Day 317, Year 6: Happy Anniversary to Heather and Jed!
Date: Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Weather: Overcast, Rainy, and Cool
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts

Heather and Jed were married eight years ago today. But unlike today, it was a beautiful, clear sky Saturday. We invited them to come have dinner on Windbird despite the ugly weather and despite the fact that all the food needed to be grilled. Sam and Jonah were already aboard Windbird as Mark and I picked them up from their first day of school here in Woods Hole and brought them to Windbird for a nap. So Heather and Jed just called for a dinghy ride and both came over after the end of their work days. Mark and I are still learning how to adapt the boat to accommodate little ones. We have been eating out in the cockpit, but tonight we had to move downstairs due to the weather. We didn’t get it quite right tonight, but with a little creativity I think we can have a sit-down dinner with Sam and Jonah. Since there are no chairs, you can’t pull a child closer to the table, so we will come up with some sort of booster seat idea and just pull the settees out so they are closer to the table. But despite the inconvenient eating situation, we were still glad that we could share in the celebration with Heather and Jed.

It was just over two weeks ago when we had a really no good, very bad day facing live-aboard problems and today we were rudely reminded that the problems didn’t go away. Irene just diverted our attention. After Kevin, Claire, and Josh left on Monday morning we started realizing that we really, really have to do something about our smelly holding tank issues. We think we will start by buying a new toilet. The ones we have we bought in South Africa, but neither of them has been satisfactory from the first day. So we’ll start by replacing the one in the forward head (cheaper than buying a rebuild kit) and hope that starts us on the path to solving the problem. The other major issue that we are facing is charging our batteries. We are having to run the engine twice a day now, sometimes for more than two hours each time, just to keep up with our power usage. That is double what would be normal for heavy use, so Mark has been reading and exploring our entire electrical system to try and track down the problem.

When I wrote the other day that fall was in the air, I just couldn’t explain why so many trees dropped their leaves overnight. Today Heather found out from people who have lived here through previous hurricanes that the leaves were killed by salty rain. Evidently it happened twenty years ago during Hurricane Bob. The wind kicks up the seas and the salt spray gets pulled up into the air. The wind blows the salt-laden air inland and the rain then delivers the salt right down on to the trees. I might not have that exactly right, but you get the idea. So we have premature fallen leaves and this rainy, cool weather adds to the feeling of fall. But I’m hoping that by the weekend, the sun will once again be shining. Mark has next Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday off work and we might just get to start building that shed at Heather and Jed’s.

110906 Day 317 Cape Cod, USA–Sam and Jonah, 1st Day of School

110906 Day 317 Cape Cod, USA–Happy Anniversary to Heather and Jed