Day 131, Year 10: World Record
Date: Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Weather: Overcast with Rain, Sun Late Evening, Winds NW 10-15
Location: Dinner Key Marina Anchorage, Coconut Grove, FL
A record has been set in the world of Mark and Judy. For the second straight day, we have done nothing but read, write, and relax! This is unprecedented in our world, but today was a good day for doing nothing. It rained off and on all day, so we just relaxed into the day. Well, Mark did move our mattress to measure the diameter and length of our steering cable. On New Year’s Eve, just before we ate dinner, we discovered that our steering cable was broken. We were on passage from Little River to Cumberland Island. Mark had to move our very heavy mattress to get to the steering quadrant. He was able to do a temporary fix by overlapping the two broken pieces of cable and bound them together with a cable clamp. That has been working for us, but we decided that we really shouldn’t head off to the Bahamas without at least having a new cable with us to install if necessary. So Mark took the measurements, called the manager of the West Marine back home in Falmouth, and Sylvia contacted Edson, the manufacturer of the cable, to find out if the cable was available, and then made the special order for Mark. She is having the cable sent to the West Marine store here in Coconut Grove that is less than a mile from the marina. Hopefully Mark’s ‘temporary’ fix will hold until we get home, but if not, at least we’ll have what we need to do the repairs.
We also had a nice Skype video call with Heather and boys. It is school vacation week and they got more snow yesterday. But they were having a lazy morning just like us. The boys were all still in their pajamas with no interest in going out to play in the snow. I think they are snowed out. We had a long conversation with Jonah and he showed us some of his paintings. Uncle Justin and Auntie Jo got the boys paint canvases and vegetable-based paints for Christmas and Jonah has been enjoying the gift. Ollie had his mommy take the computer into the play room so he could show us what he has been playing. We didn’t get to talk to Sam as he was deep into reading the second book in the series, The Mad Scientists’ Club. Jed enjoyed the original book when he was a kid and Sam discovered it this week. When he finished the first book, he asked Heather and Jed to take him to the library to get the second book, but it was checked out. He almost cried he wanted to read the second one so badly, so they downloaded a Kindle copy. So even though we didn’t get to talk to him, it was fantastic to see him enjoy reading so much.
I tried to catch up on long-overdue email correspondence today. I made some progress, but still have more to go. I suppose that’s what tomorrows are for.
