I was rooting around in the boat the other day, wearing my new summer uniform: Embarrassingly short, frayed cutoffs and a bikini top. I found this weird fuzzy thing in the hanging locker, and I asked Barry, “What’s this?”

It was a fleece jacket.

That’s when we decided we’ve been away from home for too long. I sat down at the computer, sweat rolling off my nose onto the keyboard, and bought airline tickets to Seattle. We arrive at midnight on July 8th.

Don’t get me wrong — I love it here in Beaufort. We are surrounded by wonderful people, and it’s beautiful here on the water. But with the thermometer hovering around 100 degrees, we find ourselves spending too much time sitting around, panting, and not enough time working. Sure, we could rush and get the boat in the water, just in time for the worst of hurricane season. It’s not worth it.

There have been a number of other clues that we’ve been away too long, too. I was down below on Dick’s boat last week, up at the marina in New Bern, and a wake caused the boat to rock. Dick and Barry laughed at the startled look on my face, but I was mortified. I’ve been on the hard too long — it’s time to get on some boats that are floating.

Then there are the cats. Five little kitties, becoming more attached to us each day — it’s like growing feline roots. Time to go and let others take care of them!

So I let my mind wander, and I came up with ten more reasons why we need to come home:

1. Mom and Dad have some Big Birthdays to celebrate.
2. We heard Dave is having some trouble with the Atomic 4 on Whisper. He’s been forced to sail in and out of Shilshole all this time. (kidding!)
3. Ben needs a new F.E.
4. Nancy needs someone to chicken-sit. Don’t you love that term? Chicken-sit!
5. Leilani is incarcerated in the hospital and needs to be sprung.
6. Bill says we only painted half of his house in 2007 and need to paint the rest. He’s willing to pay us in Killer Oatmeal and Coffee Herbies.
7. I need to hear my favorite chiropractor say, “What the heck have you been doing to your body?”
8. I’m dying for some dim sum. And Sichuanese green beans. And a bubble tea! Chinatown, here I come.
9. Two people in Wallingford owe me money. Maybe this should be reason number one?
10. I’m at risk of going native here: Ah seem t’be acquirin’ a Suthin’ accent and a SUNTAN!

The 2009 Meps’n'Barry Pacific Northwest Tour runs from July 8th to mid-September, with a trip to Burning Man the first week of September. We plan to stay with Barry’s folks on Camano Island part of the time, and we’ll be doing two chicken-sits in Seattle, too.

The biggest question right now is where to go from the airport and how to get there. Our tiny east coast brains will think it’s 3 am, so we’re likely to be pretty weird and interesting. Are there any night owls out there who might rescue us from SeaTac and let us surf their couch for a night?

And if you can think of any other reasons why we need to go home, please share them on the blog as comments!

Blame it on Barry and the bandsaw.

What happens if I stick my nose on the lens?

The morning after the kittens were almost born on Charlie’s head, Barry trotted over to Charlie’s trailer and asked to use the bandsaw. When he fired it up, Momma Kitty looked at him askance. Her eyes seemed to say, “What the heck do you think you’re doing? You’re hurting my kittens’ ears!” Never mind the fact that five hours after being born, the kittens’ ears were still stuck flat to their heads.

The next morning, I stopped to see Charlie and the kittens. “We have a kitten crisis,” he told me. “She took one of them away.” We looked at the cat and one remaining kitten sadly. RIP, I thought. Momma Kitty seemed more attached to Charlie and John and Barry and me than to her kitten. “Maybe if you sleep with her tonight, instead of on the boat, she won’t abandon the last one…” I suggested, hesitantly. I hated to ask that of Charlie, but he’s a hero. “I’ll do that,” he said, brightly.

The next morning, I stopped by, and it was deja vu all over again. “We have a kitten crisis,” he said. “She slept with me all night, but she took the other one away this morning. I tried to follow her, but she knew I was tailing her (har, har) and gave me the slip.”

I was a little more successful at tailing her, and I found where she’d stashed the kitten — under the back seat of John’s conversion van, which he’d left open to keep it cool and aired out.

This created a whole new set of problems. In order to buy groceries or do laundry, John needed to drive his van. But it was 100 degrees that day. If he carted the cats to Beaufort and locked his doors, he’d have two roasted cats under the rear seat. And if he did so without Momma Kitty on board, she’d be frantic while he was gone.

Then Barry went back to use the bandsaw. “What was that squeak?” he asked Charlie. I guess he thought one of Charlie’s power tools needed oiling.

Charlie couldn’t think of any power tools that made that sound. So they dug into a huge pile of toolboxes under a bunch of cabinets and found the source — the other kitten!

The family was reunited in John’s van, and then my slippery path to sainthood began. Nancy Bock and I looked all over the boatyard for a place to relocate the cats. But nothing seemed right. Finally, Barry and I decided to cat-nap the three of them and put them on our boat for the time being.

