The Karen Noonan Center

While spending a week with Matt’s family in Cambridge, MD, Matt, Amy and Graham took a trip over to the Karen Noonan Center, established for Amy’s high school friend.  Once one of the great Chesapeake hunting lodges, the Karen Noonan Center was completely renovated in 1995 to create an environmentally sound, state-of-the-art residential  and educational center.   Unfortunately, Jessie Marsh, overseer of the centers and longtime friend of Karen’s friends, had only just left for the weekend.  We were sorry to have missed him as he is always a great part of the trip for Karen’s friends.  The two people who currently run the Center, Captain Shawn and eBay (real name Elyssa; we told her about our Alyssa and pointed her out in the group picture of Karen’s friends hanging in the office) gave us a warm welcome, telling us we are family there.  We spent a while talking with Capt. Shawn who actually lives in Cambridge near the marina where we docked our boat for a couple of weeks.  He asked us all about living on a boat indicating that he and his wife are interested in doing the same.  He said he liked to poke around the marina and look at the boats and, in fact, was admiring our boat, Troubadour, that very morning.

The view toward Fishing Bay

The group of science teachers that was there for the week, were out on kayaks.  We were invited to join them for a sunset paddle but declined as we had been there several times before and just wanted to touch base.  We walked the halls of Karen’s house looking at every wall hanging, spending extra time on the art shared from the artists at Holy Child.  As always, being at the Center leaves one feeling buoyed by hope.  CBF does a superb job in its education of children and adults alike.

The Karen N a custom built shallow water jet boat.

Graham on the deck at the Karen Noonan Center

Matt, Amy, Graham in front of the Karen Noonan Center

The week in Cambridge with Matt’s family was a delight.  The house, aptly named Hard to Leave, was huge complete with tennis courts, pool, dock and crab traps.  Graham spent his time perfecting his pool (billiards) game, swimming and enjoying the Olympics which were on all week.  Our nephew, Wes, came with his wife, Stacey, and her kids, Andrew, 15, and Maura, 12.  Mary Gillman’s sister, Eileen, came with her two kids, Claire, 12, and Riley, 8.  It was great fun for all the kids to be together.  Sabrina, our niece, came the furthest – from the Dominican Republic, where she is working.  Matt’s brother, Tim, and wife, Maricruz came from Seattle.  Their son, Jacob, and his partner, Matt, came from Hollywood because they are very fabulous.  Chris and Mary and Jim and Marilynn came from Alexandria and our honorary Gillman, Mary Howland, came from Arlington.  We had fabulous food everynight including when Jacob and Matt made Smoked Gouda Mac-n-Cheese accompanied by meatloaf cupcakes with mashed potato frosting in pink, blue, green, orange, and yellow.  Who’s more fun than them?  No one.

The view from our dock of a summer thunderstorm over Church Creek

Matt and Jacob's fabulous meat loaf cupcakes

A nice Cabernet goes with smoked gouda mac and cheese and meat loaf cupcakes

Amy wiled away the hours preparing a Gillman Family trivia game to be played Wednesday night, Jeopardy style, complete with prizes from the thrift shop, pictures from younger days of all the contestants and research on the family far and wide.  The contestants came in costume to the event, also furnished by the thrift shop – everything from taffeta to Harley Davidson.

On a couple of days Matt took people over to the boat – once to see it and the other time to sail.  When I asked what they thought upon returning, a couple of people commented that it is small.  I found myself surprised.  Then I tried to remember what I thought of Troubadour the first time I had seen her.  I think I remember wondering if I could live in such a confined space.  It has felt for so long now like all the space we need.  Just this morning I was wondering what it would be like to be in a room with a king size bed.  I pictured a spacious room to accommodate the bed and other stuff around it; I immediately thought the stuff made the (imaginary) room messy and that we don’t need all that space.  Interesting how the mind works.

Wes and Maura show how it's done!

On one evening, Claire and I gathered people for a séance as she owns a Oujia Board and is partial to ghosts.  We had 6 people and 6 candles and we channeled Mocha, for whom there was a small tombstone in the backyard.  After some failed attempts to make contact, we heard howling coming from the back of the house!  Was it Mocha or the boys sitting by the pool?  Claire diligently interviewed all possible suspects but they seemed to have alibis.  ?  I guess we’ll never know.

The Gillman's August 4th, 2012

The first evening in Cambridge featured a most efficient emergency room visit for Graham as he has bronchitis – we were in and out in 15 minutes, prescriptions in hand.  We loved Cambridge – a sweet little town and we were right on the water.  The marina was on a great scenic route for driving or walking.  There was also a most interesting, albeit small, Harriett Tubman Museum as she was from Dorchester County, MD.  The three of us went together to soak up all that we could of this heroine’s story.  Matt and Amy learned a lot; Graham already knew a lot.  Amy also loved Cambridge for its Jazzercise Center and a great little thrift shop.

We haven’t written since the South and now we are in the North.  To catch up on the South, we went straight from Charleston, SC to Hampton, VA, where it all began.  We stayed at the same marina where we left from on 11-11-11 to race to the Bahamas.  From there we went to Deltaville, VA to have the boat hauled and painted.

