The last week of summer

I have a few more kitchen projects to post about (and get done before I start school again next week and life gets crazy), but this week the only DIY I’m doing is this:

Beautiful, right? It’s the anchor chain for my mom's and stepdad’s boat, Aviva, which I’m sailing on with them this week. They’ve both retired, rented out their home, and as of this week are living aboard Aviva full time in a new phase of their lives. I’m spending the week with them sailing in Rhode Island, and the above photo is just a little project I helped them with as they were getting a few to-dos taken care of before we launched. The chain needs to be marked distinctively every 30 feet so when they lower it they know how much chain they’ve let out, so fortunately they had my master painting skills available. Not my best work, but also not my worst….

Here are a few other photos from the trip so far.

This is Aviva:

 My mom and stepdad, Fred, at the wheel (my mom was captain that day, but they stood together for the photo):

On our third day, we traveled from our anchorage in the Sakonnet River to Newport Harbor through very heavy fog. At times we couldn’t see more than 100 yards, which was pretty eery. We couldn’t see land for a couple of hours, and my job was to sit at the very front (Titanic-style) and scan back and forth looking for anything in our path. I swear after like 15 minutes I started to hallucinate shapes in the fog, but occasionally I did catch sight of other boats coming toward us and the buoys we were using to mark our course, each one sounding a bell or horn out into the fog. Mom and Fred used the radar and charts to determine our course and bearing (ie which direction we should head on the compass) and estimate the time between buoys. At one point we came upon some markers in the water that we didn’t recognize, and suddenly realized we were about to go right over a huge fishing net that had materialized out of the fog right in front of us. Fortunately we were able to reverse before we got tangled up in it (though we did catch it under the boat briefly), and rechart our course around it.

Here's my mom on the bow scanning the fog, shortly before I took over her post so she could work with Fred on charting our course:

 A buoy appearing out of the fog a hundred yards from us:

Looking back into the fog, a buoy barely visible:

And then suddenly, we were in the channel right outside Newport Harbor, the fog growing lighter and boats appearing all around us. It was a relief to find ourselves where we intended to arrive and back in the sunshine.

Entering into Newport in the lifting fog:

Hard to believe this is just a few hours and miles from the photo in the dense fog:

A race up ahead:

My brother will join us tomorrow for a few days, and I'll return home to Boston Friday night to start getting ready for the return to school next week. Savoring the last few days of summer before the semester begins!