Family Day

Buzzards Bay, Mass N 41 40.351 W 70 34.458

The tropical storm passed us by Friday morning. It did come ashore in Nantucket but where we were the wind was almost totally still. Even in Nantucket, it was milder than anticipated with maximum winds of 44 knots. As I said before, I wish that the weather report had given me less information.

Yesterday we took advantage of a day in the marina to wash a lot of things in fresh water. I also walked to town and bought parts for a project. Our project was to repair our washdown hose and to improve the installation. The problem was that the hose ran through the chain locker. It wound up on the floor under 90 kg of chain and got crushed. In one place it was crushed too badly to recover. To eliminate that problem we bought a piece of PVC pipe and routed the hose through that. The pipe served as a crush proof conduit. Then we cut out the spoiled pieces of hose and spliced the ends together. It works good now.

Today was special. My sister Nancy came with her family for a day sail. Nancy, her husband Karl and their daughters Lena and Alexandra came. It has been a long time, perhaps two years, since we saw them. The girls grew up a lot. Lena, now 15, is no longer a little girl but a young woman. The weather was problematical for a day sail. The morning was drizzly, and foggy.

We had to leave the dock by 1100 but we didn't want to sail out into the fog. Our compromise was to sail out only to the mouth of the cove and to anchor for a while. While waiting at anchor all of us except Libby had a nice swim. The water was a very nice temperature for swimming, and very clean and very very salty. It was fun. One of the girls lost a snorkel and mask, so her father Karl dove again and again and actually succeeded in finding it. Good work Karl.

Libby made a nice buffet lunch for us, and by the time lunch was done the fog had lifted and the wind started blowing 20 knots or more. Lena and Alex had been to sailing school so they weren't afraid. I raised all the sails and away we flew. We didn't get very far though before everyone noticed that Karl had turned white. He had a bad case of seasickness. We turned back and returned to the anchorage. Karl didn't feel much better there, so we reluctantly called an early end to the day and returned Nancy and her family to the dock. As it turned out, soon after we dropped them off it started to rain, so overall they didn't lose too much of a sailing day.

Weather aside, it was delightful to see Nancy and family again. Thank you for coming.

Early tomorrow morning we plan to traverse the Cape Cod Canal and to set sail for Salem Mass.

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