Since the kittens look exactly like Mom, we suspect it was a virgin birth

We walked over to John’s van with a large plastic tote, and Barry put on a fleece sweater in case Momma Kitty tried to scratch or bite. But she didn’t. He gently lifted her out, and she sat docilely in his arms as I put her two squeaky kittens in the tote. Then we walked across the boatyard, carried them up the ladder, and put the tote into a cozy, defensible spot in the quarterberth. Momma Kitty did a quick lap of the boat, proclaimed it acceptable, and climbed into the quarterberth to resume nursing.

It’s been a few days, and Momma Kitty now goes by the name, “Buttercup,” because of her sunflower-yellow eyes and her princess status. The two kittens haven’t been named; we call them the wiggle-worms. At one week old, their eyes are not yet open, although they do have ears now.

It’s a happy story, except for one thing — I have two weeks to find a place for them. My attempts to place the little group with a foster family, no-kill animal shelter, or permanent home have been unsuccessful. I have made numerous calls, posted ads, and sent emails. But if you are an animal, Carteret County is not the place for you! The Humane Shelter here is referred to as a “high-kill” facility.

The few volunteers in the area who work to save pets are desperately overloaded. I call their message phones, and most call back from restricted numbers. “We can’t help you,” they say. “We have too many cats already.” If I was the praying sort, I’d be praying for help about now.

When do I get tuna?

So we’ll keep looking, and in the meantime, we’ll enjoy this snuggly, docile kitty and her two wiggle-worms. If you don’t want a pet permanently, let me suggest that you foster a cat or dog, wherever you are! I can’t tell you how rewarding this is. When these kittens open their eyes — tomorrow or the next day, I hope — what will they see first? Momma? Me? Barry? Or the underside of the quarterberth? They’re sure to think that living on a boat is a natural thing, so we’d better get them settled in a house soon, or they’ll be ruined forever. Just like me.

I was puttering around this morning, thinking of our new friend from Ohio, Charlie, and how it might be fun to start a drinking club here for Ohio expats. This may come as a surprise to our Seattle friends, who don’t even know about our Ohio roots. But as one astute friend said, growing up in Columbus, Ohio inspires long-distance travel.

Just then, Barry came back to the boat with a piece of nicely-shaped teak in his hand. He’d been over at Charlie’s trailer, using the bandsaw to shape a new piece of toe rail.

“Remember the cat that was hanging around Charlie’s trailer last night?” he asked. “She had kittens … on Charlie’s bed.” I grabbed the camera and headed over to see.

Charlie, with his trailer, truck, and boat

Charlie showed up last weekend to do some work on his boat, and everything about his rig — truck and trailer — shouted “BUCKEYE!” There were the Ohio license plates, the Columbus address on his trailer, and the bright red folding chairs with “Ohio State” stenciled on them in white 4-inch letters.

Barry and I, on the other hand, own two Ohio State t-shirts that we only use for painting and epoxy work, because we’re embarrassed by them. No other OSU paraphernalia — we’re very reluctant alumni. Sure, it’s a good school, but some people take the team spirit thing too far. When I lived in Columbus, I worked with a woman who dressed in scarlet and gray on Fridays during football season. I remember that this included a jumper with one gray knee sock and one scarlet one, an OSU sweatshirt, and a giant necklace made of buckeyes. And she hadn’t even gone to Ohio State, nor did she have football tickets!

Despite my reluctance to advertise my Buckeye affiliation, I had to get to know Charlie. We spent a couple of evenings hanging out around his trailer and talking, and discovered that he’s really interesting, and easy to talk to. He’s got a gigantic steel boat that’s trying to rust faster than he can get it in the water. The boat was such a mess, he’d been sleeping in the trailer. But he’s gotten the boat cleaned up, and last night, he said that would be his last one sleeping in the trailer — he was planning to sleep in the boat tonight.

Flutterby's feral cats

Charlie has a really central location, right by the Travelift. The first time we’d hung out at his trailer, there had been a strange, friendly dog hanging around. Last night, when we stopped to talk, it was a cat, instead. She was orange and white and incredibly thin. She was very snuggly, rubbing against our legs and pushing her head on our hands to be petted. Charlie fed her some tuna, and she followed us back to our boat and we gave her cat food. But Flutterby’s two feral cats made her unwelcome, and there was a bit of yowling and cat-fighting under the boat last night. When I got up this morning, she wasn’t around.

After Barry’s announcement, I found Charlie standing outside his trailer, smoking a cigarette and looking a bit dazed. “I’m a Daddy!” he said.

During the night, the little cat had come into his trailer and climbed up on his head. Charlie likes cats, and has a couple of them at home. But he wasn’t going to have this strange cat sleeping on his head. So he moved her down to his feet and went back to sleep. When he woke, she was still at his feet, nursing two tiny kittens.

Charlie’s got a bit of a dilemma — he and his trailer, and the kittens’ bed, are going back to Ohio next week. In the meantime, he’s going to be sleeping on the boat and wondering what to do with three cats that he didn’t have yesterday.

