Visiting Tasha in Lander, Wyoming

Thur 19^th – Tues 24^th October

I was only home for a little over 24 hours and we were back on a plane from Boston to Salt Lake City on our way to visit Tasha for a long weekend. It had been pretty tricky trying to find a time when we were all free, but we finally managed to work it out. As we made our way to Lander, Tasha flew back from Tucson having spent the previous couple of weeks instructing on a climbing course. Our flights went well and Gloria and I really enjoyed the 4 hour drive up to Lander from Salt Lake City. The countryside is mostly “high desert” and it has a really wild feel the area. We arrived mid-Afternoon on Thursday and it was fabulous to see Tasha again. It has been ten months since we were all together, although I saw her very briefly in Red Rocks, NV in March.

Tasha looks fantastic, fit healthy and happy, and we had an awesome weekend. She is now living in Lander having just started a full time job working for the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) in their staffing office. It’s 70% time in the headquarters and 30% field work, so in reality she will get almost as much field work as she did whilst working on contract for NOLS but with full employment the rest of the year!

Lander is a small town of some 7500 people just to the west of the Wind River mountain range. It’s actually quite lovely with wide streets and a sleepy atmosphere, and beautiful countryside on it’s doorstep. We spent time visiting Sinks Hole canyon State Park to the west of the town, did some hiking and rock climbing there, and also made our way up into the mountains behind. Tasha had to work Friday and Monday, but that meant we were able to meet some of her colleagues and see where she works. As you might expect we checked out the restaurants in town and had great meals at the local Thai restaurant and a place called Cowfish. One highlight was dinner round at Tasha’s on Saturday night where we also met one of her friends (SJ) from NOLS. Sunday evening the three of gathered in our hotel room and got a takeaway meal (from the Thai restaurant) and watched the Patriots game. It was lovely just to hang out together.

The time passed all too quickly and after lunch on Monday Gloria and I jumped in the car and headed back to Salt Lake city to catch our overnight flight to Boston. Gloria was teaching lab the following afternoon so it was a bit of a tough schedule for her. Our trip was wonderful and it was so good to see Tasha again. It's great that we can now picture where she is when we talk on the phone. Happily she will fly out to the Virgin Islands and spend time with us at Christmas and New Year.

Next blog – Mike heads back to Norfolk to move back onto Cotinga and prepare for the rally!

Tasha drinking cocktails at "Cowfish"

Tasha hiking to Sinks Canyon Falls

A little bouldering !

Off Baldwin Creek Road

Off Baldwin Creek Road

 To the west of Sinks Canyon

Between Lander and Sinks Canyon

The main wall in Sinks Canyon

The main wall in Sinks Canyon

Sinks Canyon Falls

 The Green River, Wyoming

Friends and family - trip to the UK

10^th – 17^th October 2017

I was really keen to fly over to the UK and catch up with friends and family before heading off on Cotinga. My mum recently moved into a nursing home so I wanted to see how she was doing and ensure that she was settling in well. (Gloria, who is in the middle of the semester teaching, decided not to make this trip and enjoyed  a quiet week at home in Sudbury)

I arrived in Manchester on Wednesday morning after a direct flight form Boston. It was a bit of a rocky start when the car rental company wouldn’t accept the 3^rd party insurance I purchased through Expedia, then within 10 minutes of leaving the airport I clipped the passenger side wing mirror on a stone wall and knocked off the plastic housing. I didn’t think there was any damage until some time later I noticed the indicator bulb hanging down by its wire! Apparently I’ve been away too long and can now join the millions of other visitors to the UK who complain about how narrow the roads are!

Anyway, in many ways it was a great visit. My mum seems contented (most of the time) at Lostock Lodge. It’s a beautiful home that’s only been open a few months. The facilities and staff are lovely and from what I could tell the food looked fine. If I could get access to NFL games I could see living there myself! Unfortunately, when my mum isn’t on good form she doesn’t remember the circumstances that lead up to her living in the home and she feels her family has let her down because she is no longer living independently or with my sister Alison. We will have to keep working on that, but we all agree that it was the right move at the right time.

