We’re in the dog days of August but time still seems to be flying by. So many chances of fun have passed without actually seizing the moment. Those few moments of fun that actually happened stand out like jewels in the cluttered mass of routine that hardly vary from one season to the next. It seems there’s just not enough time to do fun stuff, but always enough time to do the chores of daily life.
Another season passed, another season beginning. It has been a very busy summer here in the Virginia edition of the Charest family. We started with refinancing our house the evening before leaving on a three week trip to China. Upon our return home; the rest of the summer was a blur of recovering from our vacation trip, work, boating, really hot weather, earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding rainstorms, and several groups of family visitors.
Winter seems to finally be at an end. Daily temperatures are slowly climbing back up, trees are beginning to show blossoms. We’re having rain instead of snow. All-in-all, things are looking up.
Last Friday I did something that a couple of years ago would have been unthinkable. Yesterday I sold my beloved little boat “Sea Dreams,” the boat I purchased in Long Beach, Mississippi on October 26, 2002. This would be the boat that I lovingly maintained, repaired, hauled up to northern Virginia, restored, and occasionally even took out onto the water for a brief day’s cruising and fishing over these past 7-1/2 years.
I’ve heard that the two happiest days in a boat owner’s life is the day they buy a boat, and the day they sell it. I’m still not so sure about the ‘selling it” part.
This weekend was a two boating-day weekend. Saturday I spent the afternoon bouncing around the Potomac between Occoquan and Quantico, and at anchor in a quiet cove over on the Maryland side. It was a nice afternoon (any time on the water is nice, actually) even though the water was a bit rough. Sunday I went out again with friends as a two-boat rally, which turned out to be a bit of adventure.
My writing has been light lately, and there’s actually a good reason for this; a better reason that just not feeling like writing. I finally finished rebuilding my boat “Sea Dreams” enough that I could get her back in the water, and that event has pretty much taken first priority.
It was a long time coming, but this past weekend I finally had the boat out on the water again. It turned into a weekend’s worth of boating actually, as I had “Sea Dreams” out both Saturday and Sunday. Sunday Winnie and one of her friends went with us and we did a bit of fishing.