Tiny cat with tinier kittens

The kittens that were born on Charlie's bed

Emanuel's interpretation of a sailboat

Gabriel's interpretation of pirates

On a May day between my birthday and Barry’s, we were sitting out in the cockpit, enjoying the shade of our beautiful bimini top and eating a mid-morning snack. As usual, the cockpit was a mess, full of tools and parts, which included a pile of teak scraps on top of the refrigerator. They’d been removed from someone else’s boat, so they all had bolt-holes through them, but the bolts had been taken out.

A little wasp, black with white stripes, flew over and landed on the pile. She looked around, selected one of the holes, and climbed in. A moment later, she flew away.

To my credit, I didn’t scream or jump around or do any of the hysterical things I normally do around insects. I simply picked up the piece of teak and studied the two tiny green caterpillars she’d left, now exposed on top of the fridge. “Nice of her to bring us a little gift, but I don’t think we need these,” I said, flicking them onto the ground and cleaning up the pile of wood. When she came back, she walked around for a while, confused, then left us another couple of caterpillars before leaving for good.

The next gift to arrive was even more remarkable and a lot more tasty.

At his gym in Vero Beach, Florida, my Dad met a retiree named Carlo. The conversation turned to Carlo’s passion, making sausage. “What? You haven’t tried my sausage? I’ll bring you some!” After his retirement, Carlo was at loose ends, so his kids and grandkids talked him into making sausage, something he’d done as a child with his Sicilian grandfather. It was so successful that it turned into a business. Now he makes and sells Carlo’s Lean Sicilian Sausage at the local Saturday market, and he also packs it in dry ice and ships it all over the country.

When the package arrived, the first thing we got excited about was the dry ice! We put chunks of it in water and giggled at the bubbles and the smoking effect, and Barry even put it in a drink. Then we fired up the  barbecue.

Barry's birthday feast - tzatziki, baba ghanouj, grilled onions, oranges, pistachios, kalamata olives, cotija cheese, and Carlo's fabulous sausage

This stuff is magic! It’s full of flavor, but so finely ground that it melts in your mouth without the greasy feeling you usually get from sausage. I said it was the best sausage I’ve eaten. Barry said, “Yummy!”

And it was a lot tastier than the caterpillars would have been.

The next day, when Barry woke up on his birthday, he had a whole pile of presents. Being the hard worker he is, he spent the entire day doing electrical work on the boat, and he didn’t open any of them until evening, when Val and John came by for a piece of birthday pie. When he came up the ladder, Val had a big box under his arm and a shit-eating grin.

There’s a little back story to this one. Whenever a bunch of boaters get together, certain exciting topics  always come up in conversation. These include: 1. Cheap places to cruise, 2. Expensive places to cruise, 3. Marine toilets (this always seems to come up during dinner), and 4. Bedding compounds.

Val is a  proponent of 3M 5200, a polyurethane caulk with extremely strong adhesive properties. Barry and I prefer 3M 101, which is a low-adhesion polysulfide caulk, or butyl rubber, which comes on a roll and is also low-adhesion. After a glass of wine aboard Kuhelli one evening, the two of them got into an argument about it, and the fur really flew! Everyone was looking at Val and Barry, wondering if they were going to see a fistfight over bedding compounds.

That night, when Barry and I got home, I commented on the argument. He laughed, and said, “I’m sure Val knows that arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig. Everybody gets dirty, but the pig likes it.”

So when Barry opened his birthday gift from Val, he found a cylindrical object with the following instructions:

FLUTTERBY EMERGENCY KIT
Open in case of a leak from other sealant that gave up. This will happen sooner than you think!!!!
WARNING!!!
This is powerful stuff. Make sure when you use it you line up the pieces correctly, because after it cures, there is no known way to remove it. Why would you remove it if the pieces are perfectly lined up? Not because of a leak. That I am sure.

We were practically rolling in laughter when Barry pulled out the tube of 5200, which had been further labeled “EMERGENCY USE ONLY ON FLUTTERBY.”

5200: For "emergency" use only on Flutterby

It just didn’t seem like there was any way to top such a perfect birthday gift. But wait, there’s more!

A week before Barry’s birthday, we’d gone to the Beaufort Music Festival and gotten hooked on a new band, an alternative group called Bombadil. Our favorite song is called Jelly Bean Wine, which we’ve been playing over and over (you can hear it on their MySpace page, about the 5th song down). Since I have an interest in wine-label design, I decided to create some Jelly Bean Wine for Barry’s birthday. I picked up a bottle of Arbor Mist, which tastes like this generation’s version of Tickle Pink (don’t ask how I know). They take cheap wine, add corn syrup and kool-aid flavoring, and sell it like real wine with a screw cap. It’s the only wine you can buy in the gas station (don’t ask how I know).

My label involved a photo of jelly beans that I ran through the “spin” filter in Photoshop. Under the photo was the line from the song: “Perfect for a Sunday morning hangover.”

Meps' original label for Jelly Bean Wine. Our friend Tom says the label makes him dizzy, so I accomplished exactly what I set out to design!

It’s great as a piece of art. I’m not sure what would induce him to drink it. If he ever does, I’ll let you know.

