CHAPTER FOUR – GETTING READY FOR DEPARTURE

It’s Saturday, June 9, and we’re getting ready to leave the marina on Tuesday, June 12, for our maiden voyage, heading to Lake Worth 41 nautical miles north of here.  41 miles a day, you ask? That’s why we’re Slow Motion. There are a lot of bridges between here and there, and sometimes they open just once every half hour. There are 23 bridges, and 10 of these have to open for us. Slow Motion is 20 feet tall floating in the water – 10 of the bridges have less clearance than 20 feet. So we could wait a lot of 29 minute periods before we get to go through an opened bridge. Art keeps telling me I’m the navigator and I need to know this stuff. He’s already talking about a demotion, if I don’t get up to speed. I don’t even want to know what position exists below navigator – please, not cleaning out the bilge!

We rock gently in the water in the marina. Most of the time the movement is imperceptible until I reach land and notice the lack of movement.  Every day there’s a thunderstorm, which does nothing to clear the air or reduce the humidity. It’s been 90 degrees, about 80% humidity, mostly cloudy. When the sun bursts out, it’s overpowering – even the ubiquitous lizards put on their shades.  Now I understand the whole midday siesta ritual – all I want to do between 1 pm and 4 pm is find work to do inside the air conditioned salon. There is no sunscreen strong enough to fight the relentless sun, and there is no deodorant strong enough to tame the humidity-induced perspiration.  I wash clothes frequently.

Slow Motion is old, born in 1994. And apparently she still has much of her original equipment, which is unfortunately suffering from wear and tear and 18 years of use, or disuse.  So Art looks in one cupboard, cubby hole, cabinet, or other storage area (like the lazarette) after another, and he finds another repair project. We need a new microphone and wire, in order to talk with the bridge openers. There’s a guy with a store on the Outer Banks who has what we need – and we’ll get it from him Monday, if all goes well. Our radio, CD player and VCR are ancient – the guy who came to repair them said it was hopeless. He didn’t even charge for his time or opinion. But last night, amazingly, we watched an episode of MASH on our HD TV in the salon, the one where Major Houlihan wants a transfer, gets skunk drunk, and Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers come to her rescue.  We may not know what’s going on in the world, but in a few months, we’ll be able to share many more MASH episodes with you. Except that Art has an allergy to TV and he’s converting this flat screen to use it as his computer monitor.

Yesterday the high point was the arrival of most of our new canvas and plastic windows for the fly bridge. What an improvement over the old stuff, with its ripped out seams, worn out zippers and unclear plastic. We can see! We can zip! We can keep bugs out! Speaking of bugs, we fully expect to find a mosquito or two on our cruise up the Intracoastal Waterway.  However, this marina must be a bug-free zone, so we’re enjoying a few more days without bites.

Sister Sue gave me a $100 Macy’s gift certificate a few Christmases ago, and I found it as I was sorting through 30 years of stuff at Harper Canyon. We used it for mattress covers – the last three they had in the store – for our beds (1 queen, 2 twins) in the forward part of the boat. What are the chances that the last three mattress covers at this Macy’s would exactly fit our needs? As you can tell, we are preparing for guests, so give us your visiting schedules. Give me a little time to learn my navigation job (if I’m not demoted) – I’m sure you would like to know that we know where we’re going and how to get there.

I know it’s been a long time since the last blog. Let me explain. When we left the motel on May 31, I headed to the airport to fly to Providence. Art headed to the boat. I did not have reliable access to a computer until yesterday, when we bought a – tada! – laptop computer, which I am using in the air conditioned salon to write this blog. So I should be blogging regularly from now on. What happened between May 31 and June 6, when I returned to Slow Motion? Let’s see:

1)      A great visit and overnight with Marlea and Frank Dutt in Hudson, Mass. Marlea and I had tea parties which turned into cookie eating orgies when we were 5 years old. She made shoe fly pie for me this visit, and I sooo regret not taking the rest when I left.

2)      A trip to Wellesley the next morning with Marlea, a walk around Lake Waban, a tour

of the campus, including the new goslings and cygnets, and a parting at Natick Mall

3)      A 45^th college reunion at Wellesley with friends from as far away as Abu Dhabi and as close

as Watertown, Mass. Making new friends with classmates I never knew. Discovering how

“old” Wellesley has become, with seedy dorms and a president with a hair style from the 50’s. And getting friends’ emails to stay in touch, share memoirs and blogs and photos.

4)      A long drive from Wellesley to Mullica Hill, New Jersey to celebrate my brother’s 63^rd birthday

with him, Lois, Robyn, Bryce and Myla. Rusty rocks, and so does Lois, with their home cooked meals – spaghetti and meat balls – it doesn’t get any better than that.

5)      A short drive the next day to the Promenade to have lunch with Pat, the most wonderfully upbeat person I have ever met in my entire life. And she’s been that way since kindergarten!

6)      A longer drive the following day to Hershey to meet with my LGL guru, then to the Hershey Hotel for lunch with Carol G., one of the kindest, most thoughtful friends I have ever known (again, since kindergarten).

7)      A long day of travel from Philadelphia back to Ft. Lauderdale into the loving arms of Admiral Arthur, the Master of the Seas.  And my first night on the boat, my first night using the boat toilet, my first night sleeping on top of the auxiliary fuel tanks (not bad), and the rest is x-rated.

About leaving comments on my blog, you can comment on my entries, but you can’t respond to the blog in general. See if that works. We love hearing from you. Anchors aweigh in Tuesday!