Full moon - January 1, 2018

Norfolk, VA

In the middle of the night, maybe in a dream, I identified the man's voice and what he was speaking, that which I could not bring back last night - Zac speaking a poem from The Twenty, a dance/theater performance I was part of in November. Such a strong, calming timbre with these words that end the poem: 

"And here I am looking at the door
I'm hunting on the edges
And flying on the bridges
I'm the fire that ends a poem and starts a story." 

Cold in Norfolk so David and I drove south .... to Virginia Beach...... about 15 miles south..... hoping for warmth and a walk on the beach.... for heaven's sake...and for ours. We're both getting a bit stir-crazy, especially me.  So here we are on the lovely beach:

Virginia Beach, freezing our faces off!

Sunny, and a pretty sand beach with waves breaking and gulls squawking but, on my dear, really cold and windy, straight out of the north windy. We lasted barely long enough to take this photo and scat back to the car.

We did continue to drive into the town of VA Beach, an interesting mix of surf side high-rise hotels and condos and across the street those same bathing suit/tee shirt/ beachwear shops that we see in Old Orchard Beach, Atlantic Beach and other tourist beach fronts along the Atlantic and, I suppose, Pacific coasts.

Our road trip adventure continued in pursuit of a new little space heater. Ours gave up its fan and heating element earlier today. With temps in the low 20s tonight we wanted electricity in our heating tool kit, not willing to leave the propane heater on overnight. We're barely willing to leave the electric one on overnight. So off to Home Depot. No space heaters unless you wanted one that looked like a fireplace and would take up our entire galley walk space. YIKES, other people are cold and wanting heaters, too?  Try Lowe's. Yes! We bought two, just in case, even though we can only use one at a time with our electrical supply to the boat. And here they are with us on the boat:

cuddling with our new electric heaters

aluminum wrapped bubble insulation for pilot house windows

David wants to return the one I'm holding. We've tried them both, very similar except for physical size and on our compact boat, little is better in electric heaters. So we'll make another trip in the next couple of days.

It is going to stay cold and windy through the weekend, according to forecast. I'm not sure how this will effect our engine work...except that it will be cold. Hoping it doesn't delay the beginning...and completion. Know it will be chilly and hope the mechanic has figured how to support the engine without the doors having to be open!

The mechanic is supposed to arrive mid-morning Wednesday to start the removal of new engine mounts and the install of newer  mounts, fatter to help diminish the vibration transfer that is so obnoxious and uncomfortable. David, with me helping no doubt, will start rearranging our furniture, so to speak, making a cradle for the shaft and taking some parts off the engine. All this so that the mechanic can save some time, and us some money, when he arrives to work on Wednesday.

I'm pretty nervous about this fix. I think it is a good idea, that this notion of under-sized engine mount IS probably the issue and that the newly recommended ones with work done by this recommended mechanic can be successful. And, I'm nervous about our continuing south. Committed to the journey, wanting to get into warmth and excited about the "leap" to The Bahamas. The cold and the delays are wearing though, on body and confidence and adventuring spirit.

We celebrated the first day/evening of 2018 with a short howl at the brilliantly full moon and a dinner of rice, black-eyed peas and collards and chicken, about as southern a New Year's Day meal as one can imagine. It was DELICIOUS!! Even Amelia enjoyed the collards. Now that is a recommendation coming from that picky feline. 

While David did most of the cooking, I redistributed some of our stuff, partly in preparation for taking the engine "room" apart tomorrow. Ugh! BF ugh!! And I danced to Pat Benetar up in the pilot house. Dancing helps.     

So we continue...somewhat content in our discontentment, knowing that, at least for the moment, we have choices and enough resources to see some of the choices into action.  We are soooo lucky.

Joy