Author: equinoxgardens@gmail.com

Yesterday we left Stuart in the morning, and had a nice and peaceful trip south in the waterway. One wonderful bonus of this leg was the advent of Violet’s Cafe. She created menus, set tables and made and delivered lunch to all of us. (She did not do the dishes, but there is plenty of time to work on this!) There were three options for whatever you chose off of the menu: The Look-Like-You lunch (where your food is arranged into a face), The Windy Day (a true storm on your plate), and the Organizer (things tidily arranged just so). I think she has a future in the biz.

We anchored off of Peanut Island in North Palm Beach, and went ashore for the afternoon with the Ruach crew to stretch our legs a bit and to let the kids play on the beach. They slipped easily into their beach routine, which includes hauling giant pieces of downed vegetation this way and that, and we slipped easily into ours, which consists of sitting on our duffs and drinking beer. I really think we nailed it.

We now steam along the section of the Intercoastal known as ‘The Canyon’, having left Palm Beach at 7 this morning. The sides of the waterway here are cement bulkheads bordering homes and condos, giving us plenty to gawk at, but on a busy weekend day the wakes from speedboats can reverberate back and forth, which can make the trip less relaxing and more ‘washing machine’.  The overcast skies are so far keeping the majority of pleasure cruisers off the water today, so it’s not been too bad. Also not too difficult for Violet to have set up her Cafe again today, which is to be, according to her, a daily occurrence. This ‘having kids for free labor’ thing is really starting to pay off!

Ft. Lauderdale-bound.

 

While certainly not tropical, waking up to 59 degrees this morning seems downright luxurious after the chills we’ve had in the past two days. Not to complain to you folks in the northern climes, but without our wood stove or stacks of wool cozies to pile on, it’s rough! (In an effort to not overpack clothing this year, naturally we left all but one pair of long pants and any semblance of warm weather gear in the car. Of course.)

We spent yesterday in Stuart, where we successfully held our first official school day in the morning (a huge accomplishment for all three of us, if I do say so myself) while Andy did a number of projects. While we journaled, math-ed, science-d and read, he replaced the corroded anchor locker latch, replaced two lights in the girls’ cabin, reconnected the radar wiring (which hadn’t been done since the mast was stepped), and a few other odds and ends. Ship shape around here, I tell you.

After school we went ashore and Uber-ed our way to a few errands before meeting the Ruach crew at a nearby playground for the afternoon. Then back home for our favorite weekly event: Friday night movie night, which is made even better onboard. (But not necessarily by Night at the Museum: The Secret of the Tomb.)

Other notable accomplishments of the day:

-Violet learned how to operate the head. Sweet relief from having to flush for her!

-On passing a SuperCuts yesterday Lily asked to get her hair cut. It took two women with strong forearms fifteen minutes to brush her gnarly hair out, all the while schooling her on the importance of actually listening to mothers when they tell you to brush your hair. I’m not sure if Lily’s nodding grins were from it all sinking in, or pain/terror from the hair brushing, but either way I’m pretty sure a message was sent. We’ll see how long it lasts!

Only one picture taken yesterday, by Ruach: Chickadee at sunset.

We just got to wherever we are right now. (Mom note: We are on a mooring at the Sunset Bay Marina in Stuart.) I am looking forward to going kayaking today (Mom note: We are not going kayaking today.)

I had Cheeze-Its, cottage cheese and cucumbers for lunch. It was delicious.

We just were motoring for four hours to get here. We saw a great blue heron, and it looked really cool when it flew, spreading its neck out and wings.

There are two seagulls off of the stern of the boat right now. I am going to name them. They are Mr. and Mrs. Mask, because they look like they have masks on their faces.

Okay, bye!

Love, Violet

We woke up onboard this morning (where thankfully we also fell asleep- otherwise someone would have had some ‘splainin’ to do) to the sound of what must have been an alligator thwacking near the hull, due to the noise level (and precise thwackage meter I am known to possess). A nice wake up call, really, and despite the 50 degree temps on the boat, it was lovely to wake up on the water.

It was delightfully possible to do so thanks to the super speedy completion of the checklist that we had yesterday. We ended up launching early, which in turn made all of our other stowing and organizing begin sooner, which of course ultimately made the end-of-day beer a)come sooner and b)taste better.

Cabins are prepped, galley and head are clean, the salon has a few empty horizontal spaces, and future projects are planned out. We upgraded a few things this year, including storage for the girls’ clothing. They previously had bins at the foot of their bunk, which the expiration date is quickly approaching on due to the length of Lily’s legs. In preparation for that, we hung shoe organizers on their door, thanks to Ruach’s idea, and voila! Easy access.

