Day 18, 4 June

Today was our day to be off the island to get supplies.   Around 10pm the night before I went out to walk Sacatar and saw a beautiful starry night.  Around 11pm Cyn went outside and noted the lighthouse was totally hemmed in by fog.  Came in quickly.  When this happens, the entire area surrounding the lighthouse is bathed in an eerie glow produced by the dome of light emitted by the lighthouse into the fog around us.  She is always watching us.  It is really cool!  At any rate, this was predicted and rain is in the forecast for Wednesday.  We got up a 0600, got all the trash together and what was left of our stuff to take to town and headed down to the cove.  It wasn’t raining (yet).  Around 0720 Ethan showed up in the Guppy to drop off the Wednesday Warriors, 4 of them today, and pick us up.  In about 2 minutes we unload their stuff and load up our stuff and off we go, barely able to say hi.  We did tell them about a tram issue and how to handle Sacatar if she needed to go out.  She has to be helped down the stairs.  Ethan brought Pepper along, his pitbull-lab mix.  She is very sweet and seemed glad to see us.  Once we arrived at Popham Beach, it started to rain.  Rained pretty good most of the day.  On the way to town we stopped at Cyndy’s to empty the trash, get water and return some frozen chicken breasts to her freezer that she left at the Keeper’s house. We were real quiet so we didn’t wake Cyndy or Hinkley up, but we did get one cat to greet us. On the way to the office we stopped at Mae’s Café and shared a yummy eggs Benedict breakfast. We performed our duties at the Lighthouse business office, picked up a few items in town (Pizza cutter, better corkscrew), Cyn got some buttons at the yarn store and we headed over to do laundry.  While she was at the yarn store I mailed a couple of Seguin Island T-shirts to our good friends, Ron and Janice, who live in Tucson and requested them.  While Cyn did the laundry, I went to Ace hardware to pick up some lawnmower air filters, got two gas cans filled and checked on a prescription at Walgreens (they still didn’t have it).  Cynthia called both her mom and oldest brother and had nice long chat with both.  They were wondering if we had made it and how we were doing.  We both went about 6 miles to the nearest Wal-Mart to look for some rain pants.   We really should have some of these, especially for the boat ride.  Couldn’t find any that we liked.  I will order some online tonight and have them delivered to the office.  Next, off to the grocery store and fish market for food.  We finally went to have lunch at Spinney’s, a restaurant right near Popham Beach.  Got there at 2pm.  Turns out our friend Cyndy works there.  She was the one who spent the first week at the lighthouse teaching us all the ins and outs of the operations.  It was great to see her again and chat and catch up on events.  Cyn had a crab sandwich while I had a burger.  Very good.  On to the pier at 3pm for our return trip to the island.  It is now raining hard.  We pulled up and Ethan was waiting for us in his truck, sound asleep.  We quietly loaded up his boat and changed our clothes.  Ethan did wake up but was surprised he hadn’t heard us sooner.  He was nice enough to follow us in his truck to our parking spot and gave us a ride back to the Guppy.  I mentioned we changed clothes.  Nearly every time you get in or out of the boat at the cove on the island you get wet, at least from the knees down.  What seems to work is lightweight quick drying nylon shorts with some sort of water shoes.  So here we are all bundled up on top, shirt, fleece and rain jacket with bare legs sticking out below.  It was only about 50 degrees and raining so our legs got pretty cold.  Off we go to the island, hard rain, some pretty big swells and windy.  We arrive 20 minutes later and the crew is on the rocks waiting for us.  We perform the usually switch-a-roo with gear and bodies and they leave us alone in the hard rain on at the rocky cove.  We carry the stuff up the steps to the base of the tram.  Cyn puts the stuff that is not in waterproof containers in the donkey engine house and she heads to the lighthouse carrying the, all important, ice cream and frozen pizzas to get them in the freezer as fast as possible.  While she does that I fire up the diesel donkey engine and prepare the tram.  When she is at the top of the tram to provide hand signals, so I know when to stop the tram, I engage the tram gearing and up it goes.  She gives me the signal to stop, I turn off the engine and up I go.  Still raining we load everything off the tram to the house.  Put things away and sat down to watch the news.  As I write this, I have the first Kings-Rangers Stanley Cup game on in a small window on the computer.  Game is tied at the end of 2 periods, 2-2.  Puck is really small, but the image is amazingly sharp.  Cyn fell asleep on the couch.  The rain finally stopped but is in the forecast for tomorrow.  Might be an indoor day.  Stay tuned.  Oh yeah, the Kings won!