The water is turquoise.

You have to do a bunch of hustling if you want to relax in Anguilla. Not that this is anything I've ever done before, nor would it be a plan I'd formulate, left to my own devices. But when Allen's niece scheduled her destination wedding for the Caribbean in December, I wasn't going to pass on such an adventure.

there's a Caribbean down there...

Wintry mix was threatening to precipitate on the morning of our departure and, thanks to Murphy, we first had to get from Baltimore to the slightly sloppier latitude of Philly for our flight out of the country. But the freezy stuff held off--just until we took off--and I relaxed a smidge.

Once you land in St Martin (or we should say, since the airport's on the Dutch side, Sint Maarten,) it's time to hand over your passport to one person, and $20 to someone else. Chances are, there's a bit of paperwork, with blanks to fill in, a gate or two, a shuttle ride, another $20, someone else takes your passport, a boat ride, another gate (after $20,) another shuttle, passports again...then they drop you off at your hotel. For twenty dollars.

Plan on $40, and a couple of passport handovers to get through Blowing Point.

By then you're thoroughly relaxed, because you're in the Caribbean, meeting 38 new people.

At the Viceroy resort, on the west end of Anguilla, they want you to want to buy a villa. So they will leave a card in your room inviting you to a " manager's reception," and the maid will, each of the 2-3 times per day she fusses with your room, leave the tv on and tuned to the resort's own station which features crisp shots of what you'd see if you weren't inside looking at the tv. Except in that the people you'll actually see are probably not models.

But since you really are there, you'll go outside, swim in the sea, eat fruit, and decide that if you could obtain a prawn sandwich where the bun is a sliced johnnycake, back in your real life, you might even be willing to overpay for it. But probably not for all the leftover slices of red velvet wedding cake they serve at breakfast.

Well, I'm not sure you'd do just those things, but I recommend them. I also recommend renting a car so you can drive (On the left! On the left!) away from the cool glitzy marble-esqueness of the Viceroy, to distant island points where goats and dog play chicken with your car. As do chickens.

Frolicking goat

Cow, not exactly frolicking.

In spite of the rain which fell sporadically (and one night while we ate under a covered pavilion, horizontally,) we did relax. There was not much else we could do, outside of the wedding festivities.

Cacti at Junk's Hole, east end.

Volcanic rock instead of beach down this way.

We are thinking that, should we return, we may stay on St. Martin and save ourselves 3 or 4 gates, handing over of the passports, and $20 handoffs. Then again, Nags Head is closer.

We won't all agree, but it's ok.

“Anonymous,” in a follow up comment to a recent blog post of mine, raised an interesting question. Would I--were it one of my children who had recently died after a lengthy illness--add a “replacement” (my word) child, and blog about it?

 I’m not sure the analogy quite works, but I grasp the point. Is it seemly, in blog posts or any open forum, to express the happiness that my significant other adds to my life so soon after the passing of my spouse, not to mention during the time he was lingering in the Limbo of late-stage Alzheimer’s?

 I understand where/why some people would question the choice. It could be construed as dismissive of the enormity of the value of Jeff’s lost life. It could suggest that I’m not feeling the normal and expected emotions that accompany death of a life partner. There is just not enough wearing of the widow’s black going on, metaphorically speaking.

 Don’t be fooled. A happy aspect to life has not squelched the feelings that burble to the surface unexpectedly, filling me with visceral, almost tangible, memories of Jeff and our beautiful relationship of half a lifetime. I can’t imagine that there will ever come a time where I won’t miss him and won’t regret missing out on living out life with him.

 And the other thing is: I kind of agree with you. It’s not quite seemly. So I will offer either a defense or an explanation (I’m not sure which it is.) I was emotionally flat for many years, suppressing feelings as a way of coping with a partner who could no longer partner, and ultimately not even know me. When seedlings of happy begin to uncurl their little green leaves on what looked to be pretty barren ground, it’s hard to keep them secret. It’s a bit irrepressible.

 There is also this--I want to be fair to others in my position who may be wondering about the possibility of new growth after huge loss. Even with Barry Petersen having “come out” about having a new partner while caring for a spouse who no longer knows him (see Jan's story) it would be easy for less renowned Alzheimer’s spouses to feel that such a choice will come with stigma. That it's something that should remain untalked about. I would rather encourage dialog than hide.

