Shake out weekend
Normally the first night on the boat we sleep amazing. And everyone did, except me. But that was because I’m getting old and was (in the words of one of my older co-workers back when I was in my 20’s) “having my own personal trip to the tropics!” (Night sweats. Lol). Nothing like everyone tucked in nice warm blankets on a cool spring night and me in basking in a sauna.
I was up and moving pretty early as usual regardless. My day was to be a day of logistics and nothing to say other then I drove all the way back to Madison, dropped off the trailer, did all the things, picked up my two kids and drove all the way back to, now, Egg Harbor.
I am happy to report that Captain, Cory and Scott had a great sail to Egg Harbor while I did all that. Captain reports they started to get 90-degree wind shifts and working hard as they came into the harbor. He was going to drop sails and be done fighting the winds when we saw a lot of tourists on the breakwater at the marina. Not wanting to miss a public service moment he sailed right along the break water instead. Just as they were passing, they got a huge gust of wind and “Ciara showed them her belly!” Meaning they got pushed down about 30 degrees! Totally in the “NOPE NOPE” zone for me. The gust let off and they rounded up perfectly, lowered the sails like pros and anchored, just like they planned it. As much as I am sad that I didn’t get to sail this weekend, this weakling doesn’t mind missing that kind of sailing. I was told Kona did very well, only a little early season shakes. It’s okay Kona, understand.
The kids and I got to the boat around 9pm. Scott had left earlier and biked back to Sturgeon Bay. Not before being the first recipient of an official Ciara Madeline T-shirt! It isn’t uncommon for people to make shirts for their boat crew. It’s fun to match. It’s nice to have a souvenir of your time aboard. If you race, it makes the team. Etc. For nine years we have wanted to make some for her. For nine years we debated, delayed. I felt strongly that with Ciara turning 75 that she needed a commentative shirt for her birthday. We wanted custom art and Captain felt strongly about retracing his punk days and making them ourselves by screen printing. We finally bit the bullet and did it. We bought a screen-printing machine and all the things. This was one of our biggest projects this spring. I learned so much and the entire family had a hand in making these shirts. They are a labor of love and a true reflection of our time with Ciara. Cory did the majority of the art work for us. Captain taught us all how the process works. We all worked on the back print as it was three colors and needed us to all work at the same time. We made 40 shirts! Captain and First Mate have some custom shirts, but the rest say “Crew.” Anyone who sails with us this summer will get one (while supplies and sizes last of course :D ). They really turned out nice and we look forward to making more in the future.
It was nice to have everyone aboard for the weekend. We had a lovely night on the hook. Captain and Cory had gone grocery shopping while I was away and we had bacon and eggs for breakfast. The eggs here are a big upgrade made possible by our new fridge. The new fridge is working extremely well and we seem to be using less power with the two then just the one working overly hard. It is too early to tell as it is still cold outside and that makes their jobs easier. But so far so good!
We took a walk around town. The kids managed to get a treat at Fika. We had never tried this little coffee shop, and everyone loved their pastry. We walked the breakwater and did our best to avoid the nesting geese that decided to start a family in the bench area. Everyone was respectful…but I do have a rational fear of nesting geese. We enjoyed relaxing on deck for the first time when we saw a sail boat coming in from the west. Captain pulled out his seeing glass and determined the make of the boat (why can he do this with boats, and cars and everything???). “Huh, I bet that is our friends Dena and Jeremy coming over from Menominee.” On the radio “Twisted Sheets, Twisted Sheets, Twisted Sheets, this is S/V Ciara Madeline over.” “Hey there Captain, this is Twisted Sheets!” We haven’t seen Dena and Jeremy in years. Our winds just haven’t crossed. They dropped their anchor and headed over and we all went to the local brewery that has outdoor seating that Kona loves because she is the center of attention. We spent a lovely evening catching up with them and realized it had been too long!
We came back for tacos aboard using our freeze-dried beef and shredded cheese. The cheese didn’t fully come back the way I wanted, but was still good as a cheese crunch. We will experiment in how to reconstitute cheese.
Jereme came back for a little more social hour and Taps. I think we called it a night at a reasonable hour.
Sunday morning, we were up around 7am. Both Bert and Cory are marching in the local Memorial Day Parade so we have to get home. This meant that a crew of Captain, First Mate Cory and my two kiddos needed to get going on the three-and-a-half-hour motor (no wind, all fog!) to our home marina and I needed to drive all the way back down the Door Peninsula and back up the Upper Peninsula of Michigan an hour to Cedar River. I got a rare video of the crew lifting anchor from shore and I was on my way. Captain had not much to report other then we found out our ship horns aren’t working. Sigh. It was foggy the whole way. Captain has radar and all he could see were tons and tons of birds. So, he just kept an ear out for loud motors and hoped. He blew our conch instead. We also have air horns, so even with the broken ship horns we are still compliant and safe. Thankfully it is early season, the weather was crap, there wasn’t much out there and it was super calm.
I could see the kids on Life360. It was cute to see me driving up the coast and the three of them “on a boat in lake Michigan.”
I got to the marina about 20 minutes before them. They came around the channel looking like a ghost ship in the fog. Captain and crew did beautifully with docking. We spent a few hours unloading my car and re-packing it. I got 90lb of dog food in the anchor locker! I keep finding new, bigger spaces to store stuff! We finally were on our way home around 3pm with a small list of to-dos added to our already smaller list. Two weeks until we really take off. Launch weekend went really well.
