October always seems like a transition month to me.

Our summer resident snowbirds are packing up and heading south. Plans are being made for winter vacations to sunny places. The ski’s boots and snowboards in the garage are getting a second look, and the kids have all settled into the new routine at school for the year.

Our Farmer’s Market had a great year with delightful weather, an abundance of great late summer produce and quality musical entertainment we can always count on. Soon the leaves will be dropping off of the trees and the sweet smell of those wood burning stoves and fireplaces will fill the air.

I like the seasonal changes we enjoy here and I think that it is one of the things that most of us enjoy about this little piece of the world we live in.

Down at port, it is planning time. We are sorting out all of the things we need to budget for in the coming year and starting to get down all those plastic tubs of Christmas lights to set up the display for all to enjoy in December. For your planning purposes, it looks like we will be throwing the switch for the lights on the Nov. 30 — that will be the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. Look for a lot of new pieces to the display, our team of volunteers have been working each week to bring you a great show. I will be missing the tree lighting this year. I have planned a trip to South America for that part of the year.

By the time you read this, we will have had our two brainstorming meetings on how the community would like to see us proceed on development of the two parcels of property that we have acquired this year. We are looking at a lot of great ideas and will keep everyone posted on how the plan evolves.

The long awaited dredge project is probably going to happen in the month of November. The Requests for Proposals should be responded to by early October and once we get a chance to go over the bids a contractor will be selected and the project will start. It probably won’t last more than a week or so. Isn’t that strange how planning stages for projects can take years while the actual project itself usually only takes a fraction of that time to complete.

We have also engaged an engineering firm to evaluate all of the structural pieces of our covered moorage berths. Things that are built over the water tend to experience a lot of wear and tear from Mother Nature and we need to plan and budget in future years to take care of those investments and keep them ship shape.

Nautical Term of the Month

We all know what a Duffle Bag is. Did you know where the term came from? Duffle is a name given to a sailor’s personal effects. Also spelled duffel, it referred to a sailor’s principal clothing as well as to the sea bag in which he carried and stowed it. The term comes from the Flemish town of Duffel near Antwerp, and denotes a rough woolen cloth made there. I remember my first woolen jumpers I wore in the Coast Guard. They itched. But that is it.

As always, thanks for taking a few minutes to read this stuff. I hope you found something interesting.

— Pete DeBoer is a Kingston port commissioner. Contact him at pete@petedeboer.com.