Category Archives: Fine Craft

What I’ve most looked forward in taking this trip is getting to know island culture, Bahamian life.  All the way down the coast of the US and now along the islands in the Exumas we have befriended many other cruisers.  The seasoned sailors have generously taken us under their wings with expert advice and generous camaraderie in every little port.  Without it this would be a very different sort of trip.

Still, what I’ve looked forward to knowing is Bahamian culture, and I’ve gotten a good glimpse of it now at both Black Point settlement and at Little Farmer’s Cay during their 5Fs (Farmer’s First Friday in February Festival), which includes a sailing regatta of Class C Bahamas Sloops.

Black Point settlement is an island community of working class families.  If you are ashore early enough you see the school children starting their day in their crisp dark green uniforms with pale yellow shirts.  Both boys and girls wear ties to complete their outfits.  Women work at various entrepreneurial businesses.  Lorraine’s Internet Café is the most popular eatery on the island.  Lorraine asks for reservations a day or so ahead of time so she can be sure to have the food on hand (this is very typical in the Bahamas where food has to be brought in by boat).  Lorraine will advertise a particular night’s dinner buffet on the main VHF radio channel which all cruisers listen to, and they’ll either stop ashore to make their reservation or call her on the same radio channel.  We went to a Wednesday evening buffet that included jerk chicken, ribs, sliced grilled steak, Bahamas macaroni and cheese, cole slaw, peas and rice, fried fish, and probably a few more things I’ve now forgotten.  About 50 people came to this dinner, so she had her hands full cooking for all of us.

At the far left of this photo you can see the addition which Lorraine added which is computer room.  There is a counter at desk height that runs around the perimeter of this room with outlets every few feet above the counter.  This is a hot spot every day for visiting cruisers who want to check the internet.  She offers this for free with the suggestion of a donation. You can also have lunch or a snack there while surfing the net. I spent about 4 hours there one day!

I learned that whoever hears that you are going to Black Point will ask if you to get them a loaf a bread from Corene.  Her cinnamon bread and coconut bread are famous among sailors!  Without realizing it, I met her as we were returning from our big dinner at Lorraine’s.  We were walking back to our dinghy about 8pm when we saw a group of women sitting on the porch of a house plaiting palm fronds into long woven strips.  At this time of night in January, it is completely dark, and the women were working by the lights on the porch, sitting in lawn chairs, chatting.  It looked like something they did together on a regular basis.

When I came to get my bread the next morning, I realized that the bakery house was also the house with the front porch where the women were making baskets.  I asked Corene where I could buy her baskets that I’d heard were for sale somewhere.  She took me to the cute cottage next door, a smaller version of her house, where the one main room was filled with the baskets of all the women who sit and weave with her in the evenings.  I chose a large market basket that she had made by hand-sewing the long strips of plaited palm fronds together to form a tote bag.  Then she invited me into her kitchen to get the two loaves of coconut bread, one for us and one for friends who couldn’t make it to Black Point.  I can’t promise that bread will still be around by the time we see our friends on Camelot.  It would be such a shame for it to go stale! I highly recommend coconut bread, which I believe is a typical sweet, white bread dough that is rolled out and spread with mixture of butter, sweetened coconut, sugar and cinnamon, then rolled up and put into a standard loaf pan to rise and bake.  Delicious!

Black Point is well known for having the best laundromat in all of the Bahamas. Can you imagine having that kind of fame?  Well, now I’ve seen it, and it is well deserved! This is also a converted house.  The downstairs has one large room with windows that overlook a limestone ledge with views of Grand Bahamas Bank, with its blue waters that shade from aquamarine and emerald in the shallower spots to cobalt blue in the deeper areas.  Water and sky in amazing shades of blue as far as you can see.  No one ever had a better view while doing such a mundane chore.  The laundry room is bright white and pristine, with twelve washing machines and twelve dryers.  It’s just hard to turn your back on the view in order to fold clothes on the folding tables!  There is a small side room in the laundromat that offers a few basic provisions for sale, and the owner herself also gives haircuts while your laundry is going.  Her clients sit in a plastic lawn chair on the limestone ledge while she cuts their hair.  No need for clean up as the hair trimmings blow right out to sea!  Now she wins my vote as the most entrepreneurial woman ever! Oh, and did I mention that laundry is only $3.50 a load? ….in such a remote place she could charge 5 times that much and we’d all be thankful to pay it!