Most people don’t get a that many birthday presents, let alone such creative and thoughtful ones. But all of these presents paled in comparison to the large, flat, mysterious box that came from Columbus, Ohio. We’d been waiting for Barry’s birthday to open it, but his sister told us, “It’s to both of you! Go ahead and open it.”

Inside, we found a Monopoly game. We looked at each other, puzzled. We knew that the Millers, parents and kids, love to play Monopoly, but how did they know we didn’t have the game? And where would we put it?

Then Barry lifted the lid and took out the board and exclaimed something like “Holy buckets!” (Notice that I said *like* “Holy buckets!” because Barry doesn’t actually say “Holy buckets!” it’s just more interesting that “Omigod!” which is probably what he did say. Or maybe he said, “Wow!” and I said, “Omigod, holy buckets!”)

The center of the Meps-n-Barryopoly board

We bent our heads over the most amazing game board we’d ever seen. In the center were caricatures of the two of us, dressed as pirates, superimposed on the name of the game, Meps-n-Barryopoly. Each location on the board is a place we have been to and written about — Arkansas, Crater Lake, North Carolina, Portugal, Brazil, the Bahamas. Instead of going to “jail,” our set says “go to house,” and the two most valuable properties, instead of Boardwalk and Park Place, are Seattle and Burning Man, our favorite places in the world. The game pieces are sculptures of us and our teddy bears, and the cards are completely re-written to reflect our travel adventures. Even the play money is replaced with Bear Bucks, complete with Frankie the Bear’s head on them.

It was the most marvelous thing I had ever seen.

A day later, when we went to play it, though, we discovered one thing absent from the box: The rules. With our friend Dick, we wracked our brains to remember how to play, and finally reverted to the phone. We admitted to Julie that we loved our present, but didn’t know what to do with it! So she put Barry’s nephew Emanuel on the phone, and he gave us detailed instructions as only an 8-year-old can.

It was a marathon game, lasting until almost 3 am, when we all collapsed from exhaustion. Evidently, there are different ways to play Monopoly, and some take longer than others. If you play by the official rules, the game is only supposed to last about 90 minutes!

One day, we’ll get this boat out cruising, and we’ll stop at Vero Beach to meet Carlo, thank my Dad, and play Meps-n-Barryopoly while we drink a toast with Jelly Bean Wine and watch our 5200 cure. But first, maybe another little road trip? We need to go up to Ohio and thank Julie and Cody and Emanuel and Gabriel personally!

(Pictures of the Monopoly set are below. I made ‘em big, so you can read the hilarious cards!)

The full Meps-n-Barryopoly board

The Chance cards

The Burner's Chest cards

The game pieces - Scuppers in his sweater, Barry with a mohawk, long-haired Meps, and chubby Frankie

The money and hand-colored cards -- all of them places where we've been (except for a few oceans). The $50 fun fee for Burning Man is a little low, but $2000 for euphoria seems about right.

My apologies for not writing much lately. I have a couple of excuses –

1 - We’ve gotten totally hooked by a podcast and blog at NPR called Planet Money. These guys do a fantastic job of tracking down stories about what’s going on in the economy, and more importantly, why. Last weekend, we were driving down State Route 24 here in North Carolina when I saw a sign that tickled my funny bone: “Free boat! With homesite purchase.”

“We have got to take a picture of that when we come back tomorrow!” I said to Barry. Unfortunately, the following day was drizzly, which made it harder to take photos from the Squid Wagon. Barry managed a U-turn (a feat that requires a road the width of a football field) and we figured out which window could roll down and then (more importantly) roll back up again, stuck the camera out, hit the shutter button, and then said, “Thank God for Photoshop!”

I submitted the photos to the Planet Money blog with a note, where they’ve been publishing images illustrating “Half Built America.” It got published today — check it out!

2 - Speaking of websites, we spent a couple of months swearing at different web browsers, then launched a website for the boatyard we call home, Bock Marine. For those of you who have been complaining about how few photos I’ve published, many of the ones on their site are mine, so you can see where we are. We definitely feel like family here!

That’s it for this week’s excuses. I have a much funnier essay ready for you, but the pictures blew up and have to be re-shot. That part’s not funny.

As our one-year anniversary of living in the boatyard neared, I told my friends that we were planning to celebrate the event. Most of them looked at me as though I’d sprouted two heads. “You haven’t been able to launch your boat after working on it for a whole year, and you want to celebrate this fact?”

They rolled their eyes, but they came anyway.

That morning, we had begun installing the first three portlights. “Which side do we do first?” Barry asked. “The port side, of course!” My reasoning? The picnic table and barbecue grill were on the port side, so our guests would be able to admire our shiny bronze ports.

As usual, the work took longer than expected. We were still cleaning up messy black butyl and white polysulfide caulk as the guests began to arrive. We never made it to the showers, and the interior never got cleaned up. We hoped our friends wouldn’t come up on the boat and notice.

