We’re home.

Lake Union, Seattle, WA, USA, 30-SEP-2018 – We’re home. We arrived yesterday at 6:12pm.

It was a different arrival than in 2016. The dock was empty. No one to greet us.

The night before when we docked at Boat Haven in Port Townsend, we spoke about how many hundreds of times we have docked, how Jennifer routinely pulls into a slip with Caro Babbo inches from the dock. And so we did here.

The airs from Port Townsend were light. We’re no longer in Alaska, where we won’t raise a light air sail because it will be blowing like hell in a few minutes or there will be no wind at all. We raised the 170% Genoa and sailed against the current. Eventually, the wind was no match for the current and we motored. As the afternoon progressed, the current subsided and, in wind that barely rippled the water, we sailed again.

This will be the last sailing for several months.

For the last six months, we have been in the company of cruising boats. In that company, Caro Babbo is a damn fast boat. Here, outside the locks at Shilshole, the racing craft were out with AIS turned on so we can see their speed. Specialty boats do what they are designed to do: a J105 is terrifyingly fast to Jennifer and me, sailing at 80% of wind speed.

Returning to Seattle feels like we’ve never been gone, as if the Seattle timeline is a continuous ribbon and the six months away were just a loop in the ribbon.

The train bridge was up as we entered the waiting area for the locks. A man on a very beautiful wooden Chris Craft jerked his thumb angrily, indicating that we are behind him on line. Our only thought was, Do we really need this crap when we’ve just arrived? We waited our turn to enter the lock and ended up next to him. He’s just a nervous boater shepherding a fragile boat through a tight space. We spoke for a few minutes while we positioned an open aluminum skiff between us.

The rest of the passage through the boat canal was as pleasant as could be. The Ballard Bridge opened on the first call, and the Fremont Bridge stayed open for us. When we passed under, I called ‘‘Thank you’’ up to the bridge operator who honked the horn in reply. Things like that that make us feel like we’re home.

After we tied up, we spotted Kimberly and Jeff working on Stella Blue. Kimberly is looking very trim and Jeff looks younger than when we left. Jennifer and I are very tanned with more face lines.

Each year when we’ve returned, we’ve gone to Nickerson’s for burger and a beer. This year it was just Jennifer and me splitting a burger and a small salad. The night before we left we saw a sign outside Nickerson’s telling us the place would be torn down and replaced with an apartment building, with Nickerson’s residing at street level. Nickerson’s was still there, untouched.

We asked our server what was the deal? She replied the building was three years off.

I’ll be in Seattle for a week or so before heading to Atlanta to see to some houses. Jennifer will leave Seattle in two weeks or so to see to a house in Phoenix. Then, we’ll meet up at the end of the month in Atlanta.

The contractor who was to prepare the Atlanta houses for sale across the summer never showed up. At least one of the houses has had the remaining copper torn out. We worry about the other. So, I’ll start with those problems and then assess what Jennifer and I will do on our own and what we will out source to contractors that we will oversee. We’re four months behind schedule now.

When we docked, we unloaded in the dinghy, Hilary Hoffman, from the deck so we would have light in the forepeak. We’re in a city now, where it is always light. I woke up during the night, as I always do to check the anchor, though unnecessary here. There was still light, but through the translucent glass of the hatch I could see the moon to the right of Seattle’s George Washington Bridge.