There are various other small businesses on the island, run mostly by women and a few men.  When Corene happened to tell us that she was born and raised on Black Point and that she and her husband had lived in their lovely white stucco house with bright green trim for many years now, Bob asked her what her husband does on the island.  We’d seen a few groups of men just hanging around together outside during the days while we visited the island.  Corene said her husband was currently out of work, along with some other men.  They had all worked as fishermen for a man who owned a big boat.  The owner had taken sick a few months ago and quickly died.  The fishermen do not have the resources to fish for themselves or to buy a boat to share.  I was moved by Corene’s acceptance of this hardship and her confidence that she could provide what they needed.

Last night was the very first calm winds since arriving in the Bahamas two weeks ago.  It almost felt like a protected harbor in New England, rather than a bit of water between two cays, which it really was….

We are in Little Farmer’s Cay for the “Farmer’s First Friday in February Festival, ” or 5Fs, as it is known.  Part of this festival is a sailing race of Bahamian sloops.  There are a few of these boats on the island, and on the morning of the festival the large mail boat brings in a few more with crew.  This morning around 8am, we did see the mail boat “My Captain” arrive with three Bahamian sloops on the foredeck and a crowd of passengers milling on deck listening to blaring island music.  The little cay of Farmer’s is now pulsing with excitement!

And the wind is picking up as predicted.   The race should be quite adventurous, with East winds kicking up to over 20 mph and gusting to near 30.  Bob went ashore earlier to volunteer for a crew position on one of the sloops.  He came back to tell me that he is being considered for a spot on “Thunderbird.”  He’s got the camera so I cannot document what I’m watching right now through binoculars.  I don’t know if he has been accepted, but the captain of “Thunderbird” seems to be putting Bob through some paces:  making him do quite a bit of the hard work rigging this sloop which is bouncing dramatically at the dock of Little Farmer’s Cay Yacht Club.  It looks like most of the Bahamians are relaxing on the dock chatting together while Bob works solo to hank on the main sail.  I’m wondering if they are waiting to see if Bob will get seasick. I think they’ll wait a long time for that, so I’m betting Bob will be accepted to crew for the race.

And I’m not sure what I think of that.  He took his inflatable life jacket with him, but I have to wonder what the procedure is if someone goes overboard.  From what I barely understand about Bahamian sloops, the biggest asset of having crew is ballast.  The crew are expected to shift sides on every tack and to hike out as far as possible to balance the huge sail.  Will they stop to pick up a crewman gone overboard?  Will there be a chase boat for this eventuality?

Right now I’m watching a golf cart motor out onto the dock to pick up other supplies that the mail boat brought for this festival:  crates food and drink.  I was on that dock last evening, so I know it doesn’t seem sturdy enough for a golf cart full of supplies.  Hmmm… this is not giving me confidence about the safety of things around here. Wish I could manage some photos of Bob, but he’s got the camera!

Now Bob is back on the dock, and the captain is on board looking at the sail, probably checking Bob’s handiwork.  I also know that Bob is at least as agile as any of the Bahamian men, so I think it’s time to start worrying about his safety during this race.

Some of the boats are sailing around the harbor now, but I can no longer see “Thunderbird.”  There are only two or three men on each boat, so I’m rather surprised that any of them would need volunteer crew members. The booms on these boats extend well beyond the stern, at least half again as long as their length on deck, and the mast is quite far forward on the deck.  The sails are huge. I can’t tell if the sails can be reefed down in the kind of wind we have today.  Should be interesting!

There is much to get used to in Paradise.  The winds are always howling, there are no calm harbors or anchorages, and there are no proper dinghy docks.  These are pretty big hurdles for me, but in my experiences of sailing throughout New England and the Chesapeake the water is not nearly as beautiful as here, the beaches not nearly as white, and the fish not nearly as colorful!  I guess I have to jump these hurdles in order to enjoy such amazing beauty.

We are in Big Major’s Spot right now, which is right near Staniel Cay, famous for Thunderball Grotto, that was used in the James Bond movie.  Big Major’s Spot is also well known for its wild pigs, and I have to admit that I’ve had a couple of nightmares about those pigs!

But aren’t they cute??  So far they have not tried to attack any dinghies, so perhaps this is a quiet year for them… or the rumors are greatly exaggerated!

