Meet the Neighbors

Dramatis Personae

BoatGirl

CaraMay

Mark

CrystalMethDude

The Setting: A parking lot adjacent docks 3 and 4, approximately 5 pm on a sunny Sunday at the end of June, one week after I brought the Indian Summer to the dock.

(On-stage, gathered around Mark’s motorcycle are BoatGirl, CaraMay and Mark.)

(CrystalMethDude approaches from stage left, staggering slightly and speaks to BoatGirl.)

CMD:  Hey.   We like your boat…….  Your boat’s hhhott.

BG (perkily):  Umm. Thanks!

CMD:  That’s the hottest Coronado 25 I’ve ever seen.  Did you paint it that black yourself?

BG:  No.  It…it came that way.      {{Note:  Indian Summer is navy blue}}

CMD:  Its hhhooohhttt……..I’ve got a Coronado 23 and a Coronado 27.  Well, actually it’s 26 feet and 8 INCHES but they charge me for 27 feet.  What are they charging you for?

BG:  Well, it’s a 30 foot berth, but they didn’t have any single finger slips available, they’re all too shallow, so I’m getting a double finger slip at the single finger rate.  The harbormaster has been really nice about everything.

CMD:  Yeah, Robert’s great.  They’re all awesome here.  {{weaving in place}}

Suddenly, they are all distracted by loud crashing noises a few cars over

CMD: DUDE!!!  I told you that would happen!  That’s why I said to buy cans not bottles!   {{Looking back at BG, CM and M}}  That asshole dropped all the beer.  No, not really, it was just a bunch of wrenches.

CMD wanders away down the parking lot.

CM (brightly):  I think you just made a new friend!

Next week’s neighbor:  Cheech and his guns

Sailing with Sideshow

Last Friday, I called in sea-sick and went sailing with my officemate, Sideshow Ian.  I don’t remember anymore why I call him that, I just do.  He’s a great sailor – he’s bow boy for a variety of racing boats so Friday was actually a relaxing day for him.  No one was yelling at him, he got to hang out in the cockpit and deal with jib sheets.

It was one of the first really sunny days in a long time, which led to some blackmail material.

The wind picked up greatly once we passed under the Bay Bridge and we surfed around the Northern tip of Treasure Island.  Got into an impromptu race (well, we were racing) with a red boat and won – they pretended they weren’t racing but I know better.

I saw a selkie once we had passed all the construction on Arnie’s Folly and back under the bay bridge.  OK, it may have been a simple sea lion, but I was at beer number 7 so I swear it spoke to me.   In Gaelic.

Yeah, Sideshow is kind of a bad sailing influence.  He swears you are only a good sailor if you can raise a sail, trim it, etc. without ever spilling the beer in your hand.  Hmm.  He might be on to something, it was my best docking yet.

What do you call…

… 3 Henschels in a boat?

(Answer at bottom)

Five years after their first visit to California, my parents came to visit me.  They visit my brother yearly – he’s the favorite.  They are frightened of California in a way that only small-town New Englanders can be.  I think that deep down they believe they will be shanghaied at the airport and trundled off to a commune where they will be forced to wear Birkenstocks and smoke pot.  And they can’t imagine anything worse than that.

Here they are in Monterey.

But to show them how safe it was, I took them sailing.  We didn’t run into any of my local ‘friends’ at the dock.  Crystal-Meth-Dealer must have been sleeping off a big one, Frank-Cheech seems to be out of town so we didn’t get to see his gun collection, so they only saw the more normal seeming denizens of the dock. 

My mother is no longer very mobile (years of arthritis have led to replacement hip and knee) so she served as SLB (self loading ballast) while I put my father in charge of the new motor.  I think it may have been the first new outboard he has ever touched.  He seemed to really like it and kept excitedly telling me to watch how low he could idle it without it dying.  I showed them all the safety equipment I have on board; my dad seemed surprised as the only safety equipment he has on his boat is PFDs.

We left the harbor and I got my first taste of how little my dad knows about sailing despite having his own boat.  I told him we were going to head up into the wind, then he was going to hold us there with the motor low while I put up the sails.  He replied,"Why don’t we just turn off the engine and put the sails up now?"  (For those of you who don’t sail, that’s a really good way to capsize, especially in 20-25 knot winds like we were in)   "No, Dad, we’re not going to do that.  We’re going to head up into the wind WITH the motor and put the sails up."  "I don’t think we need to."  "Dad, its my boat, we’re heading up into the wind."  He later allowed as how maybe I was right on that one.  Uh, yeah.

