Home Again

Dry Land and Welcome Routines

We few, we happy few…three of the four Wahoos onboard Wahoo. The other took the photo

The photo above is of me, David (boat owner and Captain) and Mike (expert crew) as we prepared for a coming squall. The leg of the person cut out of the photo is that of my inamorata the fair Catherine, whose editorial process for public release of photos is more exacting than my own.

It is a little after 0800 hrs on Wednesday 11 June, and I am back at my ManCave desk/command center, having docked in Fishing Bay, Virginia 32 hours ago, grabbed some sleep, lunched in Williamsburg with our hosts, and trained most of the way home with a car to great us at the New Carrollton Amtrak station for the final 65 miles. We arrived home about 2200 hrs to two cats equally glad to see us, and the comfort of my own bed. As I sit here, I have still not acclimated to being ashore, as the screen and my seat seem to still be moving with the motion of WAHOO in three to five foot seas. I will not miss this feeling when it leaves.

The spelling/grammar in this post should improve over those posted from the tablet, where I have yet to figure out how to enable a spellcheck function whilst Sub-stacking. I apologize to all who were offended by my mistakes.

Our four and a half day transit from Exuma to Virginia was a memory for a lifetime. Traveling with four wonderful people who happen also to be excellent sailors in a 52-foot catamaran through mostly good weather is a giant life-win for me, with the final 12 hour transit up the Chesapeake to the dock in Deltaville providing an opportunity to reacquaint myself with skills long gone fallow since my last sea and anchor detail nineteen years ago.

I have a few summary thoughts to wrap up the trip.

• If you can make a trip like this, do it. And by this, I mean sailing in great comfort on a well-appointed boat with experienced hands who are also uniquely skilled chefs and hosts.

• Motion sickness pills/patches seemed to work. I REALLY dreaded the possibility of seasickness (I used to get a Dramamine from doc an hour before underway on day 1, then didn’t need any more the rest of the time underway) but suffered no ill-effects. That is, until sitting here at my computer still rocking and rolling, but I assume that will go away.

• Underway internet (again, thanks Elon) is a game changer, and I found a number of really good sites to help us with weather, mostly just knowing what was headed our way. David and Alison subscribe to a great weather service, and we used the web to supplement that. Real time radar is wonderful for predicting when to take in the cushions so they don’t get wet.

• Had I brought any real sailing talent to the table, I would have been a good deal more exposed to the beating sun than I was, necessitating daily sunscreen baths as I would have had to stand day-time watches like everyone else. Given that I was mostly (handsome, engaging) ballast, my (host approved) choice of midnight to 0600 watches to provide company and entertainment enabled me to stay mostly in the shade during the day, either catching a snooze in our cabin or under some sort of shade. I cannot imagine the agon of getting a Mark I Mod 0 McGrath sunburn as part of this undertaking.

I just had a little chuckle, as the latest forecast from the service David uses for weather just popped into my email inbox as I sit here rocking with the motion of the Western Atlantic while sitting in my office.

Routines, Summer, Etc.

Three months ago, when I looked out over the period from 10 April to 10 June, I did so with some hesitation. I am a man of routine and practice, and I had settled into a wonderful pace that was delivering solid returns, as I lost weight, slept great, exercised daily, lunched and lost money at gin rummy with stout company, and played my banjo, all while supporting a couple of superb clients who make up my working life. Because there were experiences not to be missed in the two months cited (Europe, two graduations, sailboat trip), I signed on to what I knew would be a period of happy—but considerable—disruption. By way of reconciling all this with myself, I declared that I would not leave my home overnight from 10 June through Labor Day, as a means to re-establish the vibe that I had achieved. About a week after this declaration, I inserted a two night jaunt in mid July to celebrate my mother’s 90th Birthday. But I promise you. That’s it. No other exceptions.

Morning Coffee, June 11th

Waking today began that recapture of routine. I slept in (0630), checked my Oura Ring to see how well I slept, grabbed my first of many coffees, and settled in for my morning ritual with my trusty cat Hazel, who throughout the night and groggy morning had been a bit more demanding of affection than usual. Prior to taking the first sip of coffee, I weighed myself, knowing that after defiling myself gastronomically for eight weeks, there would be a bill to pay. And there was, as I am 11.5 lbs heavier than I was the day I departed for Spain in April.

The bottom line is that I ate gluttonously and exercised sparingly. Worse, I ate anything and everything, decidedly deviating from my “carnivore”-like diet that sought to eliminate carbs and sugar. In addition to being a man of routines, I am a man with some difficulty in moderating, as my cold-turkey approach to giving up alcohol thirty-two years ago presaged. The beauty of the carnivore diet is that I get to eat plenty of things I really like, and I simply don’t eat the other things. Very much a binary thing. Because I was in company with others for two months who don’t follow my dieting practices, there were no guardrails, or at least I did not recognize any. Even the last part of the journey where David and Alison provided unreal delicious and healthy meals, I managed to contribute by attempting to limit left-overs. Additionally, I was a devotee of the snack cupboard, vaporizing pretzels, crackers, and corn chips like a man with two stomachs.

So now I find myself 11.5 lbs. grander, and unfortunately, achier. I’m not trying to be an apostle for a particular diet choice (you do you), but one of the claims made by carnivore types before I started was that general bodily inflammation would decline. Because I started eating this way at about the same time I started going to acupuncture and adding glucosamine to my supplements, I was unable to assess the degree to which my diet had contributed to dramatically reduced (left instep, right big toe, both wrists and several finger) joint pain. In April after six months with all three variables in play (diet, acupuncture, supplements), I was pretty much pain free, in addition to being 22 lbs. lighter. In the last eight weeks—during which my supplement intake and acupuncture routines (monthly) remained constant, I gained the weight and regained the pain.

To add insult to injury, my (already few) banjo skills have abandoned me.

So, what’s to be done?

Believe it or not, I won’t exercise or play the banjo today, as the “dock rocks” from the boat trip seem to mitigate against both. After sending this missive off to the interwebs, I will undertake the mainlining of protein and fat for the first of two repetitions today and for the foreseeable future. Tomorrow I’ll head over to the Amish Market and restock my beef, chicken, and pork, then over to Captain’s Ketch to do the same with my seafood stocks. Midday tomorrow, I will see if there is a chair for me at the gin rummy table at my regular lunch gig, and then Friday I’ll rejoin the ladies at the Y for my thrice weekly aerobics, strength, and balance class before hitting the treadmill. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I’m glad I was a part of all the experiences of Spring 2025. But there is no place like the Eastern Shore in the summer, and I intend to make the most of it.