Day 161, Year 8: Spring Cleaning
Date: Saturday, April 13, 2013
Weather: Breezy with Winds SSW 20; Temp in the 70’s F
Location: Lightkeepers Marina in Coquina Harbor, Little River, SC
Now I know why I love living on a boat—the ‘windows’ are tiny and there aren’t very many of them! Today Mark power washed Patsy and Joe’s house while Patsy, Joe, and I took out all of the window screens and cleaned all 20 some of the windows from top to bottom. The only good thing I can say about doing a job like that is that Patsy and Joe’s windows are the modern-type that are relatively easy to clean and the job is done. We also cleaned out the garage and power washed the garage floor. Then at 4:30 we hurried back to Windbird to get ready to go to a Power Squadron meeting—it was just a ‘power’ sort of day. This meeting was our last before we head north, but we are going to take Windbird down the Intracoastal a few miles next weekend to a Squadron gathering at Barefoot Landing. Back in the 1990’s when we first sailed down here on our previous boat, Sky Breaker, you could tie up to Barefoot landing for a couple of nights for free. Unfortunately that is no longer the case, but we are going to take Brian and Judy Thompson with us and make this our South Carolina farewell. We are not sure yet whether we will be heading north on the Monday after next weekend’s Barefoot Landing outing or whether we will wait one more week and leave on Monday, April 29. The weather next week is looking unsettled so we know we would have to do the Intracoastal. There is a chance that by waiting, we could go outside and have a five day trip instead of traveling for more than two weeks. And besides, our good friend Lee Kaufman would love to go with us and he really can’t go until the 29th. He was offered a price he couldn’t refuse and sold his boat Lee Way. Now he is frantically looking for another one. He and Lynda will go to a boat show in Annapolis on the weekend of the 27th and 28th in hopes of finding a boat, and then he would be back and ready to leave on the 29th. That doesn’t give us any hope of getting back to Cape Cod to help Heather with the boys while Jed is in Portugal from May 1 to May 9. So we’ll keep watching the weather, factor in all the various options, and make a final decision soon.
We started our day today with a fun Skype video call with Heather, Sam, Jonah, and Ollie. It is the start of a week of spring vacation for Sam and he and Jonah were full of energy and imagination. They were dressed in their astronaut outfits with the addition of their EMT vests. They were pretending to rescue people in outer space. First they saved Abraham Lincoln from the Sun and then they traveled to a moon of Jupiter that had a river and they had to add snorkel masks for the next save. Unfortunately, Ollie had a fever all night and he wasn’t quite himself. He just wanted Mommy to hold him, but he did give us a few smiles. Sam and Jonah also shared some of their art work. When Sam showed us a paper mache bird he asked if we had ever done paper mache art. I explained that I had when I was in school. He then explained that his art teacher told him that paper mache is “almost as hard as plastic and is very, very precious” and he wanted to know if my art teacher had told me the same thing. I had to tell him that my art teacher had not told me that, but all I could think is that Sam is the ‘precious’ one.