But as we fired up the grill and set out the appetizers, the first raindrops began to fall, and there was no place to go but up the ladder into the boat. The scene inside Flutterby was a disaster — there were tools and parts and clothes everywhere, and dishes were piled up from several meals. We quickly passed out drinks, hoping to distract our guests from the boat’s condition. We kept them busy, too: All hands were needed to man buckets and towels under the starboard portlights, which at that point were gaping 5- by 12-inch holes in the side of the cabin.

The storm passed fairly quickly and the party moved back outside, and nobody gave us a hard time about the condition of our interior. Our friends have very low standards, or else they’re very kindhearted. Given the  gifts I received at the party (my birthday had been the day before), I think it’s the latter.

Over the next few days, I took stock of our one-year situation. I have learned and accomplished a lot, including the following things that I didn’t know I needed to experience:

1. I got stuck in the lazarette (despite #3.2), had a panic attack, and had to be extricated by Barry. Have you ever noticed that the word “extricate” never has a happy connotation?
2. I sprained my ankle three times, once while stuck in the lazarette having a panic attack.
3. I broke one toe, lost 13 pounds, and cut off a foot (of hair).
4. I took one belly dance lesson. I would have taken more, except for #2 and #3.1, above.
5. I have handled carpenter bees in the ladder, a mud-dauber wasp trying to build a nest under the chart table, and a black widow spider in my water pitcher. These are all potentially harmful insects, and they did not make me scream. On the other hand, every 3-inch palmetto bug that ran across my galley counter made me shriek loudly, to Barry’s discomfort (if he sat further away, I wouldn’t be shrieking in his ear…see #7).
6. I became on intimate terms with Mr. Dremel, Mr. Orbital Sander, Mr. Makita Drill, and Mr. Jigsaw. I am now on speaking terms with Mr. Angle Grinder, and I’m getting to know Mr. Fein.
7. I found myself occasionally not on speaking terms with my husband, who is rarely more than 6 feet away from me. He can operate any power tool one-handed while lying on his back with his eyes closed in the coffin-shaped pilot berth, which I find maddening.
   
8. I fell in love with my full-face organic vapor respirator but found that it’s impossible to kiss someone or scratch your nose while wearing one.
9. I figured out that if you don’t protect the zipper of your Tyvek suit with tape, sometimes you drip epoxy on it and can’t get your clothes off.
10. I have learned to tolerate, but not enjoy, galley faucet roulette. I never know if the water is going to come out in an orderly fashion, as gravity and the universe intended, or if it’s going to explode violently into the cup I am holding, causing lemonade to erupt like Mount Vesuvius all over the front of my shirt. This is why I no longer buy pink lemonade.
11. I no longer think it’s unusual to wear hearing protection earmuffs while cooking dinner because Barry is operating loud power tools (see #6)  three feet away. It’s easy to burn things when you can’t hear them sizzling in the skillet, which makes the smoke alarm go off, which is OK, because I’m wearing my earmuffs. Barry always wishes he was wearing earmuffs when a palmetto bug runs across the counter (see #5).
12. I learned that when the  Sriracha chili sauce gets clogged, one should not simply squeeze the bottle harder. When I did, the lid exploded off, and I let out a loud, four-letter expletive. At this point, Barry looked up from his computer and said, alarmed, “Please tell me that’s not your blood!” To him, it looked like an unplanned amputation.
    

Most importantly, I discovered that some of the nicest people in the world are found in boatyards, hardware stores, lumberyards, and vegetable stands. This, coupled with the miraculous fact that we have not had to buy anything at West Marine, explains why I still have a sense of humor after a whole year.

“Hey, is there going to be a party before you go?” I asked Ivan, when I ran into him in the lounge.

“Yes, I think tomorrow,” he said. His accent and careful pronunciation of English words makes him seem more solemn and serious than he is.

“What time?” I asked.

At this point, Val jumped in. He’s been grinding on his boat for over two weeks, a grueling and exhausting job. “Let’s start at noon…two pm…” he said with a grin. I rolled my eyes, knowing full well that boat work comes first, and parties don’t start around here until at least 5 or 6 pm.

So around 6 pm, we headed over to the dock where Kuhelli was moored, her extra-large Swedish flag snapping in the breeze. I’m going to miss that flag — putting it up on the backstay was one of the first things the crew did when they arrived. It’s been windy every day for the month they were here, and the flag danced with an exuberance like that of the crew.

I remember their arrival more vividly than most of our neighbors. It was April first, and we’d been spending the evening wishing Blaine and Suzy farewell. It grew cold and very late as we sat around the picnic table, sharing wine and stories. Past midnight, a car pulled up across the way at a boat that had been stored for some time. Several people got out and got a ladder and climbed on the boat. Even in the dim light, we could see that they were not average cruising-boat owners. Much too young.

Were they thieves? Vandals? Should we confront them?

They showed no signs of taking anything from the boat, so we decided to leave them alone.