There are a number of small cays here that form an anchorage that I would not call calm but certainly isn’t as challenging as our previous stops, and there are pearly sand beaches on each of these islands where the shelling is rather good.  The currents rip between the islands creating sandbars full of beautiful marine life, but you can only gather shells on these sandbars at slack tide.  I will be thrilled if I can collect a few sand dollars today or tomorrow.

From one of these lovely beaches I walked out a ways in the clear shallow waters with Mary, from Sanity II, who had spotted this sea star as she dinghied in to the beach.  When I called Bob over to see he couldn’t resist picking it up and posing.

At today’s slack low tide we plan to swim into Thunderball Grotto, and Bob will bring both of his underwater cameras!  I thought that the grotto would be teaming with people each day, but yesterday only four people went in, and I’m hoping we’ll be as lucky today.

I’m zipping through a knitting project that I’ve designed myself with yarn I bought in England about 5 ½ years ago.  More on that if I ever get better internet coverage! Maybe by then I will be assembling it so that my description will be documented with photos.  Ever hopeful….

Many thanks to our son Chris, who takes our SSB (single side band) transmissions and posts them for us and figures out where to put the photos!

You can still follow our progress here:

Looks like tomorrow is the day.  Wish I could sleep through the whole passage thing.  But I guess once it’s over (and I’ve survived it, hopefully) it will be one less scary thing I’ve been hoping to avoid!  The reward will be island hopping through some lovely tropical waters…..

Yesterday was all about me!  We were invited for cocktails aboard Sea Schell along with others from nearby boats, and Melinda came up the companion way with a lovely chocolate cake for me!  Nothings beats wine and chocolate!…before dinner!

I blew out all my candles, so I better get my wish! (something along the lines of Beethoven’s “Calm Seas Prosperous Voyage”)

Then Bob and I went ashore to a lovely restaurant called Serafina Trattoria for a marvellous dinner out on their terrace overlooking one of Ft. Lauderdale’s many canals.  Life is good!

Today we finished our chores, and now we are battening things down.  Today we saw manatees right near the dinghy dock, eating leaves from bushes that overhang the water!

And an iguana!

And a crazy guy playing with his cool jet toy.  Bob ended up crossing paths with the crew later in the day and found out that they paid $100,000 for that toy. They plan to sell rides on it, although it looks to me like you’d need some skill to control that thing!  I wonder how many rides they have to sell to break even?

I’ll finish up with another knitting joke.  It describes me so well….what I’ll work on for the next few months.

Starting tomorrow we won’t have reliable internet, so I won’t be posting here as regularly as I’d like.  Hopefully I’ll be ‘chillaxing’ in a tropical breeze looking at a pearly white beach across an expanse of gin clear water….  one can hope!

Our return home was truly magical, and our first Christmas here has been wonderful!….complete with a powdered sugar dusting of snow on Christmas Eve! This is not my house, but a well known inn in our little town…. photo taken by Mark Cappitella.

We’ve seen lots of family and friends, and I’ve slept in my ‘cloud bed’ which I dearly miss whenever I’m away from home.  Rob and Chris have joined me in the kitchen cooking and baking some of our favorite recipes.

And Santa brought me a wonderful surprise!  A beautiful painting done by a tapestry weaver who feels like a friend even though we’ve never met in person.  I’ve followed her blog for years, and we’ve emailed over several years, so I feel like I know her.  I’m talking about Kathy Spoering who maintains a wonderful website on top of painting and weaving such beautiful images.  She’s a very talented woman, and I’m so happy to have one of her paintings.  I’m going to put it in my bedroom where I’ll see it every morning when I wake up!  (At least for the next 10 days or so before we head back to our life on board Pandora!)

Seeing this painting each morning makes me so happy!  A great start to the day.  Kathy’s other offerings are in her etsy shop Yellow Dog Tapestries.

There has been a bit too much celebrating to spend any time in my studio (except to hunt for things and realize how much re-organizing lies in my future).  Today I will finally spend a day working on my pear tapestry.  Can’t ask for a better day, with the threat of coming snow and plenty of good food in the house!

We are in Eau Gallie, Florida now and have spent four days here with a group called the Seven Seas Cruising Association.  Every December they gather here for socializing and learning from various well known sailors who volunteer to give seminars.  This year we were lucky to meet both Chris Parker, our weather router (guru) and Jimmy Cornell who has written a number of cruising books that are well known to sailors. We also met Jimmy Cornell’s daughter, Doina, who has written a book herself about growing up on a circumnavigation, Child of the Sea.

