Day 253, Year 6 The Fourth of July
Date: Monday, July 4, 2011
Weather: Mostly Overcast, Temp mid-70’s
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
While millions of Americans are celebrating the Fourth of July, Mark and I are feeling like we are foreigners in our own homeland. For almost six years now we have been on the inside, living life to its fullest every day. Now we are on the outside looking in and we’re unsure that we fit into the picture we are watching. I’m sure things will get better, but sitting here in Eel Pond this evening is lonely. People on the other boats here are not cruisers. They are people with homes and busy lives that come here on the weekend to sit on their boats or go out for a day sail. There is no boat to boat visiting, no introducing yourself to others and inviting them over for sundowners. Our friends who are in the Mediterranean say the same thing. Most of the boaters they see are not world cruisers and they find themselves in the same type of isolation as we feel here. But despite this feeling of isolation, we had a good day. We went to Heather and Jed’s and first worked on our website. We needed to get the last two years worth of logs put in categories by place. Now we need to contact our website designer (our son) and get him to put the categories for Years 5 and 6 on the homepage of our site. We have much more work to do on the homepage, but this is a start. I did a little housework and a little work in the garden and then mid-afternoon we went next door for a neighborhood barbecue. Heather and Jed’s neighbors are Brian and Melissa. They have three year-old Molly and one year-old Joey and they had quite the spread this afternoon. Brian had four grills going and was producing more smoked and barbecued meat than the crowd could eat. Now we are back on Windbird catching up on returning emails. We got one email a couple of days ago that I must share with you. Our good sailing friends Colette and Jean-Pierre from Montreal are in Japan waiting for the right time to sail east to the west coast of the US. When we arrived in the Carolinas we heard from them and they were fully into enjoying Japan. But since that time, Jean-Pierre had to go into the hospital to have a stint put in one of the major heart arteries. The artery was ninety-nine per cent blocked and the surgery cost $10,000 cash. Canadians don’t have out-of-country insurance, so this was out-of-pocket. Jean-Pierre was in the hospital for two days and on the day he was released, he had to quickly get their sailboat, Safina, ready for a Category 4 typhoon. Safina survived the typhoon’s direct hit due to the vigilance and mid-typhoon retying of lines in 100 mile an hour winds by Japanese friends. They are finding the Japanese islands to be beautiful and the local people very helpful and friendly. We are so thankful that both Jean-Pierre and Safina have weathered the storm.
