Day 334, Year 8: C & S—Cooking and Searching
Date: Thursday, October 3, 2013
Weather: Another Sunny Day with Daytime Temp 70 degrees F
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Mark and I spent the day at Heather and Jed’s taking advantage of their kitchen and their internet. I spent my day cooking and Mark spent his day downloading and searching through navigation software options. He is searching for a free or cheap replacement for the navigation software we have been using for seven years now. Since 2006, we have used MaxSea with C-Map charts and we love it. But the version we have doesn’t run on Windows 7, only on Windows XP, and our computers with Windows XP have all died. So we need to buy an updated version of MaxSea, BUT that is expensive. Mark has been searching the alternatives—Open CPN which is free, PolarView which costs $50, and MaxSea which costs $350 from Defender with only US charts. Then you have to add a little more than $200 for charts for each region of the world. Open CPN runs like a dog on our computers. PolarView has some nice features, but it doesn’t have many of the features that we both love about MaxSea. So do we make do with something that is not quite our cup of tea or do we pay the big bucks for what we want. It is like the dilemma we had with the dinghy, just not quite as costly to get what we want with navigation software.
Cooking was a lot easier. I made lots of chili—some to free for the sail south and some to eat now. And I finished baking the granola we made last week. I also fried hamburger to freeze to use in taco sauce. In-between cooking jobs, I did laundry. It doesn’t sound like much, but somehow these jobs took me all day. Mark walked to pick Sam up from school and we did our Thursday routine of giving Mark and Sam a spelling test. Sam has a 20-word spelling test every Friday and Thursday night’s homework is to prepare for that. I am still blown away by the first grade academic load these days, but Sam seems to be handling it just fine. When Heather got home with Jonah and Ollie, Mark and I headed back to Woods Hole. Jed had to go get new fish stock this afternoon and he didn’t get back to Woods Hole until after 6 pm. Mark and I were supposed to leave the keys in the car and LEAVE THE CAR UNLOCKED so that Jed would have a way home. Well, we did leave the keys in the car, but we then very methodically locked all the doors. As we were walking to the dinghy, we saw Jed unloading the fish samples and we yelled to tell him that the keys were in the car . . . . . and at that moment Mark and I looked at each other realizing what we had done. So much for well-laid plans. Mark and Jed tried to get the car unlocked but they had no luck. Heather finally called and said that the boys wanted to come get their daddy. So she had to load all three boys into the van when they should have been going to bed, and come get Jed. Apologies, apologies. This is just not our week. On Tuesday Mark’s tablet got smashed when it flew off the top of the car and today we locked the keys in the car. I wonder what we can come up with tomorrow?
