Day 17, Year 7: Visiting with Friends
Date: Friday, November 25, 2011
Weather: Beautiful Day, Daytime Temp in Upper 50’s
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, Massachusetts
The sky was robin egg blue this morning and there was very little wind, so we took the opportunity to take down the headsail and the staysail. The boat is now ready to be covered for the winter, and we were so happy to get those sails down while they were nice and dry. Thanks and praises for this milder than normal November weather. The tide was so high this morning that water was covering the boardwalk that runs along the waterfront. We checked the calendar to confirm that it was New Moon, and indeed it is. After getting the sails down, neatly folded, and put in bags for winter storage, I did some preparation for the evening’s dinner with Bruce and Jane Wooden. Then it was time for the McPherson’s to arrive. Mark hired Scott McPherson to work at New Hampshire Public Radio in the mid-1990’s. By the time Mark retired ten years later, Scott was Assistant General Manager of New Hampshire Public Radio. We were always close to Scott and his wife Kelly, and by the time we returned home to visit after the first year of the Voyage of Windbird, Scott and Kelly had managed to double of the number of McPherson’s in their household. Twin boys, Alex and Will, were just over a year-old when we met them in January of 2007. Today almost six year-old Alex and Will came to visit with the newest addition, sixteen month-old Jay. Scott’s parents, John and Pat also came. We met Scott’s father this summer when he came to Woods Hole to run in the Falmouth Road Race, but we hadn’t met Scott’s mother, Pat, until this morning. John has followed the Voyage of Windbird as we traveled around the world, so even though we hadn’t known him previously, we feel very connected. We had a nice visit on the boat, and then Pat and John took the three boys back to their home in Plymouth giving us a time to have what they called a “quiet lunch” with Scott and Kelly. We went to the Landfall in Woods Hole and spent a couple of hours just catching up on each other’s lives. It felt so good to have time to reconnect with people who have been very good friends.
By the time we got back to Windbird, it was time to get ready for dinner with other good friends, Bruce and Jane Wooden. Bruce works at WHOI and we met him years ago when Heather was doing her graduate work. We have often stayed with Bruce and Jane when home visiting during the Voyage of Windbird and we have become friends. They had never been on Windbird before, so tonight was their introduction. They just returned from a Caribbean cruise and we got to hear all about that experience. Jane loved the pampering you get on a cruise and has decided that cruise ship travel should definitely play a big role in future vacations.
We had hoped to make a quick trip to our storage unit in Concord tomorrow, but Mark got a call this afternoon asking him to work tomorrow. So he will work at West Marine both tomorrow and Sunday and I’ll focus on Christmas and probably do a bit of shopping. The weather report is for more of the same lovely fall weather, so I’ll make sure to enjoy that as well.
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| 111125 Day 17 Cape Cod, USA – McPhersons Visits Windbird |