For the next few days, half the gossip was about Blaine and Suzy’s departure, and the other half was about the three 20-something Swedish guys who’d come to fix up an older Halberg-Rossy and sail it back to Sweden. Ivan was the owner, with Lowe and Sigfrid as his friends and crew. (It actually took us forever to get their names straight — Ivan is pronounced “Even,” and Lowe sounds like “Loova”).

Anique teased them about their accents. Sigfrid came in one day, asking about jello. Jello is not a normal item in a marine chandlery, so she was completely flabbergasted. It finally turned out he was mispronouncing “yellow!” He need the pigment for his gel-coat repairs.

Like the young 3-man crew on Catania, they had boundless energy, and got more work done than any of us old-timers. Even after working well into the night on the boat, they would get up in the morning and go running. They scampered up and down the ladder like monkeys, taking it two rungs at a time going up and coming down frontwards with no hands. I saw Sigfrid doing push-ups on the dock and Ivan shinnying up the mast without benefit of a bosun’s chair or halyard.

One evening, we sat down and shared a meal, and we learned that they’d never been to the US before. Their impressions were fascinating, since they’d flown into Washington, D.C., driven straight to the boat, and not seen anything but coastal North Carolina since.

With Val and John, we tried to dispel some of their myths about this place we call “America,” going into heavy topics like immigration and politics and economics. Val has lived in Hawaii and Florida, and John has lived all over the US and sports Wyoming plates on his van, so it was a lively conversation about how different the rest of the US is from Beaufort, North Carolina.

One thing they did not like at all: The food. It took them several weeks to realize that Piggly-Wiggly was not the only grocery store, which would give anyone a bad impression of American food. They were amazed by the number of obese people and disturbed by the stuff sold as bread. Even when I brought them the best bread in the area, from the Havelock Swiss bakery, they were polite, but said it was not as good as Swedish bread.

They splashed the boat three weeks after they arrived, making me green with envy. But that was not going to keep me away from the bon voyage party.

Ivan had one more job to do up the mast, and Lowe quickly hauled him up to spreader height. We lounged on the dock, watching Ivan work and waiting for the barbecue to heat up. It was a perfect spring evening on the water, just enough wind to keep bugs at bay without blowing the brownies and salad away.

Sigfrid came back — he’s the most garrulous of the three. “As soon as we eat, we have to go get diesel. You’re all welcome to come along,” he said.

The party on the dock was starting to pick up momentum when Ivan looked at his watch and headed for the boat. Barry and I joined the three guys, and we steamed away from the dock.

It was only a couple of miles up the waterway to Seagate Marina, but we snapped a lot of pictures during that time. It was, after all, Kuhelli’s maiden voyage with her new owner. I was honored to be aboard for the occasion and felt vaguely useful because I knew approximately where the fuel dock was.

When we returned to the dock, the party had grown.

“This is the second time I’ve been on a boat, underway, in a week!” I said to Audrey. She sighed with envy. Desiderata has been here for over three and a half years, and she and her husband have been distracted from their boat work by all kinds of health issues in that time.

The other crew that joined the festivities was from Happy Hour, a boat smaller than ours with two parents and four children aboard. At one time, they had even cruised with their two older siblings aboard, and I was curious to know how they found bunks for eight.

The answer was a forward cabin (two kids), two settees (two kids), an aft cabin (privacy for two parents), and a bunch of cushions on the floor for the remaining two. I wondered if they all had bruises from stepping on each other!

Compared to that, the crew of Kuhelli had luxurious accommodations, with a private aft cabin, a v-berth, and an enormous dinette. Their center cockpit has a hard dodger and a full hard bimini as well, so they’ll be protected from the waves offshore.

That cockpit was big enough for the whole lively party. Listening to the chatter, I thought of how we’d been at a farewell party when Kuhelli’s crew arrived. I looked around, but the boats in the yard were quiet. Just as well, it would be hard to top this.

But not for the crew of Kuhelli. In addition to an offshore passage to Sweden via the Azores and Ireland, they plan a stop in New York City.

Just after dawn, I heard a horn. I stuck my head out the hatch and waved as the boat slipped away. The time they shared with us was just Part One of the adventure — the rest is still to come, and they’re going to enjoy every minute of it.

Kuhelli’s website is in Swedish, but has lots of great photos: http://svenskavinnare.se/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=12 (or you can chuckle your way through the machine-translated English version)

Sigfrid also has a great photo site here: http://picasaweb.google.se/sigfridj (”alantseglingen” are the photos of his trip to the USA)

Here’s a fun series of questions:

1. When was the first time you went sailing?
2. When was the last time you went sailing?
3. Have you ever sailed on a schooner?

As I write this, I am on a boat, one that is firmly aground, with 7 sturdy jackstands beneath it and an 8-foot wooden ladder between me and the rest of the world. I go to sleep at night in the v-berth, my face just a few feet beneath the forward hatch. Before I close my eyes, I look up and see the stars and moon.

But I miss the motion of a boat. I miss the sound of water against the hull. I’ve gotten used to being on a boat-with-no-motion, but there’s definitely something wrong with it.

