Day 303, Year 8: Another Chapter Closes
Date: Monday, September 2, 2013
Weather: Overcast with Periods of Rain
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
We had dinner at Heather and Jed’s this evening to celebrate summer, but this weather doesn’t lend itself to celebration. Jed had to grill while holding an umbrella and we had to eat inside. Despite that, the food was great. Heather spent her afternoon cleaning up the dining area and it looked fantastic. Heather and Jed live in a small Cape and the dining area is an added extension to the kitchen. Since it has the only table in the house, it also serves as the center of kid activities. All of their art and craft and science supplies are in a low sideboard on one side of the dining area and low bookshelves for cook books and a cork bulletin board for kid art are on the other side. The tops of the sideboard and the bookshelves become the repository for anything and everything, but when we arrived late this afternoon, the counter tops were cleared and all of the sideboard drawers and shelves were organized. What a great way to start the school year. It probably can’t last long with three boys, but Heather gets a gold star for trying! She has inspired me to attack this boat inside. We have just way too much ‘stuff’ and now that the Camp Oma chapter has ended, I should have the time to reorganize and get rid of a lot of things.
I delivered Sam and Jonah’s summer journals this evening along with certificates of awesome achievement for their participation in Camp Oma. We learned a lot and had great fun while doing it. Our Tuesdays and Thursdays spilled over into Wednesdays and Fridays, and sometimes Saturdays and Sunday. Jed asked each of the boys what their favorite activity was this summer. Sam immediately answered that going to Stoney Beach was his favorite. Jonah said playing miniature golf and our pirate sail to Treasure Island were his favorites. That was surely fun, but I think I side with Sam on this one. The times we had at Stoney Beach here in Woods Hole were special. It is a tiny little beach, but at low tide it is amazing. There is a sandbar not far from shore that extends the playing area for the little ones, as well as the big ones. And even when there are lots of people, it somehow doesn’t feel crowded. There are stone jetties that define the width of the beach and those jetties provide hours of entertainment. It was from the tops of the jetties that we fished for crabs using beach grass for line and periwinkle snails for bait. And it was from the base of the jetties at low tide that we discovered sea life and marine plants. We swam with schools of small fish and played among the ctenophores, commonly called comb jellies, which light up at night, but do not sting. Sam and Jonah frolicked on their boogie boards and sometimes we just kicked back on the rice mat and ate snacks while watching the puffy white clouds float in Cape Cod blue sky. So I give Stoney Beach an A+ and look forward to more fun there before the chill of fall arrives and certainly next summer. School starts tomorrow, but we have three more weeks of summer to enjoy after school and on the weekends. But before we can enjoy the beach again, those three boys need to get well. Sam and Jonah now have the cold that Ollie came down with about eleven days ago. He started getting sick on the Friday before our weekend sail to Tarpaulin and Menemsha. Then late last week, both Sam and Jonah got it. Jonah is recovering quickly, but Sam has been hit hard. Unless there is a miracle overnight, he won’t be able to go to his first day of first grade tomorrow. He wants to go so badly, so we’ll just have to wait and see how he is in the morning. Ollie is still wheezy and needs the nebulizer, so Heather’s not sure he should go to daycare tomorrow. So Granddad and I are on standby. We will go in early tomorrow morning to get first day of school photos and then see who can go to school and who cannot.
Last night Mark brought home September copies of Cruising World and Ocean Navigator magazines. There was an article in Ocean Navigator by a cruising friend from Maine that we met in South Africa. And there was an article about sailing to Bermuda in Cruising World. Nat Warren-White’s article about the most challenging passages of his circumnavigation inspired me to write my own. We both agree on the fact that the top two most challenging passages are 1) in and out of New England, and 2) in and out of New Zealand. After that he lists 3) the Strait of Malacca and 4) the “Wild Coast” of South Africa between Durban and Cape Town. I agree that both of those were tricky, but they might not be at the top of our trickiest list. Nat often sailed with crew as his wife Betsy did not do long passages, and I think a woman’s perspective gives a different twist to the story. So there’s one more reason I need to get started on writing that book.
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| 130902 Day 303 Cape Cod, USA–Best of Stoney Beach, Summer 2013 |
