Mother's Day in New York

Offshore passages used to terrorize me, I was afraid of the hundreds of things that could go wrong, hitting things in the night, seasickness, and general stupidness that sinks in after so many hours of sleep deprivation.

So, now that I have a few passages under my belt, I've discovered the magic of Scopolamine patches, I must havce subconsciously figured it was time to make it more interesting by losing my glasses just before our last passage offshore to New York.

I don't have great night vision to begin with but when Scott confidently told me I'd have 'no problems' steering at night, I thought, hey I've done this before, what's the big deal.

OK, so the big deal is this: you can't see a DAMN THING without glasses at night. I could see lights ahead but they could have been aliens for all I knew. I didn't know how far, how close, and even with our radar and AIS I couldn't pick out certain lights. On top of that the used autopilot Scott and Aidan worked on for a week didn't have a calibrated compass. It was handsteering all the way.

We also discovered Reg, who also lost his glassesand had a bad fit of teenage crankiness, may have more problems at night. He took the early night shift and in about 10 minutes had us turned around going back to Cape May. We were alerted to the problem when he said he couldn't see Georgia E, which we were folloing. Ay yi yi.

So this plus an increasingly tempermental alternator and damp, soaked-in-your-bones cold made our last offshore passage rather memorable.

But it struck me last night that this could be our last offshore passage as a family. It gave me pause, and helped me overlook the challenges and see through to the good stuff: kids helping out (or at least trying) and all enjoying our beef stew as the sunset over the horizon.

Some things I'll never forget.

We came into New York with Lady Liberty greeting us and Aidan made me coffee, Elizabeth gave me a card, Reg grunted (hey at least he grunted) and the boys had told me they wanted to get me something special in New York. There's nothing more special than what's already on this boat.