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October 12th, Wednesday - Edgewater, Maryland
It
is hard to believe that we have been here for two weeks
already. We are again staying at Bruce and Alison
Cunard's dock on the Rhode River where we began our life
on board Zia in July. We are definitely much more
comfortable on the boat and a little better self
contained than we were during our three week "vacation"
at Camp Cunard at the beginning of our trip. The
kids are all in school, and the weather has been less
than spectacular, so our outdoor activities have been
seriously curtailed compared to our daily wakeboarding
sessions and swimming in the pool during our summer
visit. That said, we have still managed to
thoroughly invade the lives of our good friends,
throwing a band party for 100 people to celebrate Joe's
50th (which is actually not until the 28th of the
month), inviting my parents and my Uncle Walter to stay
at the house with them, and using the shower and kitchen
quite liberally. We are so fortunate to have met
them and to count them in our circle of friends.
Thank you Bruce, Alison, Sam, Kari, and Holly. You
guys rock!
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The band party was a blast. It was a little
challenging getting invites out to everyone while we
were gone this summer so I'm afraid some folks slipped
through the cracks (sorry). Those who did make it
were treated to a rollicking good time. Our
friend, Francois Dunoyer, plays in a neighborhood band
with five other guys and they are HOT! We had a
great time catching up with a lot of folks we hadn't
seen in a while in between dancing to the tunes.
We had originally tried to keep the birthday part of the
party a surprise for Joe, but that proved impossible.
The boat is just too small for secrets!
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My
parents came all the way from Seattle for Joe's party.
Despite the physical distance between us since I went to
college in DC 20 years ago (yikes), we have managed to
stay close and to see each other often. I am sure
that some of the closeness we enjoy is a result of us
traveling as a family for my dad's job as a foreign
correspondent for the L.A. Times starting in 1976.
I came back to the States with a serious travel bug.
When it comes right down to it, I have to give them
credit for my adventurous spirit. Imagine picking
up and moving a family with three little girls to the
Soviet Union in the height of the cold war! My
mom's support and enthusiasm was an essential component
to the success of the whole affair. Of course, the
three of us were totally freaked out at first, but by
the end of the first year we learned to appreciate the
incredible opportunity to see and experience different
places and cultures. Although it wasn't always
easy, it was worth every bit of inconvenience and
discomfort. I will never forget my mom telling me,
as I worried about some unseen threat that I imagined
lurking in the tall grass, that if I spent all my time
worrying about what COULD happen, I would squander away
the opportunity to appreciate the good stuff that WAS
happening all around me. Thanks mom and dad, for
everything!
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The inconvenience and discomfort of cruising are greatly
reduced when you are tied up to a dock. The water
conservation issues are non-existent since we can refill
our water tanks at any time. We have had to run
the generator to keep the batteries charged up since we
have had very little sunshine in the last week. We
have a heater plugged into the dock outlet so we can
keep the boat warm at night. It is still a little
uncomfortable with all the rain, but certainly nothing
we can't handle. Every time I start to complain, I
remember Christian and Michelle on Truant, whose boat
leaks like a sieve in the rain. They have to cover
everything, including themselves and their beds, in
plastic garbage bags to stay even a little dry.
Joe has a list of about 100 projects to do on the boat
while we are here. Luckily, none of them are
crucial, but he is making his way diligently through it.
Some things we are leaving until Hampton, Virginia.
We'll be there for 10 days or so before we leave on the
Caribbean 1500 cruising rally.
I
have been busy cooking and processing green chilis.
I know, it sounds a bit strange, but it is an essential
component in our provisioning for the boat. I
ordered up two bushels of extra hot, fresh green chilis
from Hatch New Mexico which Bruce kindly roasted, bagged
and froze for me. He wound up with 14 one pound
bags of chilis. I then have to peel and seed them,
chop them up and cook them into the green chili sauce
that we love so much. I have two bags left to get
through, and I will be so happy to have that chore
behind me. By the end of it, I bet I'll have put
close to 24 hours into the project. There will be
enough to last both us and the Cunards a year, I hope.
I am dedicating a full third of our freezer space to
green chili, so it better not fail!
In
the next few weeks, I will have to plan and prepare
meals for us and the two additional crew members who are
joining us for the sail down to the Virgin Islands.
Joining us will be Gregg Weiss, who did the delivery
with Joe up from Fort Lauderdale to Annapolis when we
first bought the boat. We are very happy to have
him along not only because he is a great guy, but for
his experience doing the trip in a very similar boat
recently. Our second addition to the crew is Lew
Hill, who was referred to us by the organizer of the
rally, Steve Black. Lew had done the trip six
times on various boats, although never on a catamaran.
The four of us will stand three hour watches the whole
trip down. It should take a week or so. We
are pretty excited and anxious to see how it all works
out!
I'm always interested to hear
from those of you who are silently following along, so
drop us an email if you haven't already! Also, I
added a page called recipes but still need to work on
it. I made tacos for the band party and have had
several requests for the recipe so that is the first one
there. I hope you enjoy!
Christy, Joe, Cassie and Juliana
Next entry
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Many thanks to our
friend Craig Homenko for his assistance in setting up
the website.
We also would like
to thank our buddy Scott Brunner who has been kind
enough to host the website on his server.
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