it was back to the little wicomico river for us for the labor day weekend. we were headed north again, first to solomons for engine work at drum point marine and then to cambridge for another MTOA rendezvous the week after, but first, a stop at tommy and marie's place in reedville. on the 3-hour run to their place, however, the wind was from behind and we rolled and rolled. i was busy in front of the computer but when i looked up from it finally, i realized that i wasn't feeling too well. so i got up and stepped outside, waited a bit, then threw up and i was fine again. downwind is really not my favorite direction. in any case, it's not the first time that i've been seasick and it certainly won't be the last, but it was the first time i actually barfed in YEARS and on my own boat, no less! okay, that was probably too much information but that is what happened. yes, even i get seasick on occasion. it didn't help that i spent all that time in front of the computer screen either. in any case, i did what i always do on those occasions - get it over with - because i always feel MUCH better immediately after.
the armstrongs also happened to have family over that weekend: tommy's dad, tom, tommy's sister and tommy's sister's husband, tim. yup - tom, tom, tommy and tim. we all had a good time chit-chatting away the night. conversation with the armstrongs is always very stimulating and animated. consuelo, again, had to put up with suzie, the 1-year-old brittany spaniel. she was certainly long-suffering, my poor old girl.
one of the interesting things that happened was that tommy and marie had gotten some oyster spat and a couple of floating cages and all of that needed to be put together. since none of us had any experience with this, all four of us went out on the dock with the two dogs and a handout with instructions. the spat had been picked up earlier in the day and were in a cardboard box with a frozen bottle of water to keep them cool. there were two net-what-looked-like "socks" of 500 baby oysters each which tommy said felt like barnacles when he touched them. they were transferred to another plastic net what-looked-like an envelope which was then sealed and attached to these floating cages with cable ties and the cages were then tied to the dock pilings so that they wouldn't float away. and that was it. you are just supposed to rinse them off every once in a while. it will be interesting to go back later on and check them out to see how much they've grown. these were sterile oysters - they are not going to reproduce - but they would at least do some filtering and you could eat them when the time came. well, let's see - if they all make it, then that is a thousand oysters! yum...
tom also went deep sea diving to clean off our propeller that weekend. unfortunately, those oysters were not given any time to clean up the water. he said he couldn't see a thing underwater and had to go by feel. better him than me, but i told him to be VERY CAREFUL. there is vibrio going around the Bay these days!
in any case, as always, we had a GREAT time with our friends. they, on the other hand, maybe think it's cool to have guests they don't have to clean up after because we bring our own house? as an added bonus, because of the holiday weekend, i had no work so i didn't have that hanging over my head.
labor day..... we are closing in on fall!
No comments:
Post a Comment