Escaping the Flies

It’s raining cats and dogs! It’s fun. Early this morning Michael went out in his bathing suit to take our window shades off so we could watch the rain. The rains stopped, I quickly checked the radar and we decided that we had just enough time to get to the Northport Farmer’s Market and back. We were wrong. The last three quarters of our dinghy ride were soaking wet. Our paper bag full of fresh vegetables melted. Michael had a stream of water flowing off his nose. We cracked up. Now we’re snug in the cabin again.

Yesterday was sunny. In the morning we did a triathlon. Paddle-run-bakery! Yes, we consider bakery part of the triathlon. The baguette was disappointing (as are all baghettes since we left France) and the coffee was delicious. My favorite boat name of the day, Knota Yachta.

Boat project projected time 2 hours. Real time 5.5 hours. Removed broken deck organizer (remember it broke when we tightened the vang to get the main sail off the spreaders?). Replaced with new, heavier duty deck organizer.

To be fair this part of project actually took about 1.5 hours. It was the ‘pre-project’ of adding tie lines to salon ceiling to avoid ceiling crashing down during all future boat projects that took remaining 4 hours (Remember when we put in new clutches and the ceiling fell down?).

After a swim, re-hydrating Michael and feeding him (he doesn’t seem to eat or drink during boat projects), we dinghied over to Hobart Beach Park in search of an ice-cream truck. Nice walk, no ice-cream.

Oddly, while I am writing this Michael is doing another boat project. Me- “Honey, watchadoin?” Michael sheepishly- “Nothing.” Me- “Are you doing another boat project?” Michael- “Well I’m just doing step one of a little project.” He says that he is re-routing the head line to the fresh water pump because it was installed incorrectly with its’ own separate pump and we do not need the redundancy plus it is not sanitary the way Allures installed it. Apparently, his actual head has been swallowed up by the galley cabinet! Luckily he can’t hear my thoughts with his head stuck in that cabinet.

So how did we wind up in Northport when the plan was to spend a long weekend exploring the Sheffield Islands off the coast of Norwalk, Connecticut? On Thursday August 9th we were halfway to Sheffield Islands when the flies came. And they just refused to leave! We tried sailing away, swimming away, and dinghying away, but they were always there waiting for us- buzzing, biting and generally driving us crazy. Then Michael says rather smuggly, “That’s why we bought a boat, so we can move it.” And we sailed due south until the little buggers stopped bugging us for good! A poorly stocked galley led us to venture out for a great dinner at Skippers.