It is a very small town with a permanent population of less than 1000. For a while they had two West Marine Stores.  Now it is just one of their larger stores.  Everybody was in the boating industry.  It was very hot while we were there.  We stopped in Deltaville because we heard it was a great place to get work done at a reasonable price.  Of course, reasonable is relative.

The work by the staff of the Deltaville Boat Yard started out with a quick bottom job.  It expanded into a hull clean and wax.  Then the other battery in bank two started to fail, so we installed new batteries.  Finally, the rig inspection revealed some problems with the StayLock fittings.  We replaced the StayLocks and the backstay.

BEFORE: Troubadour is just out of the water. What a mess.

AFTER: A very pretty bottom.

I also took advantage of being on the hard and in the marina to do other work myself.  This work included included: new water heater hoses, rebuilding a bilge pump, installing a new switch for the bilge pump, installing four new halyards, and a bunch of other little stuff.

Finally, after a month in Deltaville, we headed for Cambridge, MD where we would join 20 Gillman types for a family reunion on Church Creek near Cambridge.  We had a week to get there so we spent three days anchored in Reedville, VA, famous for its fish oil factory.  When the wind was out of the wrong direction, boy did it stink!  But the anchorage was very pretty.  We also stopped in Hollywood, MD to visit our old friend, Angie, who crewed with us to the Bahamas.  She has a little cottage there where we stopped and had crabs and cherry cheesecake a la Angie.  Then we wended our way through the Chesapeake Bay and came into Cambridge the Tuesday before the reunion, which was the following Saturday to Saturday.

Us with Angie.  Troubadour in the background above Amy’s head.

Great Wicomico River anchorage a little too close to Reedville, VA

“True spirit” is a book by Jessica Watson, who is to this day the youngest person to circumnavigate the world. The book tells a great story about her life leading up to her wanting to circumnavigate the globe. It also tells of her actual circumnavigation and the time after. Some of the highlights of the book include her links to the videos she took on the sail, her brave and bold tales such as facing storms, and including the night she was hit by a massive cargo ship “Silver Yang”. Also it tells of her wonderful times at sea including a night where she saw a rainbow at night a “moonbow”. In “True Spirit”, you can get a glimpse into what she experienced sailing around the world solo at 16. I loved the book, and found Jessica’s ability and determination to make her dream come true to be really cool.

We have been in Charleston, South Carolina for a week. On the first day we went to the markets where there are a million vendors and my dad bought a book about the history of Charleston. Each day I read a portion relating to what we were doing that day and then we went out touring. On the first day we went to the visitor’s center and bought tickets for the Charleston City bus tour. On the tour we learned all about Charleston’s general history. After that we went to visit Fort Sumter It was very interesting. We traveled there on a boat and our tour guide talked way too much. There was a ranger there who talked about the purpose of Fort Sumter, when it was built, the situation leading up to the Civil War and the fort’s role in the war.

The Market in Charleston

Cobblestone street in Charleston

Fort Sumter, the first shot fired in the Civil War

On the next day, my day and I took the water taxi over to the USS Yorktown which is a US Navy aircraft carrier. We took a tour down below and ate food that WWII soldiers ate — rice, meatballs and cauliflower. We went through the barracks and saw a generator and an engine that took up 5 rooms. We went up onto the flightdeck and saw about 20 planes that landed on the USS Yorktown. Then we went to the bridge and saw the NavStation. It made Troubadour’s NavStation look like an ant’s calculator. From there we went to look at the destroyer and went inside a giant cannon and watched a movie. Then we went over to the bridge on the destroyer. After that we went to the model war base for Vietnam in which American Navy troops camped. Then we got on the water taxi and came home. While I was there, I contemplated the fact my Grandpa Gillman was only 5 years older than I am when he served in World War Two.

The mess hall where we ate

Our yummy lunch.

Graham at the helm

The Yorktown

Today we went to the tiny Old Slave Mart museum. It was on one of only 7 cobblestone streets left in Charleston. Inside were facts about the history of slavery through the Civil war. The highest price fetched for a slave was $1,500 and that was when an African American person was 20. If you were younger or older than that, people would pay less for you. Babies and 60 year olds were only worth $50. We listened to an audio recording of what a slave auction was like. Slaves were hidden behind a curtain until the last minute. Then they could have been made to pull up their shirts or walk around to see if they were fit for work. It was very interesting but disturbing too.

The next day we went on the shuttle to the College of Charleston to see an art exhibit called: Return to the Sea: Saltworks. The artist, Motoi Yama Moto, is from Japan and always works only in salt. The major exhibit is a hurricane made up entirely of salt. It is cool. In a month, the public is invited to dismantle the exhibit by scraping the salt up from the floor and carrying it back to dump it in the ocean.

We were looking forward to one more day in Charleston but Chris Parker, the weatherman for water people said our weather window is for today so now we are scrambling around to get ready.

