We’re doing nothing but messy, dirty stuff right now and our days are overcast and gray. This really doesn’t make for good pictures! However, I have many pictures taken during our trip North to enjoy–and occasionally post here.
A friend, Bob, took this shot of Mahdee in the Potato Slough last August:
People often say that buying and restoring an old wood boat requires one to set aside all logic. The same can be said for living and voyaging on a sailboat as well. So, in doing both, we seem to have had a several-years-long “lapse of reason” but that’s OK, because our moments are now filled with many, many reasons to have taken the plunge.
There comes a moment, almost every day, when I look around the boat–seeing something about the boat, the waterscape, the landscape beyond and I think “this moment is the reason we’re here; it is priceless.” Here, as in, voyaging on a sailboat, to be exact THIS old, 1931 schooner. Priceless, as in, beyond value. It sounds trite, or silly maybe to someone reading this blog. But it it true for me.
Today, that moment came when a pod of 4 dolphins swam around and around Mahdee in the still waters of the anchorage.
Yesterday, that moment came when a family of teeny tiny little ducks came swimming by the stern.
The day before yesterday, that moment came when at dusk, the Christmas lights twinkled on the Hotel Del Coronado–making it look like a fairytale castle over the water.
Last week, I smiled in the moment filled with the smell of seaweed and sight of all the tiny crabs scampering about on a seldom used mooring pickup line.
Last month, a misty daybreak with dewdrops sparkling on the wood combings gave us a breathtaking background to our routine of weighing anchor.
On the sail down the coast in October, the winds, waves, and sail combined such that moment after moment unfolded before me with all the reasons in the world to be thankful for this time sailing the Mahdee.
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Gee wiz, I didn’t realize that I still had pictures on the camera from…Santa Barbara harbor and Santa Cruz Island. Here are a couple:
First, a shot of the really lovely Santa Barbara Harbor that we ducked into to get away from the “thunderstorms and possible waterspouts” near the Northern Channel Islands. The maritime museum there had a lovely patch of zinnias that I had to photograph.
Then, some of the same questionable weather that kept following us around before and after Santa Barbara
Then, search for an anchorage on the North side of Santa Cruz Island. I kept thinking “I know it’s here somewhere!” and the second photo shows the “ah-ha, there it is!”