In the past year, we’ve visited friends whose boats are in the water, to remember the feeling. Stepping aboard Ocean Gypsy, I love the way the side deck gently dips to accept my weight. When we rode out to Honey Moon in the dinghy in January, I just wanted to throw my head back and holler “Yee haw!” as we zipped across the anchorage. A moving boat is a wonderful thing.

It’s moving. But it’s still not sailing.

In January, we took a day to help our friend Dick motor up to New Bern in his steel schooner, Ula G. It was fun to get out on the water, but Dick picked one of the coldest days of the year. We joked about the cold as we huddled on deck, wearing every scrap of clothing we owned. In our foulies and hoods and gloves and PFDs, Dick could hardly tell us apart, although Barry does have a lower voice and I giggle more. At the time, I thought about how nice it would be when the weather warmed up and we could actually sail.

Yesterday was the day I’d been hoping for. We had originally planned to drive up to New Bern and help Dick take his parents out sailing. That plan fell through when they left a day early, but we decided to go up anyway.

With the help of Dick’s friendly neighbors to cast off the lines (the freeboard on this boat resembles that of a container ship), we headed out the Neuse River.

Back when I learned to sail on a simple catboat with one sail, I had jib-phobia. I was intimidated by the thought of a boat with more than one sail. I was also petrified at the thought of operating a boat bigger than 20 feet.

Now, here I was, aboard a real schooner, almost fifty feet long, with five tanbark (Dick calls them orange) sails to choose from (we used three), and all the attendant lines and strings to play with. I no longer have jib-phobia, having sailed on sloops and ketches and yawls and junk rigs. I’m not afraid of really big boats, either. Seems like all our friends have ‘em.

I laid on the bow with my head hanging over the bulwark, mesmerized by the bow wave as the hull sliced through the sparkling blue water. The sound of the water was like celestial music.

Back at the wheel, I sat astride the helmsman’s seat, and I did throw back my head and let out a hearty “Yee haw!” Dick laughed and teased me about my “shit-eating grin.”

For Dick, it was a whole different experience from taking his 79-year-old parents out the previous day.

“Was this the first time they’d seen your boat?” I asked.

“It was their first time on a sailboat,” he admitted.

That made me pause. The first time they went sailing? Friday. The last time they went sailing? Friday. Their first time on a schooner? Friday.

The funny thing is, only one of my answers is substantially different.

The first time I went sailing? 1982. The last time I went sailing? Saturday. The first time on a traditional schooner? Saturday.

There’s one more question to ask, and I suspect that here, our answers will diverge greatly. How often would you like to go sailing?

I suspect that Dick’s parents are content with the amount of sailing they’ve done in their lives: Once.

But I want to go sailing again. I want to hear water against the hull, want to sit at the wheel and go “Yee haw!” I want to hang my head over the side and watch the water flowing past for hours — every day.

(There’s a related limerick: “News of the Neuse.”)

I made a comment to Kenny last week about our struggles to paint between spells of wind and rain. “Better hurry,” he said, “pollen’s coming.”

We didn’t finish in time. Amazing amounts of pollen drifted over everything, tinting boats and vehicles and ground yellow. When it rained, there were strange pollen patterns on our hatches, and yellow rings on the ground when the puddles evaporated. We put our painting aside.

The pollen is just another sign of North Carolina spring, along with a tiny white flower blooming under our boat. At night, we hear the sound of peeping frogs, and the birdsong at dusk is like an orchestra. There have even been a few early mosquitoes, no-see-ums, and dolphins.

There’s another sign of spring, up on the high bridge that soars over the boatyard. We are so used to the sound of bridge traffic, we hardly notice cars and trucks as they pass by. But a motorcycle makes a different sound — and when I heard several of them crossing the bridge, I looked up. They just kept coming, and I counted 26 in all, out to enjoy the beautiful weather.

Last week, we had our first northbound cruising boat, Lady Simcoe. Gordon and Susan had been out cruising the Bahamas for the winter, and now it was time to lay the boat up and go back to work in Canada. They invited us aboard, and we sat in their cockpit, drinking Fire in de Hole Erotic Rum and hearing their stories. Barry hadn’t seen the label, and he asked me, “Don’t you mean exotic?” But there is nothing exotic about rum in the Bahamas — and the dancing lady on the label is definitely erotic.

Gordon and Susan told us one disquieting thing about cruising in the Bahamas. In order to get crucial weather information, all the cruisers listen to a daily radio “net.” The net’s at the ungodly hour of 6:30 am, which keeps the cruisers on an early-morning schedule. “Parties would break up at 8 o’clock, and we’d all be in bed by 9.” They laughed, but it doesn’t sound like much fun to this pair of night-owls.

Soon, we’ll be seeing more tanned northbound cruisers like them on the waterway. Which ones will stop for a haulout? We can only wait and see, and look forward to meeting them.

There is one thing I’m not looking forward to. A couple of our cruising friends left their vehicles here while they are in the Caribbean. Any day now, they’ll be back, and I’m a little embarrassed that we’re not gone yet. “What? Are you still here?” Then they’ll tell us about their cruising adventures, and we’ll tell them about epoxy-squirting disasters and paint jobs with stigmata and tiny white flowers growing under our boat.