 Some would make this choice, some would not. There are plenty of reasons pointing both ways. But I’m inclined to reject the instinct to disappear and not talk about it, as a spouse then widow who is loving again. Frankly, I am ok with anyone telling me how he/she feels. I would accept honesty and respond with honesty.

 I Google-stumbled across this Psychology Today article when I was sifting for thoughts on this topic. This is a column by a philosopher, not a summary of a scientific study, so read it as such. Here is a decent encapsulation and quote about the complexity of loving more than one person:

Although a new love might physically replace the previous one, from a psychological viewpoint the widow will now love two people at the same time. Her love expresses the nonexclusive nature of love more than it does its replaceable nature. Thus, one widow writes: "'Second love' is different, but it's very good. I will always love and miss my late husband. It's really hard to understand sometimes how I can go from tears for my late husband into smiling and thinking of my new guy. There's an odd ‘divide'. I love both of them, one here and one gone." It seems that we are blessed with a heart that is very flexible and can accommodate various people at the same time.

Yes, pretty much. Again noting that these are the thoughts of a philosopher, not the findings of a scientist, it’s interesting that he refers more than once to the idea that the world may judge widows a little more harshly than others where new relationships are concerned.

I had to think about this. Yes, here’s the thing: We earn some super-good karma points through what we do, as Alzheimer’s spouses. Even though we’re just handling the cards life dealt us, it’s a tough road, and people are appropriately inclined to notice, with admiration. Maybe, by not waiting “long enough” (whatever that is,) to reclaim the right to love, we forfeit some of that karma.

The writer of the article, Aaron Ben-Zeév, makes the valid point that it is probably somewhat easier NOT to enter another relationship, and that sentiment has certainly been expressed by fellow Alzheimer spouses I know. There are some mighty complex and confusing emotions to sort through if you do, and you need to be pretty good at untangling the whys and hows of your feelings.

For me, I was pretty much carried by an awareness that there was a vacancy in my heart for one more. That drove my willingness and actions. So, no apologies. I love Jeff. I love Allen. I’m happy to discuss it, openly and frankly, with anyone.

Thanksgiving Project

There are a variety of methods suggested for mounting an amateur radio antenna high in the treetops. You might actually climb the tree, or you might rig up some kind of bow and arrow. I engaged the tools and skills of tree-climbing daughter Rachel who, in this instance, didn’t actually have to climb. Using her giant arborist-quality slingshot, she fired a weighted bag up and over the branches, and it pulled an attached line with it. 

What happened next is best described by this page, which provides instruction for hanging an antenna by means of “tree savers,” which are comprised of a length of webbing with stainless rings at each end, through which a parachute line halyard will be threaded in order to hoist the three points (center insulator, and the end of each copper wire “leg”) of a dipole antenna into their roosts.

I had prepared the strap and ring assemblies, according to instruction, but was having trouble visualizing exactly how the mounting procedure would work. So Allen and I simulated it, using the backs of kitchen chairs as branches, until the 3-Ds of the process became clear. Then, on the lovely sunny Friday after Thanksgiving, we went to work.

With all in place, there is still a glitch. The 1970s vintage Kenwood TS 530S transceiver with which Allen had been gifted by a late acquaintance, while beautiful and sharp in its receptive abilities, seems to be impaired in the transmitting department.

We will have to do something about that. There is no way for me to jump in and help save the world in the face of man-made or natural disasters if I don’t have a functioning rig with battery back-up. Perhaps I will buy something. 

KC3BKR (Yes, I passed both the Tech and General Amateur Radio Operator licensing exams this Fall,) signing off for now.

Taking aim at the big tree

It's pretty high.

positioning the south corner wire

Getting a bead on tree #2, southeast corner.

There was quite a bit of line detangling to stay on top of.

Critical audience

Em's mom came to watch too.

hoisting a leg of the antenna.

Can't transmit!

weirdos

Gestalt

This past weekend I gestalted Jeff’s passing, and our goodbye which, in reality, did not occur. Well yes, the passing really occurred, but not a two-way goodbye with acknowledgement of the significance the past 10 years (not to mention the past lifetime) held for the parties involved. Such is the nature of Alzheimer’s though. A person is lost long before he is finally lost.

I don’t think gestalt is really a verb. But Gestalt therapy is really a concept, and the particular warm and humane version practiced by Mariah Fenton Gladis and her team of therapists and apprentices at The Pennsylvania Gestalt Center’s weekend workshops is really a process in which a person can take part. And I did.

