Day 10, Year 7: Farewell Oceanus
Date: Friday, November 18, 2011
Weather: Sunny Day, Warming Slightly
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, Massachusetts
It has been a good day. On our early morning walk, Mark was once more in the lead with me trailing along behind. He is now using an inhaler and he’s not 100 per cent better, but he is sure better than he has been in the past few weeks. So we are thinking the doctors are right when they say he might be asthmatic. Better that than a heart problem.
It was chilly last night, but it warmed up a bit today. When I picked up Sam and Jonah at 1 pm, Sam had an extra bag with him. It contained a stuffed goldfish affectionately known as Swimmy. Swimmy goes home with a different child each weekend and that child gets to write about Swimmy’s weekend experiences. Sam happens to have an identical stuffed goldfish named Guppy, so Swimmy will have company this weekend. And Swimmy picked a great weekend to come with Sam as s/he got to go to the farewell party for research vessel Oceanus this evening and gets to go to the Yale-Harvard football game tomorrow. Right after nap, we headed to Woods Hole for the retirement party for R/V (research vessel) Oceanus. Oceanus has been one of WHOI’s (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s) main research vessels for the past 36 years. She is still in tip-top shape, but she is being retired and a newer model will replace her. Oceanus has been on almost 500 scientific missions from here to George’s Bank, to the Red Sea, to the Sargasso Sea, and to the Angola Basin. She is 177-feet, not a big ship, but she has proven time and again her sea worthiness and it was quite moving to hear the different people talk about their experiences aboard Oceanus over the years.
The success story of the day was our call to Greyhound this morning. At least we hope it is a success story. After much waiting again this morning, we finally reached a real person in Customer Service. She could not tell us why our tickets were canceled but she rebooked us at no additional charge. This time we are supposed to pick up our tickets just prior to leaving South Station in Boston for Albuquerque. We are supposed to call 48 hours ahead of time to get our confirmation number. I must say that I am a bit nervous about this arrangement since they canceled our first tickets for no apparent reason. But we will have to trust that this is going to work. So our trip to New Mexico for Christmas is once more a go.
Tomorrow we hang out on Windbird waiting for the heater/air-conditioner repairman to arrive. We are hoping the replacement relay for the starter will do the trick. We are currently heating with one, sometimes two, electric heaters, but the reverse-cycle heater should be much more efficient. Luckily, it looks like we should have mild weather through Thanksgiving. What a gift. I am definitely thankful.
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| 111118 Day 10 Cape Cod, USA–Farewell Oceanus |
