This is the adventure in which we take down the sails for the season and eat a whole pie in less than 24 hours. We’re not at sea right now. Instead, we’re tucked into a slip completing seasonal chores and preparing for a long cold winter aboard.
Apropos of the recent holiday, let’s talk about giving thanks on Thanksgiving. At 9:05 pm every night a name 2 things you’re grateful for reminder pops up on my phone. Sometimes our things are big, and sometimes they’re small, but those big and small things of gratitude are always nightly. Everyone else is doing the same thing at this time of year, so we’re not special little snowflakes on the fourth Thursday in November. I don’t remember what we said on Thanksgiving, but it may have had to do with not preparing and transporting seasonally appropriate side dishes at any time during the long weekend.
I received a Happy Thanksgiving… ham… cranberries… text message from almost 3,000 miles away. My response was something like weather was bright and crisp… flock of geese flew over us, and we could hear them quacking to each other… tide is so low that we can see footprints from our resident Great Blue Heron’s favorite fishing spot… sunset was cotton candy pink over the open water… no clouds, perfect crescent moon tonight, no light pollution… can see every constellation… below freezing tonight, 70 degrees inside with our diesel heater… no Black Friday, no traffic, no TV, no big, fast, noisy stuff that makes the giant wheels of the city spin... And that, my friends, was our Turkey Day. I had egg salad, and Charles grilled something in the cast iron skillet. Don’t worry, there will be pie soon.
Low and behold, while straightening our storage shed the following day I discovered that someone gifted me a brand new pressure canner. Read as Our friends are heading offshore and off-grid and didn’t want to take it with them. Good luck Frank and Tina! Late fall may not be the time to begin canning, and I have no idea where to start anyway so if you’ve used a pressure canner and wants to share your tips and tricks, please send them over before I end up with 24 pints of mushy pickles and a botulism scare.
If you had spaghetti and blueberry pie on Friday instead of turkey on Thursday, high five because we did too! Let’s pause to chat about butter. I rarely eat butter, however, I bought Kerrigold because everyone loves grass-fed Irish cows. If you’ve never tried it, get thee to the butter aisle immediately. Not joking. The recipe for spaghetti sauce (just add butter) in the link below was previously in the New York Times, but I’m sharing my favorite food blogger’s adaptation because everything she makes is the best one I’ve ever had. Tomato sauce with 3 ingredients and you throw one of them away. PS cheese, mushrooms, and shrimp. Just saying.
And then there was pie. This recipe is for mini’s, but you should use your pie dish because you can eat more per sitting with a fork straight from the dish than if you have to count how many mini’s you just had. I used 4 cups of blueberries and added a bit more of the filling stuff. PS the crust goes well in every pie. We ate the whole thing in less than 24 hours, and I’m kind of sad it’s gone. Best blueberry pie recipe ever, or so says Charles.
We’ll have the boat wrapped sometime in December to ensure a warm and cozy winter, so we removed, folded, bagged, and stored our sails yesterday. One of my hidden talents that doesn’t transfer well to a resume is folding things. I can fold a fitted sheet to look like it just came out of the package and many years ago I folded 1,000 origami cranes, Japanese senbazuru which gives you the opportunity to make one special wish if you complete the cranes in under a year. My wish was for Charles to stick around… hint hint go get some origami paper if you have a wish or two and birthday candles aren’t cutting it. Sails are different animals than origami cranes, however, with my exceptional folding prowess we wrangled hundreds of square feet of sail into small bags, and now they’ll spend their winter as snug as sails in bags can be.
Another lovely sunset yesterday… at some point we’ll sigh wistfully, gaze at each other and say something like, “Another enchanting sunset? Not again.” Yesterday was not that day.
This morning I showered on land. It’s a three-minute walk to and from the showers and laundry and while three minutes is nothing when you’re petting a herd of kittens, long wet hair below 50 degrees makes a three-minute walk seem like that herd of kittens isn’t so friendly and soft after all. Just-got-out-of-the-shower isn’t a good look for most people but throw on a pair of sunglasses, and now you’re rocking Apres Shower Chic. This may work on land, but it doesn’t have quite the same impact in your own bathroom.
Next up- my confession to you is that I have so! many! drafts! saved and I’m dying to tell you about our summer, about how someone gave me a blogger “award,” about how we went from Rhode Island to Miami in the space of three weeks, about how Charles sailed to Bermuda and St. Maarten without me, and about how I took Sylvie to a tiny town in Florida and dangled my puppersnapper over the ledge. I will get through the drafts, I promise.
“I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.” -N. Hawthorne hey there Mr. Hawthorne, I think you meant “by staying on land.”
Fabulous!
