Tuna Picatta

Tuna Picatta   …   Sun 19 July

As I write the words “Tuna Picatta” my mind is humming “Hakuna Matata”, the music from the Lion King . Don’t you hate when you get a tune stuck in your head? Anyway, we just finished eating an excellent meal – a piece of tuna that we bought frozen from the supermarket in Bath – sautéed in EVOO and left to “rest” in the oven. Then added butter and sautéed shallots and chopped fennel, added white wine (the finest box money can buy!) and reduced, lemon, capers and finally more butter (why not), and you have a meal fit for a king … served with white rice and green beans. To add to the ambience we have fog, rain, thunder and lightning. We are happy to be nestled in our cozy cabin.

It’s been an interesting few days. Thursday and Friday were pretty busy. On Friday we took out 11 guests on two 2-hour sails, as well as running a “Ruth” cruise in the morning. However, Saturday, which is usually a very full day of “Ruth” trips, was a total bust due to poor weather. We awoke to fog and showers, then strong southerly winds in the afternoon with a small craft advisory. We cancelled the whole day and Gloria and I took a ride to Portland to see if her sewing machine could be repaired. No joy on the repair. The man in the shop said that it smelled like the board had burned out and he knew that there are no longer replacement parts available. So he said in all honesty that he didn’t want to take our money on false pretenses and so we used the money we would have spent on repairs buying another second hand machine. We have been concerned that running a sewing machine off a “modified sign wave” inverter, which generates a fair approximation of 120V alternating current from our 12V DC batteries, was the cause of the problem. But we now suspect this a red-herring and we just got unlucky with the old machine. The “new” one seems to work just fine.

Today the weather was foggy to start with, but we ran one “Ruth” trip in the late morning and also a two-hour sail on “Cotinga” in the afternoon. In both cases the customers only signed up at the last minute and Matt, the dock master had to drive over in the launch to let us know both were happening! In the afternoon, we were literally about to jump in the dinghy and go do our grocery shopping when Matt appeared. We scrambled to get things ready and were on teh dock in 10 minutes! The afternoon trip turned out to be part sail and part motor-sail as we did our best in fluky winds and patches of dense fog. We did see some porpoises, which was nice, and I actually think our guests really enjoyed themselves!

One of the great things about this life is meeting the customers. We’ve had a few strange coincidences – guests from Concord Acton squash club (where I play), a former high school teacher from Lincoln Sudbury High School (where Tash went to school), people who live in sight of Framingham State University (where we work during the academic year) and people from Cheshire who knew former colleagues of ours at AstraZeneca in Alderley Park. But the most amazing coincidence happened on Thursday. We had two bookings - a family of three from Atlanta and, quiet separately, a man from London. As the conversation progressed the guy from London talked about a very close friend in Atlanta who has a son, who is his god-son, as well as a younger daughter called Ruth. It turned out that the family from Atlanta not only knew these people, but the daughter was best friends with Ruth. They were understandably very excited and had photos taken together so they could convince their mutual friend.

On the boating front I want to mention that docking was perhaps our biggest source of anxiety prior to starting the season, not least because of Gloria’s accident last year. We were thinking about it this afternoon and we reckon we have now been on and off the dock with “Cotinga” more than 50 times this season and I have also done close to 100 dockings with the “Ruth”. I can’t say they are all pretty, but on the whole they seem to go pretty well and I feel my skills are improving. I think it will be  agreat thing in the future not to be so worried about docking and to feel that we have learned some tricks that we can apply in different circumstances.

p.s. our radar unit is in-transit from Simrad – hopefully repaired. It’s being shipped Fedex from New Hampshire, over ground via Memphis, Tennessee. I kid you not!

Mike

Sebasco Dock ... the Ruth on her mooring (close to the dock - on left of photo) with Cotinga visible in the background (Red sail cover)

Sunday morning - pea-soup fog

Sunday morning - pea-soup fog