A cluster of people spend the weekend together (we were at capacity, with 40 or so participants,) and engage in discussions and exercises. The greatest part of the weekend, by weight and volume, is devoted to “hot seat” work, in which a person, for 30 minutes more or less, confronts through some imaginative form of re-creation, an aspect of his/her life that is in need of looking at. 

There are parent issues, regretted decision issues, difficult relationship issues. You can imagine. People usually like the opportunity to take roles in other folks work, and that is usually how the process is carried out--through surrogates, standing in for whatever or whomever needs to appear...sometimes maybe even a person having a heart to heart with self. 

I knew, or at least I assumed, that once I started talking during my turn, I’d have to pick someone to be Jeff. I had, for that reason, already zeroed in on someone I’d met, (who, for confidentiality reasons, I will call Hank) and he did a fine job. It was me I was more concerned about, performance-wise, even though performance isn’t really an apt word in this context. Really I just wondered whether I had the capacity to drop my intellectual, detached observer of the process stance sufficiently that I could even experience anything psychologically or emotionally meaningful.

I need not have wondered. Mariah has some well-honed insight into humans, and great intuition when it comes to setting up the right evocative scenario. By the time she had me sitting by Jeff-as-played-by-Hank’s deathbed with my head on his chest and arm around his torso, and he acknowledged the care and love and work I’d tendered over the past decade, and expressed his desire that I move on and have a life (things which I knew to be true of Jeff,) I couldn’t not have a cathartic, moving experience. 

I do not, at this time, know just what I took home from the weekend. I liked it. I will be processing the loss of Jeff in whatever private way my psyche sees fit to employ for quite a while, I imagine. I’m not sure what role my Gestalt work will have played. Several people told me I looked much more relaxed that afternoon, and the next day, than I had prior to my turn. But maybe I was just anticipating being brave enough to jump up and take that turn, and relaxed after. I don’t know. Didn’t, still don’t.

I think I’d do it again though

marbles

Life is a little like a bucket of marbles. Just try to shift them around because you’d like to make a little more space in the middle, or maybe you want all the cat eyes on the top. Good luck. If there’s a hole, it’ll soon be filled by tumbling entropy, and the marbles will mix themselves up any way they want to. 

In the midst of saddest events in life, there is absurdity. Don’t pretend it’s not there, in the interest of preserving the dignity of the moment. At least admit it to yourself. You don’t necessarily have to confess in writing like this: 

Jeff had died. I was alone with him. I’d said goodbye, into ears that may have heard, and he passed peacefully. A little while later, Helen, Gordon, Bill, and Allen had returned to the scene. At the bidding of the hospice nurse, the funeral home team arrived. A young lady and a young man, each on the stout side and about five feet tall, with at most an extra inch or two between them. Clad in black suits, they wore studied expressions of somber compassion, and spoke in gentle whispery tones.

They readied the gurney, then took their positions, one at the head, one at the foot. It was at this point, Allen told me later, that he and Bill looked at each other with the shared thought--should we be helping them? But the “funeral gnomes” (another thought, shared with me later,) carried out their offices unflappably while I was engaged in a phone call with the pastor, to start planning a service. There is no one who would have found the scenario more quirkily funny than Jeff. 

My old dog, Freddi, died four days after Jeff. Her care needs had intensified in her last year. I was plying her with tasty canned stews, concocted for doggies, and carrying her outside and in to meet the calls of nature. By some ways of reasoning, I should be experiencing a reprieve from dog duty. In fact, I am sitting here now, typing away, while Olivia’s chihuahua (snuggled against my right thigh) passes tiny gassy poots, and Allen’s cockapoo (snuggled against my left) snores. There isn’t much of a dog-shaped cavity in my bucket of marbles. 

Jeff

Jeff has escaped, and that--in the scheme of things--is good news. We’ve been missing him for many, many years, and did not wish for him to linger in the no-man’s-land of deep dementia. Truth is, no one can say exactly what that experience is like from the subject’s point of view, but I do know that Jeff as I knew him would not have wished for it to continue.

It is interesting now to carry on and greet the world with the sense of release that is the strongest piece of what I’m feeling since he stopped breathing at 10:25 am, on October 12, as I sat beside his bed. The community knows that Jeff Clement has died, and they received this news, fittingly, with surprise and sadness...without being able to trace immediately just how long it had been since they’d seen him functioning on all cylinders, or seen him at all for that matter.

