Pirates life for me

Hello all!
Just a little update on what I'm up to these days. I arrived back on the east coast a few weeks ago as I am working this spring for the same group I worked for in the fall. Also Sadie joined the crew for this spring as well and I'm very excited to have her around as we have adventures in the exciting land of Stamford, ct. I don't remember how much I may have have told you guys about this organization in the past so here's a little info on what I'm doing. The organization is a non-profit called Soundwaters and is basically devoted to educating kids and the whole community about Long Island Sound and about what we can all do to promote a healthy environment. There is a small museum/community center on in a park nearby where they have after school programs and all sorts of other stuff and there is also the boat where Sadie and I work and also live (featured in the picture above). School groups typically come for 3 hours and we go out on the sound and have about half the time as a whole group where the kids help us raise the sails and hear general info about the sound and the area. We do a trawl everyday so that we can catch creatures for the kids to look at and we spend the second half of the sail with the kids split up into small groups that then go around the boat to different stations taught by the crew members. Most of the time the stations are environmental like plankton and water cycle kind of stuff and occasionally we do a nautical science based program with stations on navigation and how sailboats work. We also have public sails on the weekends so if anyone finds themselves in the nyc area you should come by!

However for the moment the boat is out of the water for some maintenance so we have been spending our days painting, rust busting and putting things back together that were stored at the end of last season. And since we don't move onto the boat until its in the water we have been staying in a hotel where our dirty/paint covered carhartts have really been fitting in well seeing as how last weekend there was a dance competition (think sparkle motion from donnie darko everywhere you look) and this weekend there are lots of small children really dressed up for what we think may be a beauty pageant. Last weekend the crossword competition was also in town but sadly we missed them as they were at another hotel.

Hope everyone is well. Let me know if anyone is venturing to the east this spring as nyc, boston, and hanover are all relatively close.

fair winds
laura k