Day 293, Year 9: Magical Moments
Date: Sunday, August 10, 2014
Weather: Another Beautiful Summer Day, Temp in the 80’s
Location: Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, Massachusetts
Tonight I was sitting in the cockpit talking to my sister Patsy when I looked up and saw the full moon rising. It was a magical moment as the moon was just spectacular. When I checked on the internet to see if there was a reason it was so special, I found out that indeed it is a supermoon. This means it looks a bit larger than other full moons because it is closest to the earth. Then I found out that there was a supermoon in July and that there will be another in September. But a spokesperson from NASA said, “This (the August full moon) is the supermoon, the ‘superest’ supermoon.” It is the closest to the earth of the three supermoons in 2014. Sure hope you got to see it.
We had some other magical moments this afternoon while exploring the sand bar at low tide. Heather, Jed, and boys came out for lunch and an afternoon of fun in the water. After we ate lunch on the beach, I suggested that we walk out on the sandbar since it was a very low tide. Jed and Sam needed to make a dinghy run to Windbird, so Heather and I walked out on the sandbar with Ollie and Jonah. The first magical moment was when Jonah started catching super tiny crabs, smaller than the tip of my little finger. They were so cute. Then Heather caught a spider crab and we decided to set up a ‘lab’ on Jonah’s bodyboard. I went back to shore to get the buckets and we filled them with all of our finds. The next magical moment came when Heather caught a big, beautiful calico crab. There were two little girls that were interested in our specimens and they filled one of our buckets with hermit crabs of all sizes. One of the little girls was quite adept at catching Ctenophores (moon jellies) and she put those in with the spider crab collection. She told me her secret to catching the Ctenophores was to look for their shadow on the bottom. Some other people were finding loads of sea stars and they built a rock pool for them. Just looking at all those sea stars was magical. About that time, Jed and Sam returned and Sam immediately caught a baby pufferfish. Another magical moment. It was about an inch long and it puffed right up when caught. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me, so I didn’t capture these finds. But I know we all have vivid memories of the finds. All in all it was a very successful explore on the sandbar, but the boys were anxious to kayak over to the little beach that is exposed only at low tide and the tide was starting to rise. So it was time to go. This little beach is part of a rocky outcropping near our mooring site. It is totally covered at high tide, but the rocks and little beach emerge as the tide subsides. Cormorants and geese love to gather on the beach at low tide and today Jed, Sam, and Jonah joined them. Then they (Jed, Sam, and Jonah, not the geese and cormorants) took off in the kayak to explore other parts of the harbor. Heather tried to get Ollie to take a nap on the beach, but when it was obvious that he was not going to be able to sleep there, we took him out to Windbird. We still had no success, so Ollie went without a nap today. After the second time that I thought I had him asleep, Heather went to check on him and he had gotten up, gathered the two solar-powered lights that Sam and Jonah use for reading in the evening, and was sitting in the bed with the two lights on ‘reading’ a Magic Tree House book about pirates. Too cute. Jed returned with the boys and then Jed jumped in for a swim. Heather followed him and then Jonah and Ollie. It was a full afternoon of fun in the sun.
When Heather, Jed, and boys left to go home, I drove into Falmouth to pick Mark up from West Marine. Mark loves coming home from work and just sitting in the cockpit. But tonight he wanted to go out in the kayak and I went with him. We paddled out toward the entrance of the harbor and Mark said next time we could just keep going to Woods Hole. I’m not ready for that, but paddling about in the kayak can be added to the list of those magical moments.
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| 140810 Day 293 Cape Cod,USA–Fun in Quissett Harbor and Full Moon |
