Three Writes and a Wrong

Stretched out on the trampoline of our 44-foot cat, listening to the crescendo and decrescendo of the water sloshing past the hull; we’re reaching along at a relaxed 7 knots beneath a warm sky dotted with a flock of lamb-like clouds.

Although the equinox was a full week ago, and today is the last day of September, we have been clinging to summer. But here, beneath a sky foretelling of rain, with temps forecast to dip into the 40s (40s!) we can no longer deny the arrival of Fall. The days are shorter and night chill - and the bay deserted. All but the working boats are tucked away ... save for a lonely sloop beating toward us from the opposite, and Captain Wadey Murphy taking a few lingering tourists on his skipjack for a bay tour.

The infamous Bobbie G (Grieser) and I – along with a smorgasbord of friends and family popping on and off at various ports of call – are enjoying this autumn cruise through the Eastern Shore; we are joined at this juncture by other journalists Susan Colby and Peter Baker , which has earned our trip the moniker “three writes and a wrong” ...

Look for the story next Spring in SAILING.

9-30-11 Cambridge, Md.

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The best ever ...

I didn’t want to come in from the rain. It was soft and sweet and as I climbed up the stone stairs through the grassy sloped lawn to the inn, I slowed my pace to enjoy the evening downpour that enveloped me in the dark.

This has been the most provocative week: stimulating memories of my youth, and piquing new ones; journeying up the majestic (and currently very muddy) Hudson: sailing, exploring, meeting family and friends – old and new, and absolutely delighting in the entire experience.

There is way too much to report on, as I sit at my antique desk in a stately (and – I swear – haunted) mansion overlooking the Hudson at Tivoli, very late at night. An eclectic blend of antiques and curios of all eras, plaster-framed mirrors of gigantic proportions, and neophyte still lifes and portraits punctuate the high walls of the inn – the latter with pasty irregular faces and eyes that follow you eerily around the room.

So I’ve just returned from a side splitting and raucous evening at the Black Swan Pub, where we marched into the kitchen to introduce ourselves to Edwin (Ed-weeen) the Costa Rican, who sold me on a $10 plate of pan fried tilapia, rice, beans, and a green-bean egg-foo-yung-y concoction which I washed down with multiple glasses of the local IPA, called Hurricane Kitty. Our rowdy group, clustered around a table and overflowing to the bar, competed handily in the weekly Trivia Night contest, finishing third, before breaking up and hastening back to the mansion (or boat) in the soft mist.

But now it is pissing rain; I am debating a late-night of writing (I have well overdue assignments) versus slumber, in a four poster bed so high I need to climb up from a chest at the foot of the bed and commando in. Sleep, I believe, will win -- but not before I declare this one of the most awesome trips I’ve ever been on ... remembering however that I said that about the last, and the prior, and the one before that – until I sleepily concede that every trip I go on is ‘the best ever’ and I think that is a damned good way to live my life.