Day 258, Year 8: Two Stubborn Screws
Date: Friday, July 19, 2013
Weather: Sunny, Hot Weather Continues; Very Windy in the PM
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Good sailing friends of ours, Heather and Jon Turgeon, are currently in Fiji. We met them at Shipyard Quarters Marina where we lived in Boston before sailing around the world. Heather and Jon are much younger than us and are in their second cruising year sailing around the world. We got this email from them a couple of days ago, “Hey Judy, while we are sitting here at Ono Island in Fiji getting blown around we were looking at your blog of Thailand. I did find a small error (or maybe Thailand is more exciting that I am thinking) that Mark was working to “remove two stubborn screws that are holding one last wench on the mast”. Now, that is what we need–a few wenches on the mast ;-).” I guess I’d better be more careful of my spelling. It was a winch, not a wench, that was being held to the mast with those stubborn screws!
The weather here continues to be hot, but I’m reminded that it is not nearly as hot as many other places. And today there was a bit of relief from the wind. Mid-afternoon the wind started blowing about 20 knots and that has continued into night. Tomorrow night we are supposed to get thunderstorms and then the weather should cool down just a little for two or three days. Technically, we are not having a heat wave as the temperature has not stayed constantly in the 90’s, but it is definitely hotter for a longer period of time than normal here on the Cape. And it looks like the hot weather will continue next week after our brief reprieve.
Mark worked at West Marine today and Sam (who spent the night on the boat) and I headed to Heather and Jed’s early. Heather had to be on the air at 9 am, so we arrived there at 8:15 and Heather and Jed drove to Woods Hole to work while I stayed with the three boys. We played inside for a bit, but then went into the backyard and filled the inflatable pool they have in order to cool down and have a little water fun. Heather came home right after her hour on the air, and we enjoyed the late morning and early afternoon with the boys. Oliver went down for a nap right on schedule, but Jonah has been resisting sleep recently and did that this afternoon. I finally had to drive him around to get him to sleep at all. After nap time, we headed to Woods Hole to Stoney Beach with a stop at West Marine. Both Sam and Jonah have expressed an interest in snorkeling, so Granddad sold them dive masks and fins. Sam hit the water in Woods Hole and just took off like a natural. Jonah had fun wearing the fins, but is still resisting putting his head in the water, so snorkeling is a bit of a problem. But every day, he makes a bit of progress.
I invited Heather, Jed, and boys to Windbird for dinner. That way they could spend more time at the beach and not have to worry about going home to cook. Jonah and I left the beach early and came to the boat to cook. We had spaghetti and crabs (given to us by a work colleague of Mark’s). Tomorrow Mark works at West Marine and I stay home on Windbird to clean. We have been way too busy having fun recently to worry about boat cleaning, but the time has come.
I’ll end with a story from my trip into town this morning with Sam. We were talking about the comb jellies that he made a touch tank for on the beach last evening. The Latin name for these jellyfish is Ctenophores (pronounced teen-a-fours). I asked him if he knew how to spell this, and of course, he didn’t. But like me, he thought the word began with a ‘t’. This led to a whole discussion on how to spell words and then I asked him if he could figure out how many syllables there are in the word ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’. I was counting them on my fingers for him and we got to ten. That brought us to the end of the word, ‘ism.’ I asked him if he thought that was one syllable or two and he replied, “It sounds like two, but since there is only one vowel, it must just be one.” I was blown away by what he learned in kindergarten about the English language. I must give the public education system a ‘thumbs up’ for that one.
 |
| 130719 Day 258 Cape Cod, USA–Jonah and Ollie Chillin' on the Deck |