I’ve been hearing about this town called “Oh! Gollie!” or “Oh! Gallie” and wondering how on earth it got its name.  It turns out it is “Eau Gallie,” and since it sits at the water’s edge that explained the ‘eau’ to me.  But what about Gallie?  I’ve just learned that ‘gallie’ is French (galet) for rocky and the two words together are ‘rocky water.’  The town is named for the coquina rocks that abound here.  Still, it’s fun to say…. Eau Gallie!

This has been an exciting weekend for me!  I have met a weaver from Ontario! Her name is Lois, and she is sailing south to the Bahamas with her husband on their boat Astar.  She has a large 8-shaft LeClerc, a 10-shaft draw loom, and the same 8-shaft Baby Wolf that I have.  She knits and spins as well, so we had a lot to discuss!  One of her wheels is the same Lendrum (made in Canada) that I have.  We both had our knitting with us.  She has her OHS certificate of excellence in weaving and has worked in some capacity for that organization. She is a member of very large guild in the Ontario area. I can’t wait to learn more about that. She has heard of my regional guild, MAFA (Mid Atlantic Fiber Association), but not my new regional guild NEWS (New England Weavers Seminar). We both started weaving in the mid-70s.  It is so wonderful to have finally found another weaver!

Another woman mentioned to me that she knows of two weavers that she has met while sailing.  She promised to find them in her list of contacts and give me their names.  I made connections with these women and others during a seminar called Women and Cruising.  This seminar was for those of us women who are new to living aboard.  It was a time for us to express our concerns or fears or voice our hopes in finding other women who have similar interests.  There were birders and shell collectors and bridge players…..  One woman who has her sewing machine aboard along with bins and bins of fabric told me her wonderful experience from last winter.

In the Bahamas she likes to weave traditional baskets of local materials.  I think she called it ‘silver grass’ or something like that.  She said the local women taught her to weave these baskets.  At some point she learned that some of the women have no access to the basket materials they need because it grows in places that are only accessible by small boat.  She used her dinghy to harvest some of this basket fiber and brought it to the women who needed it.

What a lovely way to connect with the local culture, to make friends and learn something so precious!  I hope I will find opportunities like this! Doina Cornell’s tales of spending her childhood sailing around the world with her family were also full of the experiences she had living in such varied cultures from all around the world.  The weekend was rich with amazing experiences and valuable insights!

Walking about with my knitting led other women to talk to me about their own knitting projects.

 Oh!  I must not forget to mention that I finished my Ann Jacket!  Woohoo!  Just for the record I finished it on December 5th, in plenty of time to wear home!  And since I cannot let my needles lie silent I have moved on to the “Ruffle Wrap Cardigan,” and it is practically knitting itself.  Every time I knit what feels like a couple of rows an entire body section is finished.  If only all sweaters would knit up this quickly!  I have finished the back and both fronts, so yesterday I started the first sleeve while walking around the SSCA conference.  The sleeves are the first opportunity to use the fun ribbon that gets knitted into this design.  Wow!  That ribbon is really over the top….perhaps a bit garish?  I’m wondering if I have the guts to wear this when I finish….

We are homeward bound!  Today we will sail down to Vero Beach and will have dinner with our friends who have a house there and split their time between living on the Connecticut River in the summer, in Vero for fall, and on board their boat Camelot for winters in the Bahamas.  Then Monday I will get a rental car in preparation for our trip to the airport, and I’ll do our last minute laundry.  Tuesday we fly home!  I will have 1500 hundred miles under my belt and three full months onboard.  The first tiny drip of experience in what Bob hopes will be many, many experiences living onboard.

Day 90, December 9th: Eau Gallie to Vero Beach.

Who said it won’t feel like Christmas in the tropics??  I believe I said that….

Well, we are really getting in the spirit down here, in spite of palm trees, mangroves, and dolphins!  The lights of St. Augustine are about as festive as you could see anywhere, and in New Smyrna we were treated to a Christmas parade of boats!

During the afternoon and early evening quite a few boats passed us along the waterway on their way to the gathering spot for the parade.

I could see something sparkling bright blue long before we got close to this boat.  It was the flash of the mermaid’s sequined evening gown!  This boat wins the prize!  It was as much fun to see in daylight as it was to see in the parade after dark!