It was also great to catch up with many other members of my family and some of my friends. I loved seeing everybody, but I’m not sure I was on the best form. It was a bit of hectic schedule and I was already tired before I missed a complete nights sleep on the plane andI know from past experience that when I’m tired it tends to make me less positive and optimistic about the future. On this occasion I think it was a combination of things that made me feel somewhat less cheerful than usual. Being back in the UK always reminds me of so many happy times with friends and family, particularly when Tasha was young, but on this occasion I was knocked back by the sense of these times having passed, never to be repeated. No doubt part of this was prompted by seeing my mum getting so much older and wondering whether she thinks back on her life with happiness or if there are more times when she is filled with sadness about what can no longer be. Perhaps both, and I certainly hope that she spends more time with happy memories rather than reflecting on what is lost.

For much our married life, Gloria and I have struggled with the question of where to live. There is no easy answer and we long ago realized that there are pros and cons to living in the USA or UK. We have been happiest when we stop worrying about it and just get on with living our lives, wherever we are. Recently, we seem to have fallen back into the conundrum, trying to figure out where we should be in the future. I have really struggled to get past the 2016 election. It’s not that Donald Trump is a pig (and he is) that troubles me, but the fact that nearly half the voting population support(ed) him. I can’t seem to accept that so many of my fellow citizens thought that using a private email server was more outrageous than bragging about sexually assaulting women, to name but one of his disgusting behaviors. It makes me question whether I really belong in the USA. At the same time it appears that the UK is also a divided society facing great uncertainty and a difficult transition out of Europe. Clearly the life we lived in the UK is no longer there, and the reality is that with friends and family on both sides of the Atlantic there is no simple solution. I suspect the only answer is to accept that this is the case and make the most of it.

To be honest, I debated how much of this to include in the blog, but if we never comment on how we are feeling then it all seems a bit superficial.

Mike

Note: The following photos were all taken on my iPhone. It's a pretty good camera - except under low light conditions

My mum (Edyth - on left) having lunch with three new friends (Fred, Margaret, Barbara) at Lostock Lodge

The Roaches - an iPhone panorama taken whilst out for a walk with my friend Roger

Jessie - younger daughter of my niece Suzanne and husband Mark

Caitlin - older daughter of my niece Suzanne and husband Mark

East Greenwich, RI to Portsmouth, VA

Sunday 1^st – Tuesday 3^rd October 2017

The ARC 1500 rally doesn’t leave Portsmouth, VA until the first week in November, but for various reasons it suited us better to move the boat down to Portsmouth in early October and leave her on the dock. That way we could pick the best weather window and also free up time to make some family visits without the pressure of having to move Cotinga south.

Rod, Brian and Sandy joined me for this trip. Rod (Gloria’s brother) and Brian (a friend from Concord Acton squash club) will also be making the passage to Tortola. Sandy is a friend of Brian’s and joined the crew at the last minute to give us some extra support for this leg. I think we worked really well as a team!

As I sit at home a couple of days after the trip, some of the details have already become a little foggy! I know for certain that we left East Greenwich at just after 10 am on Sunday 1^st and dropped anchor off Hospital Point, Portsmouth at just before 10pm on Tuesday evening. We covered about 390 nautical miles in 60 hours, at an average speed of 6.5 knots. The weather was beautiful with cloudless skies for the first two days and then a few fine weather, fluffy clouds on the final day. We sailed as much as we could, but with light winds mostly from the north or north-east (downwind) we ended up motoring or motor-sailing for 38 out of the 60 hours.

