Crooked Island, Bahamas

Wind: SW 20 knots
0 nm

I managed to get the last two weeks posted today, after much delay. I have reams of pictures to post, too, but haven’t got around to that yet. Soon, I promise. I also downloaded a bunch of other people’s blogs for casual computer reading, which I am now devouring voraciously. I’m so pleased with my computer’s ability (heretofore unknown) to download things for offload reading. I know it’s the most basic of digital magic, but I’m still impressed by it every time. So I was able to catch up on my sister’s blog, my favorite of all the website’s I read. (There’s a link to the right, people. Read it.)

Reading other websites also assuages my guilt for reading myself. If I read, that means I can justify other people reading me. Good Lord, must I feel guilt for everything? I went all out in a guilt bidding war with a Catholic at one time, who claimed that he couldn’t leave a store without buying something because he felt too guilty. I said that I felt guilty for buying anything because of (take your pick): the Chinese children working in sweatshops that made the thing, the materials with which it was made, probably of fossil-fuel-derived plastics or clear-cut old-growth timber, the global warming involved in transporting it to its current location, and, heck, spending money on anything that isn’t absolutely essential to continuing life (water, for instance. I should be able to live off body fat. Then again, water comes freely from the sky. So anything).

My sister’s blog is wonderful, though. I don’t know how she makes the adventures of her little daughter such apt parables for contemporary life, but she does. She always inspires me to write more like her, but I’m not sure I can. She also writes only once in a while, making each entry precious and to be savored. I keep thinking maybe I should do that, but I fear I lack the discipline to keep writing unless I do it every day. I’m a little obsessive-compulsive by nature (back in my running days, I one time ran every day for almost 160-odd days straight. As soon as I skipped a day, I stopped altogether for several months). It brings me to an interesting dilemma as I face an extended boring sojourn in the States. Can I find enough items of interest to blog about daily while we’re there? I do look forward a great deal to writing about our culture shock. I’m sure that we’ll be surprised by unexpected aspects of our reintroduction to our native land after six months away. Other things I’m expecting. We’re probably going to be scared by all the white people. And I know that watching television again is going to be addictive and revolting, and it’s going to fill me with vast amounts of insecurity. But do you really want to read for weeks on end about Melissa’s insecurities? I think not.

Maybe I’ll just do shorter more multi-media focused blog entries, photographs, video clips, excerpts from what I’m reading. I intend to read as much as I possibly can while we’re away. The Southern Massachusetts library system as inter-library loan with all of the libraries of the greater Boston Metropolitan area, including all the universities and the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. I made use of that resource before we left, but not nearly as much as I should have, in retrospect. I intend to have out thirty books at a time while we’re there. Not just sailing books, but history, non-fiction, as much modern fiction as I can check out. I’m going to gorge myself on books, if the television doesn’t suck me in, chew me up, and spit me out.

I also want to start doing yoga again, which I hope will inspire me to begin a yoga regimen on the boat, something I have always intended but never followed through with. I love the yoga instructors at the local Y, but I hope they don’t charge me a fortune to visit them if I’m only there for a month. I’ve tried to do a lot of thinking about my goals while I’m in the States so that I can feel like I’m really using my time well while I’m there, but I know most of it’s going to be spent doing research and buying stuff online. Ick. Then there’s the time to budget for fun: visiting all of our friends and family, going out to all of our old favorite spots, eating all the food we’ve been craving (let me just make a list: Chinese, Thai, Indian, Japanese, Italian....), going on at least one overnight backpacking trip, hanging out with my brother in Boston and doing all the city things I’ve been craving--galleries, museums, plays, concerts, foreign films...

All of this sounds very expensive. Still, it’s our vacation from our vacation. So if you get bored, check back in a couple of months. I should be back to all our old adventures by then: exploding on-board plumbing, secluded anchorages, fat fish, and us trying not to kill each other.