We think about 40 boats went by during the parade.  We gave high marks for the boat that looked like a sea monster (or perhaps Jules Vern’s “Nemo”), the pirate ship, and a sport fisherman decked out as an alligator.

Well, this will be one of those moments best left to memory!  We took a lot of boring videos with my phone, and a few still shots.  Have you ever tried to take photos of moving objects in the dark without a tri-pod?  Yeah….

It was a lovely evening at anchor in New Smyrna.  We were joined by friends from Mystic who are also headed south for the first time, just like us!  Ted and Ginnie are aboard Firecracker which is a sister boat to Pandora.  What a treat to be traveling with friends from home! We combined efforts for dinner, had lots of wine, and enjoyed the parade! Traveling together from St. Augustine we saw our first mangroves, lots of dolphins, and Ted reported that he saw a manatee!  Now we are really on the look out!

Along the way to Cocoa we traveled past Fort Matanza (I need to catch up on Henry Plummer’s visit 100 years ago), Daytona Beach,  and New Smryna which was originally settled by Greek immigrants.  Cocoa looks lovely, and I plan to find out shortly.  There is even a knitting shop!

Going past Daytona

We had been warned that Florida is the waterway of bridges, and boy, it is so true!  In Daytona we went through five bridges in the space of one mile, and three of them were draw bridges that required waiting for opening.  To get to Cocoa we went through three more.  And supposedly this is nothing compared to what lies ahead!

How nice to decorate a bridge for the sailors who pass under it!

Knit and Stitch in Cocoa, Florida

Day 82, Dec. 1st: St. Augustine to New Smyrna
Day 83, Dec. 2nd: New Smyrna to Cocoa
Day 84, Dec. 3rd: Lay day in Cocoa

Just a moment away from tales of our journey, and tales of my knitting on board, to share some great things I found online in the past couple of days.

Prince Charles trying his hand at tapestry at the Australian Tapestry Workshop in Melbourne.  Really!  It’s not that scary! Actually, I’m sure he’s hamming it up for the press.  He is a wonderful supporter of the wool industry.

And this lovely image of a woman knitting….

Some highlights from the past week are all about food!  What better balm is there for terribly dreary weather?  We stayed on the docks in Savannah for a couple of nights and treated ourselves to some of the high spots of Savannah.

I discovered the Tea Room almost 20 years ago and have visited it each of the rare times I’ve been in Savannah since then.  In fact, I’ve been mail ordering their “Emperor’s Bride” loose tea for all those years.  This year I had “Red Fruits” black tea, and it is my new favorite. As you can see, there is a lot to choose from.

The store and the dining room is done with an “Arts and Crafts” theme that is really lovely!  I could live here…..

On another day, our friends from Brilliant recommended we all have lunch together at Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room.  What an experience!  You line up on the street with about a thousand other hungry people, and you are admitted to the dining room a table’s worth at a time.  Most of the tables seat between 6 and 12 people, so you are seated with others when a table becomes available.  You don’t order food; there is no printed menu.  Food just arrives at the table in large serving dishes, and you help yourself to what appeals to you.  I have never seen so much food on a table!  It’s more than Thanksgiving!  I think some of these dishes must always be on the menu:  fried chicken, black eyed peas, Brunswick stew, barbecued pork, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, rutabaga, squash, green beans, candied sweet potatoes…..I’m sure I’m forgetting at least a dozen other dishes.  It was amazing.  The only thing you have a choice on is your drink, which can be sweetened or unsweetened iced tea, or water!

This is the little alley-way that leads into the dining room.  When we arrived at 12 noon the line was already down the street.

And here’s a shot of the table!

Oh yeah….just looking at this photo shows several dishes I forgot to mention!  Baked bean,  cornbread, biscuits….. it was amazing!

I’m not going to mention the three days it took us to get to St. Marys, Georgia.  The weather has just been so dreary that it’s best not to talk about it….best for me to just put it behind me.  I will say I had another day with some rather severe homesickness….

St. Marys (and it is not St. Mary’s) is just over the border from Fernandina Beach, Florida.  I mean literally.  I think the two towns would be connected if not for the border.  Well, maybe that is a slight exaggeration.  They do share the same harbor entrance that splits before you reach either town.  And that means that moments after we leave here we will be in Florida.  Wow!

