Back from the almost-perfect storm

I had an incredibly busy weekend. Incredibly. That’s all there is to it. I bet no one else has ever had a weekend as busy as the one I had. Almost, anyway. I mean, who could? I was busy every second! There was not a moment – hardly a single one!! – where I was idle. And it was an extended weekend too! Have I piqued your curiosity yet?

My incredibly busy weekend started with a bang on Saturday. We had to get out of our Cape Cod cottage by 10 a.m. We got up bright and early and worked and worked and worked. We packed and cleaned and packed and cleaned. Then we cleaned some more. We got out at eleven.
Soon after that we stopped at the Eastham Superette, a nearby general store, for lunch with the Holschers. It was there that I saw the tick on the speedometer, and it was from there that I drove a trailer for the first time. (See Bria’s blog)

All that was well and good. We got home in good time and started to unpack despite the 90 degree heat and oppressive humidity. I was very hot and tired, but I was glad to be home. I planned to spend the rest of the weekend relaxing. Little did I know......

It was around seven that evening, I believe that my plans changed. I found that I was going to go to RI with Daddy that very night. Conveniently, all my clothes were packed, but we still didn’t get out until about nine or nine thirty. (The trip had something to do with sailing, but rather than explain our plans, I’ll just tell you what happened in the end, as it’s almost the same.)

We got to our destination (Uncle Jeff’s house near Newport) around midnight. We spent the night there and left at seven the next morning for Cape Cod with Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Jeff. I got a pretty good sleep in Ben’s bed, but the neighbors across the street woke me up around 5:30 by yelling in Spanish and banging car doors. Oh well.

We got to Wellfleet harbor, where Daddy’s Hunter 30, Eagle Wings, was moored, around 10. I helped unload the stuff from the car and then drove off to Eastham while the older relatives sailed off into the bay. I joined up with the Holschers again at the Donut Hole, and proceeded with them to the Eastham Inn, where they had elected to stay another day. We went swimming there in the pool, and I had an awesome time.

After the swim, we drove in a four-car caravan down the length of Rte. 6 to the Cape Cod Canal. There are two roads that run the length of the canal – one on each side – and we went biking down them. It was quite fun, and there was a stunning view of the canal and the Sagamore Bridge. We got back to the cars after an hour and proceeded to eat lunch/dinner and wait for Eagle Wings to come cruising into Sandwich Harbor (where we were). When it finally did, I went over and joined the crew. After they grabbed something to eat at a nearby seafood restaurant, Aunt Cheryl drove the Mazda (which, by the way, has nothing wrong with it despite breaking down two weeks ago; since then its been driven home, to Newport, back to Cape Cod, back to Newport, and home again) back to her house. I went with Daddy and Uncle Jeff to Newport by a combination of canal, bay, and sound.

Here’s where the "almost-perfect storm" part of the title of this post becomes relevant. One of several reasons that I chose to go on the trip was that the weather was predicted to be very warm. Boy, were they wrong! They weather was, in fact, COLD! In addition, the waves were very steep, and every couple of minutes the bow would crash down into the trough of a particularly tall wave with a sickening mixture of "thud" and "smack." This lasted for about six or seven hours. I was busy for half of it steering and manning GPS units, and for the rest of the time I was VERY busy trying unsuccessfully to sleep.

We reached a small inlet with moorings in it about a mile from Aunt Cheryl’s around 2:20 a.m. We docked on an unoccupied mooring and set about preparing a little inflatable raft we brought for the water. Uncle Jeff and I set out for shore while Daddy stayed on the boat. It turned out to take a lot longer than we expected. In unfamiliar places in the dark on the water, one’s depth perception can be a bit off. Aunt Cheryl got to the boat landing a good ten minutes before we did. It turned out that the boat landing was on a closed beach. Pretty soon a police officer showed up to inform her of that fact. She told him that we had gotten in later than expected and were rowing in. They started chatting, and he kept shining his light over the water. Aunt Cheryl asked him if he could see us, to which he replied, "No." Naturally she started getting a bit nervous. After all, she WAS on a closed beach at 2:30 in the morning. Fortunately, the officer spotted us pretty soon, and left almost immediately.

The next morning, after a good seven hours’ sleep at the Jenkins’, Ben took me on a tour of St. George’s, which is about 1000 feet from his house and where he goes to school and Aunt Cheryl works. It was stately, to say the least. Anyone who hasn’t seen St. George’s hasn’t seen anything beautiful! Well, not really, but the only mar on the school’s beautiful nature is the fact that Howard Dean is an alumnus, and the school is proud of it.

Daddy, Ben, and I sailed some more after that. The sail that day almost made up for the treacherousness of the previous day’s sail (but not quite). The water in the Sakonnet River was smooth, and we were propelled up the river by warm 10 mph breezes at our backs. In fact, we were going as fast as the wind, so it felt as though there was almost no wind at all – not even a zephyr! We reached the mooring we were heading to (it’s owned by the family of one of Daddy’s friends) and Uncle Jeff picked us up. He took us back to his house, where Ben and I played ping pong (more awesome fun) and loaded up the car with our stuff. (By this time it was Monday afternoon, in case you’ve lost track.) After we said our goodbyes, Daddy drove us to the boat again. We closed it up, I hit my head on the boom, we lost an expensive paddle, and then I drove the rest of the way home. It was my second time driving through Boston in only three days!

Well, how was that for busy? I’m glad it’s over, but it’s weekends like that that memories are made of. I had a fun time over all, but I was dead tired when we got home. I might write more, but this post is easily long enough, and possibly too long, and plus I have to go to a birthday party for Alicia Abigail Bright. Arrivederci, my dear readers.