I date the beginning of the winter of 1995-1996 from Wednesday, November 29, because on that morning I had Summer School hauled and put in dry storage in the marina boatyard. I had come to Summit North the previous evening so that I could be ready early in the following morning even though it meant that Nancy would not be able to be with me. It was late in the season and I could not afford to miss this opportunity. We had been trying to have the boat hauled for several weeks but had been delayed due to weather and scheduling problems.
On this Wednesday morning my concern with the weather continued. I awoke at 7:30 and looked out the boat window to see a transformed marina. It had snowed overnight and there was about one inch of wet snow covering everything, the docks, all the boats, their decks, even their dock lines. It was still snowing slightly with large wet flakes slowly drifting down through the still air. The calmness was a great relief to me since I would not have to fight the wind as I was taking the boat out of the slip, steering it the quarter mile down the marina fairway and docking it in the lift slip where the travel lift was located. At 8 a.m. I was sitting at our salon table, drinking coffee while I waited for Doug, who had agreed to ride with me so that he could help with docking in the lift slip. All the curtains were drawn back and I had an expansive view of the surrounding marina and the few boats that were still in their slips. It was a scene of striking beauty with the white snow-covered docks and boats contrasting sharply with the absolutely calm water, which seemed black in the morning light and reflected with astonishing clarity the snow-covered trees on the far bank bordering the fairway. As I was sipping and watching, a huge great blue heron landed on the finger pier just outside my port window. He stood there in the absolute stillness, stately and at least four feet tall as he peered intently at his surroundings with large yellow eyes. The neck of the heron seen at such close range was thicker than I would have thought. His plumage was a soft slate-gray with a chest covered by long, black decorative feathers. He was magnificent as he slowly walked to the end of the finger pier to stare at the water, looking for breakfast I supposed, leaving large footprints in the snow. He took off when Doug called my name and knocked at the cabin door. It was time to go, to put an end to this decisive season of on-water boating.
Of course, with our heads filled with the growing plans for our Great Escape, there was much we hoped to do on the boat while it was blocked up in the boatyard, to make it more suitable as our only home. We expected we would have some mild days during the winter, not unusual for this part of the country, when we could come from Easton to work on it. But the snow that fell the morning I had the boat hauled was the beginning of a five-week period of persistent below normal temperatures and above normal snowfall. When we came to the boat during this period it was for the sole purpose of shoveling snow off the decks. The sides of the hull of Summer School extended about a foot above the decks all the way around. Although this was an excellent safety feature it meant that drifting snow could easily accumulate on the deck to a depth of a foot or more. I was afraid that, if the snow were left there, subsequent melting and freezing could damage the sides of the cabins or the decks due to expansion. So we drove to Delaware and shoveled after every significant snowfall.
On Monday the first of January the temperature finally climbed into the forties, but just five days later, on Saturday night, a snowstorm began that would become known as the Blizzard of 96. Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware had record snowfalls and declared states of emergency. In Easton we had 37 inches. Our little Honda, which we parked on the street in front of our house, was buried up to the windows. It took us two days to dig out our steps, walkway and car, and it took the city of Easton about that long to open the narrow roads on College Hill. When we could finally leave the area we drove to Summit North yet again where it took us another long day to dig out the boat. By the time we were finished I had re-injured the herniated disk in my lower back and it was painful for me even to walk.
A week later we drove over the icy roads into center-Philadelphia so that I could have a check-up with Dr. Mason. There we received the uplifting news that my leukemia was apparently still solidly in remission. All my blood counts were within normal limits, even my platelet count, which had been below normal when last checked. Although my back still gave me some pain at that time, and I had been experiencing some stomach discomfort due to the ulcer condition, these maladies were very minor compared to the problems that could be caused if the leukemia became active. Nancy and I felt that on this visit we had cleared a major hurdle on our way to the future.
The unusually bad weather continued through the first months of 1996. We had another major snowstorm at the beginning of February. Even on March 8 we had to drive to the boat to shovel off a fresh accumulation of snow. We became tired of the winter, tired of the ice and snow. We longed for the time when we could be on our boat following the seasons south in the winter. Nancy often would say that, if we finally made it through this long winter, the only time she ever wanted to see ice again was in her drinks.
