Day 374, Year 6: Getting Ready for a Trip to Storage
Date: Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Weather: Beautiful, Sunny Day; Temps in the mid-50’s
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts

We just got home from Heather’s and we left here twelve hours ago. It has been a long day. We have definitely decided to make the trip to New Hampshire tomorrow and we heard back from our friends Alan and Helaine Kanegsberg telling us we are welcome to stay with them tomorrow night. So all is set. It seems we are always making a last minute decision to go to Concord and the Kanegsbergs are always welcoming. We truly appreciate their flexibility and willingness to put up with us. Thank you, Alan and Helaine. And we are so looking forward to seeing all our friends at the Concord Yacht Club meeting tomorrow night. The last time we saw them was in January of 2008. When we came home in 2009 it was summer time and there are no yacht club meetings.

We spent the entire morning sorting through things we have stored in Heather and Jed’s basement and packed those things that will go to our storage unit in New Hampshire in the car. We are taking all of our paper charts (eleven chart tubes worth), summer clothes, spare boat parts, and loads of boating books. We still have way too much stuff in Heather and Jed’s basement, but we are planning to put things on Craig’s List to try and sell them. If they don’t sell and we can’t give the stuff away, we’ll take it to the dump. In the meantime, we also thank Heather and Jed for putting up with our stuff for the past six years and now that we are home. We know it crowds an already crowded basement. Heather and Jed, we are so appreciative. Thank you. We know we have got to deal with the whole storage issue over the next year. The storage unit is not cheap and we have definitely paid more for it over the last six years than the things in it are worth. But it is truly hard to part with some things that are never going to fit on a boat. Our friends Heather and Jon who just sailed south did a very smart thing that I wish we had done. They bought a small piece of land in Vermont near where Heather’s parents live and built a garage on the property. They store all of their things there and the money they have invested is not lost. We have basically thrown away the $9,000 we have paid for the storage unit over six years, so we definitely have to do something different soon.

I spent the afternoon with Sam and Jonah at Heather’s while Mark returned to the boat to meet Randy, the refrigeration repairman. It appears that our refrigeration system has a slow Freon leak, but Randy can’t find it. He charged it and put some sort of dye in the system. When the charge runs down, he will return to charge it again and hopefully the dye will help him find the leak. He is still waiting for parts to repair our reverse cycle heater/air conditioner. He hopes to get that done before we move to Fiddler’s Cove late next week. So the boat repairs continue.

With Jed gone, we stayed at Heather’s for dinner and then helped with after dinner play and bath time for the boys. We are so delighted to be here to help out. It helps erase the guilt for not being around for the past six years. But it’s more than that. We just enjoy being around the grandchildren. I just wish Justin and Jo lived closer so we could spend more time with Ziggy. But we’ll just have to make the best of our two weeks with him at Christmas.

I have to share what I find to be a very funny story from our friend Zbyszek. Zbyszek and Tina sail on Shirena and are very close sailing friends. They went through the Red Sea in 2009 and have just completed a sailing season in Turkey and Greece. Shirena is in Cypress for the winter and Zbyszek and Tina are back home in Australia. If you read my log from October 27, you know the story of my disintegrating shoes that I wore to our anniversary dinner. Here’s Zbyszek’s shoe story:

“In Australia we had my son’s wedding. It was a very good fun and we enjoyed the few days we spent in Canberra. I also had a rare opportunity to see my both children together. I had a very similar adventure to Judy’s with the shoes. I had no suit or even decent jacket to wear for the wedding. Eventually, Tina dragged me to a shop where we spent hundreds of dollars. One of the options was to buy new shoes. I said I had a good pair at home thus we did not buy any. At home I cleaned the shoes and polished. They were ready to go. I put them on again just before going to the car that I drove to the church. On arrival I discovered some pieces of rubber on the floor. Soon it was clear the shoes were disintegrating. I was leaving a trace of black powder behind when I walked. It was 16:30 on Saturday and the wedding was at 17:00. We ran to a nearby shopping centre but there was no shoe shop there! We found a horse ridding shop and they had shoes! I ended up with a pair that I can use not only for weddings but I can also ride horses in them!”