People who’ve dealt intimately with dementia know, better than others, why I have, as a widow, a more cheerful than average response to their expressed condolences. It’s been roughly 10 years from the early troubling personality changes to now, and I have felt--over that course--the full brunt of every feeling you might imagine gets squeezed out of the Alzheimer’s spousing experience. But I am stoic, and have a preference for emotionally strategizing my way out of negative feelings wherever I can...so the tolls paid do not always show.

There is no question that for those he loved, Jeff would want us to uncover every speck of happy, inquisitiveness, exploration, and worth we can in the years each of us has left. Go team.

Would you like brown, brown, brown, or umber?

Neither I nor Allen really wants an RV*. Well, not really really. But we do, as a matter of recreation, make a point of noticing the many varieties of them which are on the small side. And wondering just how small can you go to achieve the perfect overlap of towability and comfort. (*In actuality, he may--in a sense--want one of everything.)

So this weekend, for a Sunday of entertainment, we headed north to the Timonium fairgrounds to see the RV Super Sale. This is a gathering of multiple Maryland dealers, and the vehicles on offer were packed in like cattle in a feed lot. 

We found a few of the small sort that we admire--specifically a couple of T@Bs, such as the one pictured here. 

Very cute, very efficient. With a trailer such as this, you could do everything from sleep to make a pancake. It all depends on what you want out of life. And of special note: These little campers are not brown. Inside or outside. 

The reason this un-brownness is notable is that everything else, and I mean everything, had an interior design scheme based on the following shades: brown, mud, dirt, and dog hair (provided the dog is brown.) I assume they did market research on this, and ascertained that the sort of people who enjoy camping in a climate controlled luxury hotel suite (with full kitchen) on wheels, also favor brown. Brown cabinetry, brown carpet, brown fake lightweight tile, brown bed coverings, and upholstery where abstract patterns in brown frolic fetchingly in a field of brown.

A saleslady was hiding in one of the giant RVs, and we unwittingly stumbled upon her. “Isn’t this a great interior?” she gushed. “I especially love the color scheme in this one.” Yes, it was brown. I could see why she loved it.

So on and off we climbed, into and out of vehicles which ran the gamut from $10,000 to a couple-hundred grand in price. And this is what I learned about what people nowadays want in their recreational vehicles:

They want: master bedrooms up a few steps from the rest of the vehicle, with a private entrance into a bathroom featuring a walk-in shower, potty, and sink. (Although, in many cases, they also want a secondary exit door located such that whoever’s poised on the head could--if he wished--enjoy a full frontal view of the neighbor’s exterior auxiliary kitchen. As they were enjoying a similar view of him.)

They want kitchens with islands and Corian countertops. They want theater-style seating across from a flat-screen tv. They would like, if you don’t mind, a gas fireplace just below the tv screen. They would really, really like an entire other third of the vehicle subdivided into a room for the kids, with its own tv and mini-fridge, sofas that convert to sleepers with pull-down bunks above. And the exterior auxiliary kitchen I alluded to involves a flip-up panel to expose your outside kitchenette, just in case you do not--for some reason--relish the thought of climbing back into your “Big Sierra Sasquatch” to grab a beer.

I can only imagine the fun people must have keeping up with an ever-rotating series of Joneses. 

As for us...there weren’t enough campers of a modest size to fuel our acquisitive sides. It will have to keep being one of those things we look at just for fun. Just as well. 

tree

What usually happens, during acupuncture, is I drift off into a place that’s a little better than sleep, because there’s a certain amount of awareness.

I’m sure it’s planned that way. I’m on a comfy massage table, pillows propped just so. Tiny needles, placed to energize the right meridians are twangling painlessly in my dermis. The lights are dimmed, and fairyland music plays softly while a hint of fragrant oils infuses the room. So, once the thoughts of the moment play their way through my frontal cortex, some other brain zone takes over, filling my head with nondescript imagery...sometimes like a subtle form of the Northern Lights.

On Wednesday morning, after asking Sara to work on my Achilles tendinitis, I had a vision of a very large tree. It was an evergreen, conical like a Christmas tree, but with rounded contours and softer cypress needles...and huge. It towered, many stories high, at the crest of a hill up which I’d hiked.

