John and Joan's sailboat Starlight at sunset at its mooring on Five Mile River

John and Joan offered us amazing hospitality over the last week and we have really enjoyed spending the week in Rowayton. We borrowed Joan's car to do a couple of provisioning runs including topping off our propane tanks for the stove and BBQ. Driving a car after 3 months was weird! Since we were moored on the bow and stern buoys, we had a short dingy ride every day to get into town up the Five Mile River past quintessential east coast architecture houses. The weather this week was fabulous (finally!!) and I even spent the better part of Friday afternoon working from the back deck and waving at the boaters passing by.

Open-air outdoor dining had just been allowed in Connecticut, so we took the opportunity to eat at a restaurant just down the street from John and Joan - our first dining out experience in several months! This restaurant had a cute patio where half the tables had been roped off to account for social distancing, and we wore masks whenever the servers came to our table and removed them only for eating.

It's a little hard to eat with these on...

Since some packages that we were expecting were delayed and we knew we would be extending our stay into the following week, we decided to go for a weekend overnight to Oyster Bay, just across the Long Island Sound and invited John aboard to see if we could convince him to come to the dark side (power boating) :). We had a fantastic short trip and the weather continued to hold, so David even brought out the inflatable toys and drank a margarita off the back of the boat.

Our final package arrived and we determined that Monday would be our last night in Rowayton. We have spent the last two nights with David's family watching the developing news of the protests sweeping across the country. David and I are very aware of the privileges of our lives, and not just that we are in a position to be on this adventure this year (regardless of how it has been affected by the global pandemic). We are horrified by what has happened and is happening in our country and we stand in solidarity with those who believe in equal rights and justice for all.