I always have mixed feelings about the fall coming. It's beautiful here, with pleasant days and cool nights, spectacular changes to the foliage, massive harvests from local farms, and a change of shift in the bird population. The Ospreys leave. The Bald Eagles return to patrol a river full of geese and ducks. Its lovely. It's also the gateway to winter--never my favorite time of year--and the cold. I'm from Florida, folks. Cold is not my friend.
There will be changes, though, to which I look forward. After a summer of parties and boats and people, the marina will grow quiet, the mornings still and devoid of motors firing up. The evenings no longer full of voices. By the end of summer, I'm ready for the quiet.
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| You can feel it, even through the heat. The Fall is coming |
I hear the other boaters talking of "winterizing" their vessels, of pulling them out of the water and storing them on the hard, draining water tanks and flooding the engines with antifreeze. To a livaboard, "winterize" means something quite different. It will mean sealing the drafty windows, loading in more onboard water storage, and doing all the exterior maintenance of which we can think so to avoid the wet in winter. It will mean digging out the kerosene heater and lanterns, moving the summer clothes to storage and trucking the blankets and comforters and coats to the boat.
Not yet, though, not yet. There are still a couple of months of pleasant weather. We'll be building a little sailing dinghy, a Puddle Duck Racer, to take advantage of the best sailing weather of the year here (actually, we're starting that today. There will be pix.) There will still be parties and dinners outside and barbecues and leisurely cruises on the bay. There's still time.
But the Fall Equinox is coming on hard. We turn the corner.
Happy Mabon.
M
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