And then we’ll all laugh and go out to dinner. I’m looking forward to that.

It’s a tiny town, you can hang around with me
It’s a tiny town, and ev’rybody knows what you been doin’
(with apologies to David Byrne)

We’d put away the tools, cleaned the sanding dust, and moved a few things to storage to make the boat presentable. Dinner was cooking, and we had the makings for sangria. But as I looked around the boat, I worried about the next few days.

Would Dad be comfortable here with us? He has more room in his walk-in closet than we have in our combined living room, kitchen, dining room, and office. Would he like Beaufort? It’s a tiny little town, and we don’t know anybody here.

A friendly honk interrupted my survey, and I scampered down the ladder for a hug. Dad had driven from Florida to Myrtle Beach for a conference and get-together with journalist friends. A few more hours of driving brought him to Beaufort, where he planned to spend five days with us.

First, though, he had to master the ladder. Although Flutterby’s centerboard makes her much lower than most of the sailboats in the yard, it’s still a daunting 8 feet to the cockpit. Then about 4 feet down the companionway to the interior.

Barry and I do it dozens of times a day, in the daylight and in the dark, with arms full of tools and groceries and boat parts. We’ve had occasional slips — at least three bruising incidents on the companionway. I also took some priceless video of Barry going down the big ladder facing forward. About halfway down, he lost his footing and slid plink-plink-plink down the rungs, making a sound like a xylophone and landing in a heap at the bottom. Only his dignity was hurt, which is why he grabbed the camera and deleted the video.

Anyway, Dad made it up fine with us hovering anxiously, and was soon ensconced in our salon. Over the course of the week, we spent lots of time there, talking, listening to music, and spreading out newspapers, books, laptops, notecards, food, and beverages. My fears were groundless — the only spatial challenge was vertical. At 6′2″, Dad’s head brushes the ceiling, and going into the head is like climbing into a hobbit-hole.

I had planned short daily expeditions to see local sights, like the Maritime Museum and Fort Macon, and I’d checked with our boatyard expert, Larry, for restaurant recommendations.

By Tuesday, the rain had cleared, and we were at the Backstreet pub, listening to a lively Irish band and eating corned beef and cabbage. We were having a blast when along came our neighbor, John. Then we struck up a lively conversation with a couple from the University of Tennessee, and the two professors found lots to talk about. John left, and along came our Burning Man friend, Jeff. All this, in a town where we don’t know anybody.

On Wednesday, I suggested we check out the live music advertised at the Sandbar. So we parked at Town Creek marina, and I noticed our friend Ted sitting in the cockpit of Ocean Gypsy with a friend.

I called down from the parking lot. “Hi! We thought we’d come over and check out the Sandbar this evening.”

Ted told us, “You’d better come have a drink with us instead.”

Ted and his neighbor, Ron, said the Sandbar was a great little bar and restaurant. But the couple who ran the place weren’t getting along, and the woman left. She took the liquor license with her! This resulted in the police coming out on Saturday and shutting the bar down.

As a result, we sat in Ted’s spacious cockpit and swapped stories about book-publishing and sailing and life until it was almost dark. Dad got to see what a properly-outfitted Freedom 33 looks like, and we got to know Ron, who’s recently published a book, Sailing With Carol. All this, in a town where we don’t know anybody.

On Thursday, we took a ferry ride to Oriental, which considers itself the “sailboat capitol of the world.” We stopped at a waterfront park on the way and ran into a couple who’d been on the ferry with us. Dad ended up in conversation with the husband, and Barry and I started chatting with the wife…were we standing there in the sunshine talking for 30 minutes, or 45?

On Friday, we went into Beaufort and strolled Front Street, stopping into a few shops. We were browsing in Rocking Chair Books when Ted came in to see the owner, Kelli. After he introduced us, we were chatting with Kelli, and in walked our neighbor, Oscar. All this, in a town where we don’t know anybody.

The funny thing is, Dad has an even older friend here in the area, but he told me they’d been out of touch for a while. When he looked up his friend in the phone book and called him, I could tell something was amiss.

Dad had asked for Woody Price. Unfortunately, Woody had died eight years before, and his 94-year-old widow never, ever called her husband “Woody” — only “Woodrow.” Once they straightened that out, they had a nice chat.

When Dad finally got off the phone, I asked him how long he’d been out of touch with the Price’s. “I got Christmas cards from them for years, with a painting of their little saltbox house,” he reminisced. Then he told me he’d last run into Woody by chance during a trip to the Outer Banks. His wife hadn’t been with him on that trip, though.

Later, I checked the family photos on my computer. Dad’s last trip to the Outer Banks had been in 1971. He hadn’t seen Woody for 38 years, and hadn’t seen Mary for over 40. With his incredible memory for details, he made it sound like it was yesterday.

So many friends, new and old, in a tiny town where we don’t know anybody.