Happy Thanksgiving!
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Yes there are indeed many things in life to be grateful for. For us, our whole lives here on a sunny tropical island is one. Plus the family and friends that we have. And the opportunity as younglings many many years ago to work and travel around the world.
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Yes, you understand what I mean! When you start looking at how many small good things you have around you every day, it makes the bad stuff a little easier to handle.
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Happy winter! I just wrapped Renegade to keep the heavy snow out here in Maine with visions of the refit process that will begin in earnest next spring. I can hardly contain my excitement with the work to come! (I know, that’s what I say now!) I’m sure you understand that feeling and the longing to be free on the sea. It may take me 2 years to complete everything but whats that compared to the many years after living the life of a nomad? I look forward to your posts of this summers escapades!
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Maine… we keep coming back to talking about sailing up there to spend the summer! Is it true that you can hang a lobster pot off your boat when you’re on the hook and pull up dinner every night?
I feel your excitement- I have a new shower pump on the way that I’m going to install and Charles is threatening that we’ll spend the winter rebedding all of our deck hardware.
Were you able to get out at all over the summer?
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Nice to hear from you! You cant catch lobsters without a license, but you can call any boat coming into a harbor and they will come to your boat and sell you some at wholesale prices. I just purchased my boat and I have to wait till spring to begin the refit. I cant afford a big boat so I started with a Pearson 30, a solid boat but it needs alot. I wrote about it here. https://johndavidray.com/2017/09/30/how-do-you-define-your-life/
You really should take the time to come to Penobscot Bay and soak in all that Maine has to offer. If you do, I hope you will look me up so I can help you find the best spots!
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Hi! As of an hour ago I think we may be sailing to Maine in August. Don’t hold me to that but I think planning starts now!
I’ll definitely keep in touch, thx for the link, just followed you.
Do you have a list of refit projects?
I have a new shower pump and 1 new teak & brass cabin dome light on the way.
Bet the weather is cold up there!
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Indeed! About 25 at night but I’m used to it. Refit begins with mostly new electrical and all new plumbing. Yanmar engine and both sails are brand new so that’s a huge savings. Electronics, paint etc will take time as I have to earn the money for projects as I go.
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I can “help” with your plumbing as I replaced our toilet pump assembly over the summer. Take note- flush a gallon of fresh water and a bit of vinegar through the toilet before removing the hoses, namely the discharge hose. I didn’t do that and ended up with a flood from the discharge hose. I didn’t write about it because nobody wants to read things like “covered in raw sewage.”
Re. electronics, we also need an upgrade but we’ve heard so much about apps that can be used on iPads that we’re going to try to next season instead of upgrading the electronics. Ours aren’t limping along but we’re going to test this stuff before a major upgrade package.
Bad Elf- GPS receiver that plugs into iPad or iPhone, might be redundant but we’ll see. We also use the Navionics app which is pretty robust for navigation. It’s pretty common so you may already have it.
I’ve heard good things about the B&G Zeus… we can dream.
Can you recommend a good Maine cruising guide?
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Here’s the best one out there…. https://www.mainecoastguide.com/shop-online/
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Thanks, I’ll take a look at it!
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I remember my fist pressure cooker, it transformed my canning. Admittedly I went a bit nuts doing corn, beans, beets, carrots, and anything I could get my hands on! Have fun.
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I’m thinking apples and squash for the winter and when it gets warm I have a few ideas for tomatoes. I read the warnings about botulism and I’m a little wary, though!
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Very nice read.
I lived in Minnesota and know what you mean about the below 50 hair freeze. 🙂
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This whole showering in cold weather thing was a good kick in the pants to get me to replace our old shower pump. Next up will be something like “adventures in boat mechanics.”
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LOL! What one learns when trying not to freeze one’s butt off. 🙂
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Cruisers tend as a class to cherish the Great Outdoors, although not all of us are lucky enough to be parked next to a resident Great Blue Heron.
And Americans tend as a class to cherish the Thanksgiving holiday for the opportunity it gives us to reflect on what makes us thankful.
And, finally, writers tend as a class to cherish the thousands of words we turn out annually on these two perennial themes.
It’s been done before. It’s nice. There’s nothing wrong with it, and it will be done again.
But the reason *I,* for my part, keep coming back to *this* blog is because I just know that somewhere among the usual flavors, I’m going to taste
24 pints of mushy pickles and a botulism scare.
So thanks, Tiffany, for adding a new spice to this year’s Thanksgiving in the Great Outdoors. 🙂
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Good segue for me to offer you a jar of pickles when I get around to canning. It might actually be nice to warm up the galley.
Are you getting wrapped? We got wrapped today, just in time with the snow predictions.
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