We have been trying for years to get our neighbors, Mike & Denise (along with Eliana & Ryan) to come for a day of boating and this weekend was finally the right time.
But before we get to that, we also hosted a group of work friends for an evening cookout on Friday. Josh and Jennifer were both key people in my early work life at my company - providing much of my training and coaching in the ins and outs of GC software. Josh and little Josh (who Vicky adopted as a sort of honorary nephew - now not so little) even came along with us on a vacation to China a few years ago. We had a nice cookout by the shore of our marina (for which we had zero photos) and after sprinting to the boat as squall approached, we had dessert in the cockpit (and later down below when the storm became too much).
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| Me, Little Josh, Josh, Deniz and Jennifer |
On Saturday, Mike and Denise arrived a bit after 10:00 AM for a day of sailing. They along with their kids, Eliana and Ryan, are our next door neighbors back in Newark and we have been wanting to share a day of sailing with them for some time. Kid's schedules, summer events and weather have always seemed to keep getting in the way. We finally scheduled it, and Saturday turned out to be the perfect day to introduce these great people to sailing. Winds were light - maybe 5 to 6 kts and the sea state was relatively flat despite last night's storms.
I'll let the photos tell the story.
Eliana is almost 12... the perfect age to want to try all the boating tasks. She seemed to thoroughly enjoy herself.
Ryan, a rising Junior, just started driving.
What was next was foolish question with teenagers on board. Given the choice of motoring across the bay to see a lighthouse and going to dock and dine at Waterman's... well, the debate was brought to an end once Ryan let Vicky know he was willing to try picking some crabs. The space at the dock was confirmed with a call to the restaurant and we made a beeline (of sorts... still had to observe the water depths) for the restaurant.
Ryan has some food allergies so an intense consultation with their head chef was called for, and once the green light was given, Ryan dug into a huge platter of steamed clams and then picked two jumbos with Vicky.
Everything was fine as they pulled a leg or two off the crabs, hammered and sucked out the meat. But then Vicky showed Ryan how to pry the crab apart and pick through the innards... I glanced across the table at Eliana and saw this wonderful look of horrified nauseating disgust at what had become of her dear brother.
I GRABBED my iPhone camera!
But I was too late... that initial look (as though Ryan and Vicky had started butchering a puppy right there on the table and eating it raw) gave way to this more sustainable look of utter disgust at the happenings across the table from her.
Eventually she softened up and decided that her brother and Vicky were still OK people after all.
After our dinner we headed around Gratitude Marina into Swan Creek and docked. We spent a brief time visiting in the cockpit before a transient boat docked next door and decided to keep their generator running so we retired to the AC below.
There I learned that Eliana had taken a year of chess this past school year so we had to break out a game. I started strong... capturing her queen in the first few moves, but then got distracted by the conversation, and ended up loosing to her in a rook-king vs queen-king endgame.
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| Lost in thought! |
Shortly after the chess game ended, we bid our neighbors goodbye. Vicky spent the afternoon napping and I watched theater organ youtube videos. Vicky woke up just in time for sunset (it turned out it was B-Dock-henge again - the setting sun aligning perfectly with B-Dock at the moment it sets). We had leftover ice cream from the night before. A bit later, I chased Scronk (our adopted Great Blue Heron) slowly down B-dock for a photoshoot.
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| B-Dock-henge |
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| The setting sun lines right up with B-dock tonight. |
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| Scronk walks our docks regularly. |
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