I am writing this in the wee hours of the morning as my boys sleep.  It doesn’t really matter because all I have to do tomorrow is relax some more.  I am kept awake by the sound of krill pecking at the boat — tiny little fish most famous, to be sure, for their singular line in FINDING NEMO, “Swim away!” as Marlin and Dory are swallowed by the whale. They are generally quiet as they as miniature, except when there are thousands of them like now — pecking into the boat, hopefully cleaning the bottom.  Graham is nestled on the settee next to me in his Pokemon sheets and as I lookout the porthole past him I can see a boat called “Oceanchild” and I think how well that name fits this child who slumbers next to me.  I thought he learned to love the water on the Jersey shore but as I see him more and more in different waters everywhere and how he acclimates immediately, it occurs to me that he was probably born an oceanchild.

We are in lovely Charleston for a while as we make our way up the coast.  We had some trouble on the passage here as the wind died in the middle of the night and then the engine died immediately following.  We had to wait till first light for Matt to start working on it and after four hours and no fix we had to be towed 10 miles into the harbor anyway.  It was tedious but vacation nevertheless.  I keep thinking that if we were home right now, Matt would be away at his annual meeting in Chicago working 16 hour days, Graham would be studying for the dreaded Standards of Learning Tests and I would be rushing around as usual trying to jam it all in.  Instead, Matt doesn’t work as such, rather he makes Graham and me laugh in the carefree way that reminds us of why we love him so.  As we cruise I often think of how lucky we are to spend this family time together.  To some it may seem stifling, but I am appreciating this time with Graham who probably won’t want to be hanging around his parents for too much longer.  We get to play games at dinner like going round and round the table trying to name as many Troubadour absolutes as we can:  Always leave the head handle to the right, no food down the sink, if you take out a cold water, put a warm one back in, get rid of the cardboard at the grocery store — no cardboard on the boat (roaches!) and many more.

As we while away the hours, I try to tell Graham stories that are new — about him, about me, about life, his family traditions, anything.  When we were at home and I worked in the jails, substance abuse prevention programs, child abuse prevention programs, etc. we always stressed the importance of talking to your child from day one.  So I like to talk to him about anything in the hopes that when he needs to, he will talk to us about something.  I do a little bit of the same with Matt, purely for the entertainment value and to pass the time on a crossing.  We sit in the cockpit and I try to think of stories we might not know about each other (however, if you reference the November blog history, you will note that we took first place in the Newleywed Game in Green Turtle Cay, Bahamas),  It’s after 2 and it’s June 5th now so I’d like to give a shout out to my dear friend, Ken, whose birthday it is today!  Our love to you all.

I have come to really like boats, looking at them anyway. Most have white hulls, we have a navy one and a teak deck and people are always commenting on how pretty she is. And we are mostly cruising the same pattern that her former owners did for 5 years so we frequently meet people who recognize the boat because of her distinctiveness. I can’t believe I know any of this – like that she is a Cutter-rig Sloop – because a year ago I knew so little. Back to the colors of hulls, a beautiful red-hulled sailboat came into the marina yesterday. She is beautiful not because she is in pristine condition, in fact she was a little rusty all over; I was drawn to her because of her bright red hull in a Little Engine That Could way. And then I saw her name, the ANN-KRISTIN. I was immediately reminded of my Aunt Ann and her daughter, my cousin, Kristin – two of the strongest people I know. It made me feel a little closer to home. She was gone this morning before I could get a picture and I wondered if she was really there after all.

This blog is focused on the Jurassic park section of universal. The only ride there that is worth the wait, and we could go on, was the Jurassic Park river adventure. it basically was a narrator telling about random dinosaurs until you go into a raptor facility with escaped dinosaurs.

A flaming sign

Then at the very end a T-Rex tries to eat you and you go down an 85 foot drop. but the T-rex was not my favorite Dinosaur. My favorite was an Underwater dinosaur that shot up 15 feet in the air. It sorta looked like a combination of a unicorn and a goat. Yeah disturbing thought huh?

well anyway hope you enjoyed

This part about universal is mainly the marvel super hero island attraction at universal.

Marvel superhero island. The first ride is the amazing spider-man ride. And the only way to describe this ride is to call it “sensory overload”.  You begin the ride by noticing the awesome job they have done in making the area you walk through while you in line.  You start by walking through the office of the “Daily Bugle newspaper”, where TV screens tell story you are about to see, basically doctor octopus stole the statue of liberty . With 3D glasses on, your ride begins.  Almost immediately, you will see that this will be a very different ride.  A state-of-the-art 4K high definition film and 16-channel audio thingy will make you feel like you’re in the driving in the the Streets of New York, allowing you to see every single tiny detail down to the sewing on Spidey’s gloves. In one part, Spider-Man appears to jump on the roof of your car/bus/thing, and the car/bus/thing responds to it.  Throughout the attraction, 3D villians such as “Scream” and “Doctor Octopus” appear to punch, kick and otherwise pummel your car/bus/thing into spins and even very high free falls. The other rides include the incredible hulk coaster, a very fast paced green roller coaster, and doctor dooms fear-fall.

All throughout the island are marvel characters and gift shops full to the brim of marvel merchandise. This area in universal had to be my favorite because of my love of spider-man. I also got a T-shirt that has picture of Venom (my favorite villain.) So, umm…………………………………………………… Derp?

This is the entrance for the amazing spiderman ride