The kids made a house, and their first Family Game, out of a cardboard box. They’ve been dumpster diving for parts and bits and bobs to make it a home, and everyone at the marina seems to stop in for a picture. I’m not sure if they’re pleased to see kids not entertaining themselves with screens, or if they’re recording the scene for future DHS fodder, but either way, it’s kept them occupied for hours, so we’ll take our chances.

Today is provisioning day, and a day largely spent in Stuart, acquiring last minute list items before a hopeful shove-off tomorrow. We’ll spend a night in Stuart on our way out in order to have our rig tuned, and then we’ll be off and heading south via the intercoastal waterway. It’s a loose plan, of course, since we know better than to anticipate perfection in timing when it comes to cruising!

In true Allen style, we’ve acquired a catchphrase on this trip that weaves its way into multiple situations, almost none of them applicable to the phrase itself. When pulling out of my Dad’s driveway four days ago after our goodbyes, Andy stopped the car quickly with his window down. “Is that a knife in the driveway?” he asked my father. My Dad walked in front of the car, bent down and came up with a decent-sized serrated knife. “Why yes it is!” he casually replied. The fact that this surprised no one present, including the girls, is the best part. Who doesn’t have a knife on their driveway?! Anyway, it caught us all in the funny, and now every time someone thinks of Granddad, knives, driveways, or anything, really, one of us says it and the rest of us crack up. It really doesn’t take much with this crew.

On a boat note, we’ve made it to Indiantown, and our Chickadee! After a couple of hours of cleaning, unpacking and stowing, we saw that we’d not make enough progress before nightfall to have two cozy bunks, so we shifted course and went into Stuart to pick up our serviced dinghy engine, our new cockpit cushions and other supplies before finding a room to stay for the night.

We’re on the road back to Chickadee, and we launch this morning at 11. Pictures to follow!

Six hours to Chickadee, or so says our trusty GPS.

Yesterday’s Charleston finale included a relaxing morning, a catch-up brunch with the person who introduced us to Charleston in the first place (and hooray for that!), a stroll on Sullivan Island’s beach despite the chill, some shopping, and dinner with friends with Southwest Harbor ties. All in all, a delightful day, and we’re happy to have been able to sneak in a side trip on our southbound journey.

Now we look ahead to the immediate future, which includes provision lists, as much computer work as possible while we have good wifi at the marina, and ‘get-the-boat-put-together’ lists that are so daunting each year. The transfer of materials out of the boat, into the boat, out of the car and into the car is a Tetris challenge that I love, though tricky at times. (We keep a lot of deck gear down below while the boat is in storage, so that has to come out to make room for the contents of the car, which need to be emptied in order to grocery shop and to be able to stow any boat-related gear that we opt not to take on our sail (extra sails, extra cushions, e.g.). It’s a two day game of ‘schlep this box/bin/bag’ in one direction or the other, and sometimes both, which is as satisfying as it is maddening.

The girls will spend their time reacquainting themselves with the yard and its cast of characters and activities. We are regularly informed about new boats coming in (more dependably so if they have pets of any kind), what Jessie and Alex are up to (the two yard crewman who operate the travel lift, which is in constant motion this time of year), and what treasures may be found on the ‘Free’ table in the lounge area. Joined together with the Ruach kids, they are like a band of low-rent Eloises, skibbling around and scoping the scenes.

Back to more planning and list-making on this car trip while I still have time on my duff!

After twenty three hours of travel from door to door, which included   18 hours of driving in the rain (no picnic there), and not the best of sleep for anyone trying (except for Violet, who got her forty winks), we realized our first trip goal and pulled into Charleston, South Carolina.

Andy and I lived here a lifetime ago, and hold it fondly in our hearts, so we were really excited to introduce the girls to the city. After a shower and a rest at our hotel, we toured the town, including a stroll on the docks at City Marina, our old home (on a boat we worked on). A visit to the market, food breaks and plenty of reminiscing went on.

We then met up with a dear friend and her kids for dinner (our kids had never met as non-babies!), and clicked instantly back into comfort, as you do with friends whose relationship distance is ever only geographical.

Lily’s dinner experience was much more ‘nap’ than ‘food’, but it gave V a chance to work on sketches. (This one is a picture showing Violet carrying Lily back to the car in her current snoozy state.)

Today we’ll visit more friends, tour the lowcountry a bit more, and continue resting up for tomorrow’s arrival at the boat. Stay tuned!

 

And so it begins again. Andy is just home from a Chickadee prep visit in Florida, and I have finally turned my attention to the matters of packing at hand. While he’s been chipping away at the boat work list (reassembling the rig after a mast paint job this summer, new wiring down below, a new stem fitting on the bow, and the dozens of other odds and ends that find their way to necessity), I have begun the less dramatic part of cruise planning. Kids are doctored, dentisted, pets have their winter homes secured, packing lists are beginning, school planning is… hmm. Not so much in the works, but that’s next.