In the meantime, we intend to have a marvelous few days here, and it’s going quite well at the moment since today I awoke to sunny skies for the first time in about two weeks!  Every night leading up to Thanksgiving there is some kind of evening get together for sailors in this town, or morning coffee and treats at one of the local shops.  They have a tradition here of taking good care of sailors for Thanksgiving!  I don’t know how they do it, but each year they serve Thanksgiving dinner to about 200 sailors.  “They” supply the turkeys and the sailors supply all the side dishes and desserts.

I’m off to shop for my contribution so I can bake tomorrow.

….Oh! And last night I wore my Ann Jacket for the first time….sans sleeves, but still, I wore it!

It starts with a latte made by Bob.  It’s a great way to start the day!  I highly recommend it!

Then, of course, there is knitting.  I knit everyday.  And I plan meals… both those activities go without saying.

On this trip our new tradition is to read from The Boy, Me and the Cat at some point each day.  This is a classic cruising tale about a man, Henry Plummer, and his teenage son who sailed a small catboat down the coast from Massachusetts to Florida during the fall/winter/spring of 1912-1913…. exactly a hundred years ago!  Some things haven’t changed at all during the past century, and some things are light years different…

Henry started his journey a full month after we did.  So, after all my complaining about being cold, I’m now reading how he woke to mornings with icy decks and had to break the ice in the basin in order to have a wash up.  Yikes!  I don’t know anything about hardship, do I?

Some of most entertaining parts of the book involve the antics of Henry’s cat, Scottie, who was drafted into the trip.  She is a feisty little thing, and with no ‘kitty kibble’ onboard her meals are always interesting…

Eleven years ago Bob and I worked on a new edition of this book.  I edited the text and chose some of Henry’s original photos to add to his wonderful line drawings, and Bob worked on all the details of getting the book republished.  It came out in 2001, bankrolled by The Catboat Association, who are the repository for all of the Plummer family’s many treasures related to this book.  Our edition got very high praise from Wooden Boat Magazine, Elizabeth Meyer (founder of IYRS) and even Walter Kronkite!…among others.  We are very proud of this edition, and we worked hard to include lots of information that the previous editions (and subsequent editions too) could not.   This is the only edition that includes Henry’s photos and appendices that include his correspondence from that time, newspaper articles about him, and family information and what became of the Mascot.  It’s a great story whether you read our version of one of the others….but our edition has the most to offer!

So, as we sit anchored in Beaufort, North Carolina, we are reading about Henry’s visit here in early December of 1912.

Turned out at 5 to find all quiet, still and dark. So quiet that from the quarter I could hear the ticking of our little clock.  So calm that each star was mirrored on the water.  Away under power by 7.  Out into a golden sunrise the pride and beauty of the day.  Here was a morning for sun worshippers to kneel.  Sea and sky melted into one great glory in the east and behind us faded into soft pearly mists in which horizons were lost, and we seemed to be floating in air.  So flat the bosom of the sea that the meanest stepmother in the land would have been proud to call it hers.  The duck feathers floated on the surface as lightly as — well, I can’t think just how lightly now, but gosh-dinghed lightly.  We turned her on a 20 mile leg southwest at 8, and sailed all morning on this wonderful sea.  Why can’t somebody come here and tell people of the beauties to be found?

You can see why we look forward to each day’s installment!  Henry Plummer was one of the first adventurers to sail these waters for pleasure.

This evening we will have a little party onboard for other sailors we keep bumping into (not literally!).  We will finish the last of that peck of oysters!

I’m feeling a tad homesick these days…..so I can’t stop taking photos of houses…. these are  the lovely houses in St. Michaels.

Days 15 and 16, Sept. 25 and 26: St. Michaels

There is a yarn store here which I’ve visited in past years, Frivolous Fibers, which just might be the friendliest yarn store ever!  When I got there yesterday there was hardly room to peruse the yarn shelves because there were so many women lounging together working on projects.  It wasn’t a class; it was a gathering, and it happens every Tuesday! They invited me to find a seat and join them.   These are my people!  Women were working on sweaters and afghans, lace shawls, cowls….you name it!  They were discussing books, knitting, grandchildren, husbands.  It felt like home.  It felt like my wonderful knitting group from NJ… I miss them SO much!

Back on board Pandora for a little ‘wine and roses’ before dinner.

Then back ashore for dinner at Ava’s, a wine bar and brick oven pizzeria.  Wonderful!