REASONING

Last week we grappled with why we couldn't make the break, leave our home waters. No matter what we tried, something prevented us from leaving.

"The universe took one of our spark plugs," I told Chip about the dinghy motor landing in the shop for 10 days. We can't leave without it.

It's now clear in hindsight why we were waylaid here in Manteo. This impending trip to New Mexico would have been so difficult if we were already in the Chesapeake. We would have to find a safe place to keep the boat, find people we trusted to keep an eye on her. And then we would worry.

One of the things we like about cruising is that we are able to help our aging parents. The last five years with the wine shop, it was not possible to leave on short notice or stay indefinitely. Now we can. Sooner than we thought.

We monitor mom's condition from afar, judging the best time to make the trip. Our hope is to arrive when she goes home so we can be there to help her get back on her feet.

The struggle we face is her continued life-threatening complications. My sister and I confer on the phone, but she is the one who is there to make the life and death decisions, to listen to the litany of hideous things that could happen as a result of the procedures she approves, spending her nights on a recliner in ICU.

One thousand eight hundred and eighty-five miles seems infinite.

THE MIDNIGHT CALL

Our daughter, Casey, and our 5-year-old friend, Townes, slept over with us on the boat last night. We played games, romped in the playground and went on an "adventure." Sweet times.

Everyone was quietly in bed at 10:00.

Soon thereafter I got the first call.

My 78-year-old mom was coughing up blood and being flown from Roswell to Albuquerque.

By 4 a.m. she was having emergency surgery to repair two tears in her left lung, in danger of bleeding out at any time.

After four hours of surgery, they gave up on repairing the second tear and planned to go back in this afternoon.

By 4 p.m. she had stabilized and apparently the other tear is healing on its own. She is on a breathing tube and heavily sedated, therefore content and resting.

We will see what tomorrow holds.

A trip to New Mexico is in our near future.

*That image is a card Townes made for us, by himself, while his parents were sleeping. He doesn't know how to write cursive, so he found a Cara Mia shirt and copied the text. We love you, Townes. You will always have a home on Cara Mia.

THE GRIP OF THE LAND

Perhaps we underestimated the steely grip of the land.

Little things pile up and together become big things. Chores that should take an hour grow extracted and take many times that. Others get done but create five more in their wake.

We each had a list of people interested in buying our cars, but when we were ready to sell, the people disappeared.

The damaged grill had to be sent back and a new one shipped (slowly) to replace it.

The topper we ordered for the mattress will be here in three weeks.

That engine for the dinghy? Still waiting.

Ah, we wait -- a wait riddled with good times and good friends and no schedule. We are not suffering.

TAMMY-PROOF?

Today I found some windproof matches.

I tried one to see if it worked.

Then I tried to blow it out.

I hope I don't burn down the ocean.

QUESTIONS FROM MAREN

Maren: When are they going to launch for good?

Darn if that isn't a good question! I'm sure you're not the only one wondering that -- including us.  We thought we might be gone by now, but just this week, we took the dinghy motor to be repaired, and they said it would take TWO WEEKS. We're waiting for our new grill to arrive and still have to sell both of our cars before we can leave. In the meantime, we're trying to get other boat chores done.

For instance, we want to buy solar panels, so we can get our electricity from the sun (your mom will like this). You might have seen one solar panel on the back of Cara Mia:

Solar panel is just above and in front of the flag.

There are newer solar panels about the same size that will give us twice as much power in the same amount of space, so we want to replace it.

Maren: Where will they go first?

When we leave, we will go north to the Chesapeake Bay. Even though you could get there by car from the Outer Banks in a few hours, it will take us several days by boat. At its fastest, the boat only goes about 7 miles per hour. Ask your mom or dad to show you how fast (slow, actually) that is next time you're in the car. Make sure there's not anyone behind you, because they'll honk!

We'll stay in the Chesapeake until hurricane season is over this fall. In the Chesapeake, we can practice sailing in a huge body of water without being in the ocean. Our boat is new to us, so we want to get to know it and get it set up like we want it before we go in the ocean.

We'll be going back to school like you, sort of. There's an online class we'll be taking to get our captains' licenses. In the class we'll learn about safety and how to find our way around (called navigation).

Thanks for reading!

MAKING MUSIC

For the last three months, we've been stuck with old technology on the music front, since the stereo on the boat did not have an input to play music from our iPod.

After that long slog of putting all our CDs onto the iPod a few years ago, we were down to one CD that actually belonged to Dylan: Nickel Creek's Nickel Creek album. Now, I love Nickel Creek, but one CD for two months was getting REALLY tedious.

So Chip bought a new car stereo for only $59, (why didn't we do this three months ago?) and we toughed through installing it ourselves, a task that could have been ridiculously easy if the billion-wire plug was the same on the old stereo and new. No, of course not, so we spent an hour or so splicing wires while sweating (we had to turn off the power and thus the air conditioning).

Now thanks to technology our musical repertoire has exploded without taking up an entire room.

Thankfully the new stereo has not exploded -- at least so far.

YOU KNOW YOU'RE OFFICIALLY A CRUISER WHEN...

...you marvel at washers and dryers that operate without demanding quarters.

...you have more bags than you have clothes.

...you get annoyed when all the articles about John Kerry's new $7M sailboat talk about taxes and not the boat!

...it takes three whole days at the in-laws, before you realize you can use HOT WATER to wash your face.