On the ‘road’ again.

Back on the move once more, we left our Green Turtle post on Friday for Great Guana, where we anchored in beautiful Fisher’s Bay and the kids had their swimming and kayaking ‘playpen’ back once more. We went ashore and tracked down yet another Mainer, this time one from Southwest Harbor, and had a really nice visit in her wonderfully comfortable winter home. It’s so nice to make connections with the near (so many are within grasp at home, but paths are rarely crossed!) while far away.

On Saturday morning we hoisted anchor early to get trucking down island to catch the annual Man O War flea market, purported to be a big hit for young and old alike. It was a full morning of hermit crab racing, candy drops, flea market scouring and stuffing our faces. There weren’t a lot of craft vendors, so hey ho, maybe next year I’ll really boost my friendship bracelet and granny square stock and peddle my wares!

Since we left Man O War yesterday after the fair, we’ve been luxuriating at the Orchid Bay Marina, where at 50 cents a foot, it feels like we’ve won the lottery.  It’s been nice to be tucked behind their breakwater for the most recent blow, and the pool is an added bonus, but we made the ‘unadvisable on a Sunday’ Sunday venture to the ocean side and Nippers Bar. (We weren’t trying to ignore sound advice, we simply limited by schedule.) It ended up being a chaotic but incredibly amusing lunchtime-and-beyond experience. We drifted in before the crowds, and had the pools to ourselves along with some groovy 50s and 60s tunes to bop our heads to. The music shifted forward in decade as time went on and the decibels increased. By the time we had moved to the decks to eat our lunch, we had Michael Jackson and Madonna to dance to while eating. (It was raining in fits and starts for an hour or so, and I’m only sorry that I can’t upload the video of Violet shaking her groove thing by herself under a dry deck while stuffing a grilled cheese in as fast as she could.) By the time we left, our ears were ringing, the current pop had the hoards packing the ‘dance floor’, and all we could think about is how people would safely make their way to their various destinations (most via boat) in their current states. In other words, mom-thoughts.

In addition to our beautiful anchorages and consistently fun activities, overall boat life is finding its easy and sometimes not-so-easy rhythms. Where I feel huge gain in some areas from last year to this, others have been tougher this time around. The former includes everything to do with familiarity of the boat itself- better use of storage spaces, a better handle on our usage of resources (water, fuel, propane, power), more comfort with the galley allowing for more meal variety and overall comfort of recognized patterns and routines with the details of Chickadee life.

The other piece, the frustrating piece, has been the schooling, though I must admit that recently a decent combination of shifting gears to a better boat-based curriculum and good old fashioned bribery has been a tremendous help. Frankly, we all feel like we need rewards for slogging through some of the tedium of getting your own kid to focus on what you have to say while their younger sibling is doing ‘fun stuff’. I have to remember that I am not in fact, a fourth-grade teacher, and that hopefully my kid won’t hold my lack of fourth grade teacher keep-it-together-ness against me as the seed of teenage anti-mom angst in later years, as my darker moments have caused me to envision. (If that turns out to be the case, at least I’ll have the ‘I saw that coming’ thought to keep my frustration company.)

For now, I’m sticking with simple gratitude for what we have here in this adventure and try to get my teachin’ game face on. The nurse sharks circling under our boats and docks in this marina may vary well be our ‘creature study’ tomorrow- easy peasy. After that, it’s gratitude that we’ve realized how much more beer we can carry than we originally thought. Balance!