New found respect for teachers
12 December 2007
October 15, 2007 Monday Ocracoke, NC
Today is another warm and sunny day with temps well above the seasonal average. We are comfortable here so we decide to spend another day in Ocracoke. I will keep busy all day with maintenance, repairs and upgrades to the boat's systems. Deb has her chores to complete as well, those being cleaning and paper work (bills) which have her attention until 11:00AM. Deb then begins today's homes schooling lessons. She gets the girls both started with a subject and then works one on one with each girl. Danielle is in 5th grade and Kristen is in 2nd grade so the curriculum is quite different for each girl. Preparation and explanation of the lessons requires her complete attention during the entire schooling session. There is little or no down time for the teacher. It is really quite time consuming and we both have a new appreciation for teachers. So far I have had very little opportunity to teach due to the ever-consuming daily list of maintenance and repairs required to keep the boat healthy.
Kristen works with tens and ones in math. Danielle reads her book Shiloh. Kristen then continues with Fantasy and Realism. She understands the concept quite well. Danielle now begins her math lesson. She is reviewing subtraction, which is not a problem for her. She completes the 4-minute test in fewer than 3 minutes thanks again to her 4th grade teachers. I hope she learns just as well from us. Kristen is now onto spelling and poetry. She knew all of her words at the pretest for spelling. Thank you Mrs. Fessler. Danielle completes her spelling assignment, but was getting frustrated with History. We decide to read the chapter together. She is learning about the explorers that were trying to find the Northwest Passage that did not exist. We finish the chapter and she has to do a short essay on a question.
Meanwhile, I am busy installing a 12-volt outlet near the forward companionway and had to relocate the autopilot remote control jack to make room for the outlet. As usual, This work takes a lot longer than I have planned. We will use this outlet to power our handheld GPS in the cockpit. We found the GPS antenna was unable to receive satellites efficiently in the cabin where there are plenty of 12-volt outlets so it needs to be placed on the cabin top to get good reception. It can operate on batteries but not for more than 12 hours so the outlet is a cost saver when you consider the price of batteries today. There is another 12 volt outlet at the helm, but running the wires across the cockpit, the companionway and then to the navigation station inside the cabin is an accident waiting to happen with 4 people moving about. The GPS has a data cable that feeds our position information to a navigation program running on the laptop in the navigation station. It works essentially the same way as our Raymarine chartplotter/radar system display does at the helm. We opt to run this second GPS system as a backup, in the event one system should fail, while we are offshore.
The girls finish school around 4:00PM. They play on their Nintendo's and Deb cleans up some emails. Kristen later sends some emails and feeds a few ducks that came by our boat. I am now making more temporary repairs to the autopilot hydraulic pump so it can be used while we locate replacement parts.
Evening arrives and it is time to settle down to watch the Red Sox!