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!
