Day 186, Year 9: Dominant Theme . . . The Sickies
Date: Friday, April 25, 2014
Weather: High Temp in the 50’s F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
It’s hard to determine the dominant theme here these days. Is it the weather or ‘the sickies’? I think I have to go with the latter. Heather went to the doctor yesterday after not being able to work most of this week and she is now on antibiotics for a sinus infection. Ollie went to the doctor today and is now on antibiotics for an ear infection. Stupidly, I didn’t go to the doctor and I’m certain that I have a full blown sinus infection. And now Mark has whatever it is that we are all suffering from. He was able to work today, but thankfully has tomorrow off. Hopefully a little rest tomorrow will help us all. What a way to spend spring vacation week. The only hope now is that everyone is better by Monday when life gets back to normal. Sam and Jonah were supposed to come out tonight for an overnight on Windbird, but we had to put that on hold. Maybe tomorrow night.
Tonight Mark and I watched the movie Captain Phillips. It sure made us feel good about our decision to go around South Africa instead of going through the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea in 2010. The one question that the head of the US Maritime Liaison Office in Bahrain, Captain Hastings, posed to us in an email caused us to reverse our direction, “Who in your family will you appoint to negotiate with the terrorists (Somali pirates) should you be taken?” This question stopped us dead in our tracks. We had no answer, so we reversed our direction. It was late in November of 2009 when he asked that question, the same year that Captain Phillips’ ship was boarded in April. The movie tonight made us sad to think of Jean and Scott Adams of Quest who did decide to go through the Gulf of Aden in 2011 and were boarded by Somali pirates. And just as with Captain Phillips, the US Navy tried to come to their rescue. But that rescue attempt didn’t work and Scot and Jean were murdered by the pirates. SY Quest was the first American vessel to be captured by Somali pirates since the Maersk Alabama hijacking in 2009 that is the subject of the movie, Captain Phillips. We knew Scott and Jean which makes all of this way too personal. But still, we enjoyed the movie.
