Day 243, Year 8: Happy Red, White, and Blue
Date: Thursday, July 4, 2013
Weather: Sunny Day, High in the 70’s F
Location: Anchored in Great Harbor, Woods Hole, MA
This was one of those days when things just didn’t quite go our way. This morning we had planned to go the town dock to fill up with water. That is usually an easy task, but not so today. The first problem was that there was a skiff on the dock whose owner had obviously gone somewhere. We were going to go move it, but then the Harbor Master came in and tied up. We decided we should go ask him if it was okay to move the boat. He was agreeable, but once we asked, we felt like we needed to take Windbird to the dock right then. I had planned to spend an hour cleaning the canvas on the inside of the cockpit before we went to the dock. You are only supposed to tie up there for a max of 30 minutes and that is just not enough time to do the cleaning. But we went and I cleaned like a crazy woman while Mark filled the water tanks. We were there for over an hour, but thankfully the Harbor Master didn’t say anything. When we finally left the dock and started to head back to our mooring, all of a sudden we were hard aground. We could pivot, but we couldn’t move an inch forward or backward. When we checked, we found that we were still a couple of hours from low tide, so we settled in for a long day waiting to float off—not exactly the way you want to spend the Fourth of July. It seemed like forever, but actually not long after we got ‘stuck’ a man in a skiff with a powerful motor came by and offered to try and pull us. He knew there was deeper water to port, so he pulled us that way. After two tries, he was successful and Windbird was free to go back to her mooring. It was after noon by the time we were back on the mooring and we tried to regain our day. I won’t bore you with details, but one thing after another kept going wrong. Just when we thought we had a plan for the evening that would be great fun for us and for Heather, Jed, and boys, a dense fog rolled in. We were planning to take Windbird out in the Vineyard Sound to watch tonight’s fireworks display, but even that got derailed. Despite the fog, we asked for a bridge opening and we got out far enough to see the full extent of the conditions, we made the decision to go right back into Eel Pond at the next bridge opening. Of course, when we got back inside, the fog started to clear. It was just that kind of day.
We did get to watch the fireworks from a land-based location, but that meant packing up all the kids and heading to shore to drive somewhere—not nearly as much fun as seeing the fireworks from the boat, but we at least did get to see them. Tomorrow Justin, Jo, Ziggy, and Coco arrive, so I’m really hoping it is a better day and at least a few things go our way.
