Fort Pierce, Florida, Birthplace of Maggie May Everything tastes so much better when you have reached the far side of an unexpected ordeal. My coffee this morning. The new box of Walkers shortbread I just opened. The breakfast eggs and potatoes Bill made. Some 16 hours ago I thought there would be no more breakfasts on the Maggie May. Just for about 60 seconds,…
At 2:00 am I look up from my book to see Bill sleeping deeply, his sleeping bag gripped tightly around him against the cold. The dim blue light cast by a night vision night light pulls his face out of utter darkness. He’s just a face and a cocoon of maroon puffs of sleeping bag. It’s his turn to keep watch, but these may…
ST. MARY’S RIVER, 11-5-2020 — Yesterday afternoon we sailed up the St. Mary’s River on a light wind from the southeast. This river, which we have returned to several times over the past months, runs southward from its headwaters to its mouth at the lower stretches of the Potomac. Along the way it twists and turns making for good Maggie May protection from any…
One of the hardest things about this journey—beyond the heat and cold, the financial stress, fear and self doubt, the trying to live in a confined space with another (albeit lovable) human being, the banging my head on the bulkhead every damn time I go to the aft cabin—has been the absence of a mission. I anticipated that Bill and I would both be…
Summer on the Chesapeake Bay, in five lines:
Hot, humid, thunderstorm.
Bald eagle tries to steal fish from osprey. Osprey crying out indignantly, loses fish.
Great blue heron barks at both of them, at no-one, at everyone and the general effrontery of the world.
Hot, humid, storm.
Jellyfish.
Summer on the Chesapeake Bay, in five lines:
Hot, humid, thunderstorm.
Bald eagle tries to steal fish from osprey. Osprey crying out indignantly, loses fish.
Great blue heron barks at both of them, at no-one, at everyone and the general effrontery of the world.
Hot, humid, storm.
Jellyfish.