Alaska Trip Day 6

5/21/11

Echo Bay, Sucia Island

Miles motored:  19

Miles sailed:  0

Our great weather didn’t last and we woke up to rain, but we knew that we hadn’t been magically transported to California so reality would hit us again, oh well.  For the second morning in a row I woke up to a sinus headache, boo!  Tor took care of the boys so I could lay in bed for a little longer…actually he shut them in the bed with me but since they had clean diapers they were happy to play by themselves and seemed to quickly forget I was there since I was immobile.

I went up to take a shower to hopefully make my head feel better and Tor put the boys down for their nap.  We’ve been having a hard time with them getting to sleep which just adds to the stress we’ve been feeling, but they went down for that nap without any problem (yay!) maybe they’re used to it now, or maybe they’ve been over tired when we’ve put them down and had to work out the stress of the day. I don’t know, but we seem to be on the right track.

 I washed a load of diapers at the Laundromat even though there weren’t many…hey if it means that we don’t have to wash diapers tonight at anchor, let’s have a machine do it!

I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things…easy when you have a car!  And went back to Karla and Jared’s house to drop off the car.  Einar and Soren were very interested in seeing the boat so we all came back and we had another short visit while the boys explored the boat.  It’s amazing how kids like boats, I think it’s because things like the stove or toilet are smaller and more kid sized.

We pushed off at about 12:30 with the destination of Sucia Island in mind.  Here is where we’ve had to make an adjustment to our approach because of the boy’s routine…it would have been a great sail, but because I was going to be putting them down for a nap soon, we thought we should just keep motoring since they were used to those sounds while napping.  We also wanted to get there before their bedtime and motoring was faster in those conditions. Oh well, the wind soon died out and we knew this was likely to be a mostly motoring trip.

The boys went down for their nap without a peep, but Tor woke them up too early by going down below and being too loud.  They both had a really hard wake up and Odin in particular was very upset.  I finally got him calmed down while Tor had Lars in the cockpit with him.  Poor Odin!

After about 3.5 hours of motoring we reached Echo Bay and set the anchor.  I cooked dinner while Tor played with the boys in the cockpit.  It was so nice to be able to cook without worrying about stepping on little fingers!  I made pineapple peanut stew with kale and black eyed peas on top of brown rice.  It’s our comfort food, yum!  The boys had it for the first time since we’ve now introduced peanut butter in their diets and they liked it too.  Score!

Playing in the cockpit with Papa so I could cook dinner efficiently! 

What a difference a day makes in the weather, I had to break out the woolen balaclavas to keep the boys warm (and cute too!)

Another good experience putting them to bed and Tor and I are sharing a generous measure of scotch in the cockpit in celebration of “a day that didn’t suck!”  I think we are on the right track for operation family fun.