Despite our frustrations with the weather our moods remained buoyant. With no immediate worries over the leukemia we felt free to focus on our Great Escape and all the exciting plans we had for our future life aboard our boat. We made list after list after list. There was a list for everything that was to be sold at auction, and a list for everything that we would take with us on the boat. We came to the conclusion that there were some things that we would not sell but neither would they be taken on the boat, and we therefore needed to rent a small long-term storage space near Summit North. Thus there was a list for things to go into storage. There was a list of equipment and supplies that we needed to purchase for the boat, such as chemicals to finish the teak and a new VHF radio to mount on the bridge helm station to replace the one that had failed. We arranged with Kathleen that she would rent a post office box in our names at the post office that was near her place of work; we would then change our address to this box when we moved permanently onto the boat so that she could forward our mail to us weekly or as convenient wherever we might be. Then we made a list of all the address changes that we would need to make (again!). Finally we made a list of all the boat work that we wanted to do. One of the pleasures that we had when we went to the boat to shovel the snow was to enter the boat after the work was finished and survey the interior speculating on how we could improve it for long term use. We were especially excited by planning all the changes we would make to the forward cabin to convert it from a sleeping cabin with two V-berths, to an on-board office with space for a computer, desk space to work and shelf space for all the books we would bring with us.
When I was not working on things associated with our move onto the boat, I worked on writing, a project that I had conceived in the fall and early winter. It seemed quite miraculous to me that I was looking forward to the future with such excited expectations, that Nancy and I together were planning what to me was such a great adventure, that I was living each day with such contentment and deep happiness, when only little more than seven years earlier I was alone at the age of fifty, freshly diagnosed with leukemia, trying to overcome a failed marriage and the death of my son, trying to find a way to live with a terminal cancer amid these tragedies. I wanted to write about the transformation that took place during these seven years, about finding Nancy and what she came to mean to me, about developing this passion that we shared for living and cruising on a boat. During the first months of 1996 I worked steadily on this project, trying to write a description of the beginning of our cruise south along the ICW in 1993. Progress was slow but gradually the piece grew into something that pleased me, and I could envision the other chapters I would need to write to complete the story and give it unity. I gave the book the working title, Lessons from Summer School, and I was looking forward to the time when we moved aboard our boat and I could continue writing in that environment we loved so well.
Nancy also worked on writing as she stole time away from her work at Lafayette. Not only did she continue to work on "Tirades" but she wrote several short pieces describing a number of ideas for improving life aboard a boat. These were inspired by all the improvements we were considering for Summer School. She submitted a few of these pieces to the magazine MotorBoating and Sailing for possible publication in their regular section titled "BoatKeeping." On Saturday March 16 she received a telephone call from a senior editor who told her that they had decided to publish her submissions. Nancy, of course, was greatly pleased and encouraged and she, too, was eagerly anticipating living on our boat while continuing her writing in what would become our onboard office.
In fact, by mid-march, when Nancy received the news of her publications, many pieces of our life's puzzle had fallen into place. We had sold our desktop computer and replaced it with a small notebook computer and portable printer that could fit in the office we were building in the forward cabin. We had dedicated an empty room in our large house to holding, on one side, a growing pile of all those things we would be moving onto the boat with us, while on the other side we piled the things we would be placing into storage. Finding a suitable auctioneer proved somewhat difficult. After interviewing several we finally contracted with one Jim Gastony who had a well-established business in the local area with his own auction house. He agreed to move everything out of our house when we were ready and hold a sale in his auction house after we moved onto the boat. This was much simpler and less disruptive than trying to hold an auction at our house. Nancy gave her notice to the Director of Engineering at Lafayette on March 4, thus completing a decisive and even sobering step in our process. On Saturday March 10 we drove to Waynesboro, Virginia for a last visit with Nancy's parents before leaving Easton. This enabled us to bring them some things that Nancy wanted to leave in their care while we were living on the boat. But more importantly, this visit greatly eased my mind because I saw that Nancy's parents, for whom her academic success had meant so much, were not disappointed with our decision. Indeed, they seemed to share our enthusiasm and excitement at the prospect of our great adventure, partly, I think, because Nancy's evident happiness was so contagious.
Following the weekend we went to Virginia the weather finally relented and it became almost spring-like. I drove to the boat almost every day to complete the hard work necessary to prepare it to return to the water. There was much to be done, the worst of which was to refinish the bottom. It had to be thoroughly washed and then sanded to remove the old bottom paint. There were several small blisters in the fiberglass that had to be repaired. Finally the bottom had to be repainted with an expensive new layer of anti-fouling paint. The work was hard. I had to lie on the ground for much of it, sanding and painting over my head. With my low back pain from which I was still suffering, frequent breaks were necessary and progress was slow. But finally all necessary work was completed, and on Friday March 29 we launched Summer School while being pelted by heavy rain driven by a cold north wind. We brought it into our old slip without incident and moored it securely to the docks. We were wet and cold but smiling nevertheless. Despite all, we were aboard our boat once again and the real work of making it into our permanent home could begin.
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