The tree was not perfect. Somewhere, at a point roughly two-thirds of its height, the trunk had diverged into two. The trunk section facing me was bare. Devoid of  branches and foliage, it was nubbed off at the top, and polished smooth with age. Patches of its bareness showed through the tree at many elevations. Behind it, the second trunk was full of branches, and it extended them lushly as if embracing the brittle, empty trunk next to it, giving the tree--though asymmetrically patchy--an overall effect of wholeness.

There's a puppy sleeping in my lap, so I'll just make a silly blog post.

I'm about 1/8 through this. It's remarkable that I've spent my life wedged between 2 rivers and know as little as I do.

Yesterday’s trip was somewhat less than a 3-hour tour aboard the Minnow. The boat’s name was Delight, but I still enjoyed filling the general Gilligan role. The role of Ginger was played by the Skipper’s ex, a trio of children variously took the part of Mary Anne, I suppose the ex’s employer would have to have been the Howells, and several employees more or less covered the Professor. Yeah, that was a stretch. Especially since the torrential downpour held off until we’d been safely back to shore for a couple hours.

This ride was arranged by the aforementioned ex, as a day's entertainment for her company, and the boat belongs to a friend of Allen's--the guy who launches his crab boat from Cypress Marine, then steams and sells them from his truck on site.

From the Delight, looking back toward the Marina. I'd gotten a quick tutorial on which lines to undo, and in what order before we set sail.

There were some pretty darn cute kids aboard. These two had a few things to tell me about Dora and Diego.

It's worth noting that when the water got choppy, whoever was driving got dripped on by water that had pooled in this fixture. 

Captain Allen gives the very cute inquisitive kid a landmark to aim for, while occasionally grabbing the wheel to compensate for the kid's tendency to turn it 180º when a subtle directional adjustment was called for.

No kid, you don't get to drive us under the Bay Bridge and turn around. I do. I pretend to know what I'm doing by driving and shooting pictures at the same time.

Under the Bridge is a nice point of view, and no one takes $6 from you, or reads your EZ-Pass transponder. 

Where it stands...

Cindy, a Sunrise nurse, stopped me as I was entering and she was exiting yesterday afternoon. She wanted to know if I was aware that Jeff was having swallowing problems and we shared the basic acknowledgment that, in terms of disease progression, any semblance of a plateau is long gone.

The swallowing issue was not something I’d seen. I noticed something like that once, a month or so ago, but not recently. And most of my attempts to do breakfast duty lately have found Jeff still in bed. So, yesterday, I returned at dinner. He scarfed it without problem. So swallowing is not consistently unreliable. Eating napkins, should his hand happen to grasp one, is...all part of his being in a very primitive, infantile state, reflex-wise.

I will try again for this morning’s breakfast time. But he does sleep often, if not mostly. When not horizontal in bed, he is most often parked in his wheelchair, somewhere. At his most alert, he might look at you, and you might get a smidgen of a smile. He may mumble a couple words. You probably won’t understand them, and they may not be words at all...just a syllable, repeated, sometimes.

I don’t fear the falling possibility so much now. When he could stand, there remained the risk that he would bash his head on something, and bleed profusely enough that the night staff could not resist their urge to call 911, despite the firm decision--affirmed by family, doctor, Sunrise nurse staff, and Hospice--that he should remain in place with comfort measures provided.

I still see the impulse to stand and “do something.” But what remains of it is his hands feeling the sides or arms of his chair, and a slight push. That’s as far as it goes. He is undisturbed. The memory of the thought that gave way to that push was fleeting, and it doesn’t seem to trouble him that the follow-through action fizzled.

Today I will haul in a bag full of disposable undies, wipes, and bed pads. The pads, in particular, have been disappearing quickly, as one is used for each underwear change.

There’s so little more to say about this. You just go, and you give a few loving words and a back rub, because that’s all that’s left to give. Beyond that, you just have to care for what he’s leaving behind, and that’s people. Because you know that’s what he’d be trying to do if those “do something” impulses could lead to anything.

Next time, we wear...maybe Captain Blood costumes.

