Day 256, Year 7: Ready or Not, Here We Go
Date: Saturday, July 21, 2012
Weather: Sunny with High Clouds
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
We’re going to go sailing tomorrow. I’ll explain more about how that came
about as I tell you about today, but suffice it to say that we both jumped
at Heather’s suggestion that we all go sailing tomorrow. Never mind that we
don’t have the headsail on, but we do have the main and the staysail and we
can sail with that configuration. Summer is slipping away so fast, so it is
time to get out there, ready or not.
I took Mark to work at West Marine this morning and then called Heather to
see what their plans were for today. I was trying to decide whether to go
to their house to work in the garden, but when she said they were headed to
Woods Hole for the Stellwagen Bank festivities and were planning to have a
picnic lunch in Woods Hole, I decided to offer to fix the lunch and meet
them onshore around 1 pm. Heather talked about coming out to the boat to
eat, but Jonah was adamant that we have a picnic, and I’m glad he did as it
was delightful. I took the lunch in and left the bags under a tree while I
walked to the aquarium to meet the gang. I love living where you can
actually leave things just sitting under a tree and be assured that no one
is going to bother them. I had thought we would eat under the shade of the
tree, but Sam really wanted to go to the Bell Tower garden which he and
Jonah call the secret garden. That sounded like a great idea, so we walked
there for our picnic. While there, Mark called and asked that I come pick
him up. He was feeling great, but there were more employees in West Marine
today than customers. And since he was not really scheduled to work, he
felt like he should volunteer to leave early. The manager, Sylvia, has been
so good to Mark and she just tells him to come to work on the weekends when
he feels like and not worry if he can’t make it. He checked the schedule
for tomorrow and decided that he will not go in as there are already ample
people scheduled. And that gave us a free day. That’s when Heather made
the suggestion to go sailing and now that is the plan. We have things that
must happen before we head out like having Heather climb the mast and put
the wind indicator up and then taking down the spikey bird protective strips
that we put up while at Fiddler’s Cove. It just wouldn’t be a good thing to
have one of our sails ripped by these strips. And if Mark and I can get
ourselves out of bed before the wind pipes up in the morning, we might get
the headsail put on. But if not, the staysail will just have to do. We
aren’t planning to go far tomorrow. We just want to get out there. We’ll
decide where we are going depending on the timing of the currents and the
direction of the wind.
When I went into town to pick Mark up from West Marine, we decided to go to
Heather and Jed’s so I could do some of the garden work. Then we ended up
staying for a dinner of take-out sushi-the perfect ending to any day!
