but they both do this with grace, determination, and very positive attitudes. We have no grand plans for tomorrow. We will just hang out and enjoy each other’s company.
Lots of other little things happened today. Ed, the person who does maintenance here at The Studio, came at 10 am to fix a broken kitchen drawer and a ground-fault kitchen outlet. While he did that, Mark put together a nine-drawer small chest that I bought at Job Lot yesterday. We are still desperate for storage, and this unit fits nicely at the end of our hall. Heather, Jed, and boys headed to Maine for a week and a half. And I did some cleaning and cooking. We received the check from the sale of Windbird today and talked on the phone with Sam, the new owner, as he is on Windbird this week. We had hoped to be there in person, but Mark was just not us to the trip. And late in the day, Ed Kirwin, not the Ed the maintenance guy, fixed the broken kitchen drawer for the second time in one day. In the AM, the runner on one side of the drawer was secured, but a short time later, the runner on the other side of the drawer gave-way. After a search of the boat yard next door for a piece of wood 7/8 inches thick to repair the drawer, we ended up going to Heather and Jed’s to get a piece of wood. Ed then successfully fixed the problem. While at Heather’s we picked enough cherry tomatoes for our dinner salads and enough kale for Ed’s morning green smoothie. But foremost today, other than the arrival of Ed and Lynne, we enjoyed the change in the weather. The winds came from the north and cooled things down considerably. In fact, tonight the low will dip into the 50’s. We haven’t seen that for many weeks. The cooler weather makes it feel like the end of summer, but the weather is fickle. As soon as the winds switch to come from the south, things will warm up again. But today was just delightful and we’ll enjoy the cooler weather and good friends while we have them.
