Day 325, Year 10: Fishy Day Two with Sam, Jonah, and Oliver
Date: Monday, August 31, 2015
Weather: Partly Sunny with Haze, Temp 80’s F, Wind 15 WSW
Location: Anchored in Tarpaulin Cove, Nashon Island, MA
Our sailing vacation with Sam, Jonah, and Oliver is going along as planned and so far, all three boys are hanging in there. Ollie has stayed with us on the boat for a night at a time in the past, but otherwise, he has never been away from mommy and daddy. So I think we are all a little surprised that he’s doing so well with multiple overnights. He is a little trouper. He sleeps with me when on the boat, and this morning the two of us didn’t get up until 9 am. I heard Sam get up around 7:15 and then heard Jonah and Granddad get up at 8:00. But Ollie was still sound asleep and I fell back asleep as well. Lazy us! Tomorrow morning all three boys are very excited about walking up to the little lighthouse on the southern end of the cove and then the plan is to sail down to Cuttyhunk and spend the last night of our sailing vacation there. We will return to Quissett on Wednesday morning and hope to get the boys home to play with neighborhood friends on Wednesday afternoon. Then after a night at home, they might return to Windbird for another couple of nights. We’ll just wait and see. Sam declared at one point today that he thought he should just live on Windbird, but then later in the day I heard him talking about how excited he will be to get home. He loves the fact that he can now pull-start the old Yamaha dinghy motor. We had always said that he could take the dinghy out by himself once he could start it. But we had no idea that would be so soon. He goes out by himself rowing the dinghy, but letting an eight year-old drive a 15 hp motor makes me just a little too nervous. Maybe next year.
It was just after noon when we arrived at Tarpaulin, so we ate lunch and then headed to the beach. Granddad had to stay on the boat to work on a boat problem. The knot meter stopped worked just before we got to Tarpaulin, so as soon as we arrived, Mark checked to see what the problem might be. The knot meter had a piece of plastic pipe stuck in it, but that wasn’t the only problem he found. The thru-hull in the same compartment supplies salt water to the forward head and the connection between the hose leading to the head and the thru-hull was leaking. It completely fell off when Mark touched it as it was rusted through. After spending the afternoon searching for the right parts to fix it, Mark gave up and just turned off that thru-hull. So we are down to one head for now. Thankfully we have two. The boys and I had better luck on the beach. We took their fishing poles to the beach, but the tide was going out and it was very shallow. They finally realized that they were not going to catch fish from the beach, so they changed course and had a great time catching tiny fish with their nets. At first only Sam was catching silversides, but then Jonah started catching a smaller minnow. They looked a bit like baby searobins, but we weren’t sure. We didn’t get back to Windbird until 4 pm and then the real fishing frenzy started. We got the squid bait out of the freezer. Jonah used a scup rig and Sam used a new lure that we weren’t sure would work. But right off the bat, he caught a nice, big scup. Jonah was then desperate to catch something and wanted to change his lure, but Mark convinced him to stick with it and he soon started reeling in scup. Ollie had not seemed too interested in fishing, but Sam worked with him a bit and he decided he would like to catch one. While doing this, Sam caught a small sea bass. I then pitched in to help, and soon Ollie brought in a scup. All three boys were so excited. We went to the beach to clean the fish and it was almost dark by the time we finally ate. But there were no complaints as catching and cleaning fish was definitely a goal the boys had set for this sailing vacation. Ollie is the only one who really ate the fish. Sam tried it and then gave it a pass. And our almost vegetarian Jonah really wasn’t interested in trying it at all. There are more bones than fish, but I found the taste okay. And we froze the sea bass and one large scup to share with Heather and Jed.
We are doing a bit of rocking and rolling tonight here in Tarpaulin Cove. I sure hope it doesn’t get so rolly that it wakes the boys up. If it keeps up as it is now, it should just rock them deeper into slumber.
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| 150831 Day 325 Cape Cod, USA–Woods Hole to Tarpaulin Cove |
