Below, she stands at the entrance to the floating house.
Cassy is six years old and this was her second sleepover aboard Quiet Passage.
As usual, she was awake at 0600, nudging her grandma, asking to feed the cat. The energy of six-year-old kids is quite similar to nuclear power plants. It seems endless.
We had dressed, had breakfast and were ready to go for a row aboard Imp, our 22-year-old dinghy.
Cassy and I rowed out into New Haven�s harbor. A glassy-calm morning, with barely a ripple on the surface of the water, made the trip easy. As we approached a floating shack, the owner invited us to go aboard. He was leaving to organize a rowing contest among some high school kids at the Sea School in New Haven.
The little place had many of the comforts of home: a pot-bellied stove, a bar, sofa, even a Port-a-potty. On the row back to the boat, I handed over the oars to Cassy, who rowed us in circles for a while, until she got the hang of pulling on the oars.
We came back aboard QP and prepared for the trip back north to Kent � two hours away. Cassy, who is just beginning to read, announced she was hungry. As we drove up Route 25, American marketing kicked in. She saw a billboard for McDonalds and immediately called out that was where we should head. I was in the outside lane and couldn�t cross traffic fast enough to get to the exit, though. So, unworried, she sank into her back seat and fell asleep, waking five minutes from New Milford, as the next McDonalds came on the radar screen.