Trogdor the Burninator, which was partially piloted by Gabe in 2008

Every Spring, the American Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore hosts a very goofy, and very popular, Kinetic Sculpture Race. I last attended in ’08 when Gabe was a 10th grader at The Baltimore Lab School, and the school’s entry (at the “Bush League” level, meaning non-seaworthy,) was the pedal-powered Trogdor the Burninator. The sculptures (and accompanying teams, and fans,) take a 15 mile walk along many blocks at the south end of the city, pausing (approximately mid-way through,) at the Canton waterfront where those so equipped trundle down the launch ramp into the Inner Harbor and attempt to prove their wet-mettle by rounding the pier and making it back to shore on the pedal or oar power of their crew.
On May 4 I got a new perspective on the race as first-mate of the safety boat--Allen’s nameless skiff in which he, for the last few years, has anchored just a smidge west of the main action, ready to assist any sculptures whose steering or floating equipment isn’t proving to be quite adequate.

Cypress Marine in the rear window

So, on Saturday morning, we ate big at the Breakfast Shop, and left Cypress Marine.

It's NOT ominous at all that the streetlight in the background has vultures perching all along it.

Halfway down route 10, the highway wind proved too enticing to the old blue pool float whose function was to be a comfortable sit-upon, and it flew out of the boat. We pinned it under a duffel of windbreakers and a bag of water and granola bars.

This is how you tie the rope to the cleat. Got that? Good. That makes one of us.

Hanover Street Bridge, and sittin' on the dock of the...harbor, waiting for the boat trailer to get wheeled in.

We parked the truck and launched from the public ramp behind Harbor Hospital. From there, it was a fifteen minute (or so) motor around the point of Fort McHenry (no cannons firing today) to the Canton Waterfront Park.

It's a nice green buoy.

Out of focus, yes, (we were chopping along at a decent clip,) but significant in that it is a red marker. Here's the  mnemonic: Red, Right, Returning...or how to position your boat in the channel. Here, we're outgoing so it's on our left.

The Lehigh Cement towers, Baltimore Inner Harbor

There are some seriously big ships. Here, Navy vessels Gordon and Gilliland

A paddlewheeler as we approach the Canton waterfront

Canton Waterfront Park in view

We were early, and had a little time to kill, so we made use of the porta-potties before the crowds arrived, strolled around a bit, and lounged.

Our friends the Porta-Potties. Visit #1, pre-crowd.

Wasting time. Comparing shades of arctic blond. 

Allen is geek-bonding over audio equipment

Ok, smile, because after this it's hats-on from here on out.

As the floating entries came up Boston Street, we putted a little ways into the Harbor and took our position. By our position, I mean close enough to monitor the action, but discreetly out of the way enough not to annoy the kayakers who are the first line of assistance and consider any help from a motor to be largely unnecessary. Even if it isn’t. Unnecessary. (I should also point out that where anything having to do with managing the boat is concerned, “we” actually means Allen, except in that I was there, and also except in that I did--for the first time ever, and most inexpertly--drive the boat a little on our return trip across the Harbor.)

This kayak has a greenish mesh drape over it from which it is sprouting actual sprouts. 

This guy's got a tiny video camera on the tripod

And this guy is placing the orange markers, around which the sculptures are meant to navigate.

The Platypus rounds the pier

Here comes the Mad Scientist

The Hogwart's Express comes complete with a dementor, which may explain why they had such trouble with portside listing, and not much forward progress.

"Go Ask Alice," the Wonderland-themed entry, powered by quite a few people.

Then the entrants enter the water, one at a time, and the crowd inevitably roars. Each sculpture is piloted by from one to many riders, and each comes with an entourage of costumed pit crew, who cheer and yell from the pier as their entry either moves or flounders.

No problems yet

Mostly, we spectated until the kids in the good ship Crabtastic began to drift out to sea, at which point we motored around behind them and gave them a nudge or two in the direction of the dock.

The kids on the Crabtastic need a push. We're pushing.

Along the Harbor wall...we take turns running to the potties while a 3 year old gawks in awe at our boat

So yes, I operated the outboard for a bit on the return trip across the Harbor. Allen insists that it becomes intuitive, but I don’t think I’ve got the best brain ever for right-left differentiation, so it took some focus for me to remember to push the tiller if I wanted to turn right, and pull when I preferred left. At any rate, I got us to the Right of the Red marker as we were Returning, then turned it over to the Skipper rather than risk any unnecessary collision of boat with dock.

The Star Spangled Banner still waves--Fort McHenry

Allen backs the trailer in. I sit on the pier and hold the rope.