The countdown to the trip (we head out mid-January) is certainly sped up by the onslaught of the holidays, which is good and bad. We are oh-so-anxious to get to the boat, but still far from prepared. I have school programs to plan, meds to gather, storage organization to organize! And yet there are presents to wrap. Dang.

 

 

 

 

Whelp, here we are. The northern home. Snow on the ground, temps painfully below freezing, kids scattered around the house on reunion play dates, full dockets to plan for our first Monday mornings back, and a completely different set of routines and guiding forces. I even just woke from a dream about painting our stovepipe, for Pete’s sake. ‘Real’ life sure did crash back pretty quickly.

Once more, the girls, who no doubt adore their Chickadee time, have mentally and satisfyingly assimilated seamlessly, with only thoughts of seeing friends, their favorite parts of school ahead and playing in the yard and in our incredible surrounding spaces here on MDI dictating their new time.

Andy and I… less so. It’s hard to let go of something so special, especially when that special is accompanied by truly pleasant forecasting not seemingly aimed at harming you (forget the hurricanes, people, I’m simply talking about 78 degrees and a level of humidity that doesn’t suck your airways to a crisp). Aside from the fact that we drove out of New England in January and traces of head colds were instantly forgotten only to rear their heads again upon crossing the state line again, it’s hard to give ourselves up to our world here, to leave our ‘Cocoon of Four’. I have always loathed when parents of older children use the phrase “just wait, you’ll see” when referring to an ‘age-tied’ experience that they’re having with their child (who in the heck says my experience will follow theirs?!), but man, one day, Lily and Violet will see. They’ll know what we mean, and why we’re a bit sulky for now. We are excited to see family and friends, and we love our jobs and our life here, so we know that this too shall pass. For now though, our thoughts are still with the boat, and how she’s doing without little toes dancing on the bow and one particular monkey swinging from her davits. She also has the ability to boast that we can put dishes away without moving our feet, a fact we were painfully reacquainted with when we got home and had to schlep those plates around. (Blessedly our house isn’t that much bigger than our boat, so the ‘schlep’ was hyperbolic, indeed.) That is to say that our sweet Chickadee provides benefits to our lives that only increase as time goes on; we’re ever so grateful.

See you next year, old girl.

There have been so many goodbyes for us this week, it’s hard to keep track of our various states of sadness, anxieties and on the flip side for a few things, excitement. In addition to saying goodbye to our dear Ruach compadres/winter family (for the short while until we make the large island-crossings on MDI this summer), we said goodbye to our Jensen Beach friends as well. We’ve also said goodbye to warmth on our skin, any semblance of decent TexMex for months to come, Indiantown Marina and our beloved Chickadee. We’re also also in the stages of saying goodbye to the sun as we’ve known it, our flip flops, and what’s becoming my favorite stretch of Florida driving-the back roads to Indiantown through cattle farms edged in palms and pines.

Saying goodbye to flip flops seems like a minor complaint to have, but the implications are terrifying to think of. In an effort to ‘be fancy’ at one point about a month ago, V wore socks one day, which necesitated wearing shoes. An hour later, a quarter-sized blister started a blood trail onboard that has only barely abated. Shoes all day without pain and suffering?! Re-entry conundrum.

On the plus side, we’re saying goodbye to our scattered methods of communication and work, and I am not alone in thoughts of how nice it’s going to be to have my desk to pull up to once again.

On the super plus side, I have all but said goodbye to my school marm title, and I get to watch that yellow miracle-mobile come pick the girls up on Monday morning and take them to infinitely more qualified teachers for whom I can only hope they offer more attention.

Our road to the current I-95 has been a busy one. We motored along the Okeechobee Waterway on Sunday and pulled into Indiantown Marina in time to start unloading and getting things ready for hauling the next morning.

All went well with the haul on Monday morning, and the crane came a couple of hours later and hauled the mast. Friends graciously took the girls to a science museum in West Palm for the day, so Andy and I had a very productive day of cleaning, stowing, organizing, laundry, and taking mast fittings off in preparation for its paint job to be done this fall.

Yesterday’s list was shorter for me, and we were able to escape to the beach for one last surf romp of the trip.

Today Andy did most of the final tuck-in and covering sans mast for support while I packed, unpacked and repacked the car for hours on end. (I was hoping, along the way, to find an extra 10-20 cubic feet for maximum stuffage, but alas, none presented itself.) We now drive along like a primed jack-in-the-box: open a door incorrectly and various combinations of gear might jump out at you. Here’s to hoping Jack stays in the box for the next 30 hours!