During the days we ran an informal watch system, but at night (6pm – 7.30am) we ran a system based on a cycle of 90-minute watches, where each person would come on watch for 90 minutes, then spend the next persons watch relaxing in the cockpit, but supporting the new watch leader, then the following 3 hours down below sleeping. This seems to work pretty well and although tired, we all managed to get some sleep at night, augmented by naps during the day.

Having sent out the link for the AIS tracker website we were a little disappointed to hear that the system lost us shortly after we passed Montauk on Sunday night. We now realize that our class B system is VHF radio based (rather than the much more expensive class A satellite systems) and relies on being reasonably close to shore monitoring stations or other vessels that may relay positions. The lesson here is that if we drop off the system we probably haven’t sunk, but more likely that we are out of range of a monitoring station! From our point of view on the boat the AIS worked brilliantly and we were able to see and be seen by other vessels and we initiated, and responded to, a number of radio calls that helped clarify navigational issues.

I do want to mention “the one that got away”. On Monday we were dragging a cedar plug behind the boat on a ~100ft long piece of line when we hooked a Dolphin fish Mahi Mahi). We hauled in the line and landed the fish on the side deck … where it squirmed, spat out the hook and flipped over the side! This was a great disappointment. Despite not getting fresh fish, we did eat well (no surprise there!). Rod’ s wife Sue cooked us  a terrific lasagna that we ate on Sunday night. On Monday we had chicken and white bean casserole and on Tuesday, afteor r we arrived, we had Shepherds pie. For breakfast we ate bagels eggs on English muffins and some fruit. For lunches we had a variety of sandwiches. In truth we brought way more food than we needed and ended up bring a fair amount home again!

Everything on the boat seemed to work well. There were no breakages  or mechanical issues. The seas weren’t always that smooth, with short choppy waves on Monday morning and then swells from the east on Tuesday, but everyone seemed to feel fine. I personally put on a scopolamine patch on Sunday afternoon whilst still inside Narragansett Bay and that seemed to help me a great deal. I was able to function well on deck and inside the boat without feeling sick and was able to cook, send/receive satellite phone messages and even take a shower whilst under way! All of this helped me build confidence ahead of the big passage, where it could get a lot rougher.

We had fantastic sunrises and sunsets, but perhaps the most interesting part of the trip was the last 20 miles as we made our way from the Chesapeake Bay entrance up to Portsmouth, passing an astonishing amount of naval ships and facilities. All of this was done in the dark, with fairly tight channels, many other vessels and lights of all sorts everywhere. This took a lot of concentration from all of us over a couple of hours. At one point I was absolutely convinced the US navy had sent a drone to check us out, but after a few minutes it became clear it was just a South West Airline jet coming in really slowly over our heads for a landing in Norfolk. Perhaps it is just as well that we arrived at the anchorage shortly thereafter. We dropped hook just before 10pm, drank a cold beer and ate the wonderful Shepherds pie, before essentially collapsing. We woke at 7.30am on Wednesday morning, and after a quick breakfast, motored the last quarter mile to the Ocean Yacht marina in Portsmouth, where we filled up with diesel and docked the boat.

We spent Wednesday doing odd jobs and relaxing. In the evening we went over to the Bier Garden and ate some fine German food with excellent beer, finishing up the day with “dark and Stormy” cocktails (rum and ginger beer) on the boat. On Thursday we took a taxi to the local Avis shop, rented a car and drove home. We dropped Brian in Philadelphia to visit family, and Rod, Sandy and myself made it back up to Rhode Island and Massachusetts by early evening (about 12 hours). The drive was not the highlight of the trip and when we return to the boat at the end of the month we are seriously considering flying!

Mike

 Sunset Day 1

Sunset Day 1

Sunset Day 2

Sunrise Day 3

Sunrise Day 3

Sunrise Day 3

Approaching Chesapeake Bay Bridge

Choppy Seas morning Day 3

Choppy Seas morning Day 3

Brian, Sandy, Rod

Brian and Sandy

Brian

 Brian

Brian

Sandy

Sandy

Sandy

 Rod

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