Anyway.  Mom freaked out every time the boat started to heel over a little so I had to sail a beam reach most of the day to keep it more even.  Dad got pissy at first about not wanting to wear his PFD.  He also didn’t want to cleat off the jib sheets the way I wanted so the jib kept coming loose and flapping.  But, apparently, they really enjoyed themselves and we sailed all day.  I even let my dad bring the boat into the dock.  They thought it was a really pretty boat and much nicer than my dad’s.

Here’s a picture of the new jib they gave me for my birthday.

  And here’s me and Carlos lashing it down. 

Actually, despite my snarkiness, it was really fun doing boat-bonding with my dad.  He approved of the modifications I have made for the motor and had some good suggestions for more improvements, as well as explained what is going on with the batteries I have.

The next day we went to Monterey to see the aquarium and now I want a pet California sea otter.  They’re so damn cute!  They look just like extra big rats.  I could keep one on my boat and it could swim along behind while I’m sailing.  Just so ya’ll know – my birthday is coming up.  I’m not yet sure if otters can be house trained, but I’m sure I can work it out.

Answer:  2 too many.

Impromptu Boatwarming

AKA Noah’s Revenge

Payday was Friday, so I bolstered up the sagging US economy on Saturday by going to West Marine and Home Depot to buy supplies.  Glue is remarkably expensive, they should probably stop making it out of racehorses.

I arrived at Indian Summer at the crack of 11 on Sunday and quickly checked the old jib in preparation for getting a new one – in fact the old one is a little small, which makes perfect sense when compared against measurements I’ve gotten off the interweb.  Item 1 accomplished.  I moved on to item 2, epoxying up the engine well to make a more secure platform.  I drilled out a lot of the rotted wood so the epoxy could soak in, then mixed up a batch and pored it.  The clamps I was planning to use on it were too small, so I used string to hold the delaminated wood tight while it dried instead.  Check off item 2.   A little epoxy in a crack on the cabin hatch, check item 3.  Time to stabilize the chart table leg with the wood pieces I found at Home Depot, item 4 complete, just needs time to dry.  On to install the new VHF.  I ripped out the old one, plugged the antenna cord into the new one then the power cord.  Oh dear.  They’re different.  Umm.  Now what do I do?

First, try again.  Nope, still don’t fit.  Remember when you were a toddler and you had that toy which had different shaped holes and you were supposed to put the square into the square hole and the triangle into the triangle hole and not just find a rock and whack them till they jammed in?  Yeah, it was like that.  I restrained myself and turned on my phone to call my brother for advice – being that he’s a Henschel, it would have started out "Do you have a hammer on board?"

I had a message!  From Miles!  Offering to come help me work on the boat on Sunday!  For anyone who doesn’t know Miles, he is a computer guy who I think did some sort of engineering degree and is very, very bright, not to mention incredibly nice to volunteer.   So I called him, asked if he knew anything about electronics and he showed up half an hour later with a soldering iron and a very large tool set.  The wiring knew it had met its match and only sparked briefly before we unplugged the battery.  Turns out whoever installed the old radio hadn’t bother to insulate the wires at all which is a trifle dangerous.

The new radio works beautifully now.  Yay Miles!!!       (Karen – sorry I couldn’t wait for your visit – I’ll find more electronic stuff for you to do)

So now we get to the boat warming.  Cara called.  She and Noah wanted to stop by as Noah had yet to see the boat. 

Interesting factoid: Despite being named for a famous biblical sailor, Noah doesn’t like water or boats.

However, I didn’t think he would stoop so low as to try to burn my boat down.  There was an uninsulated wire sticking out of the compass wiring.  Miles thought it looked like it had fallen out of a piece of electrical tape so Noah said "Let’s see," stripped off the tape, wound the two wires together and went to put the tape back on.  Miles said "Shouldn’t you check it first?"  He gets a second gold star for saying that.  Upon turning on the compass switch: 

SPARKS     FLAMES      SMOKE 

It was scary.  The problem was that one was a red wire and one was a black wire so they shorted each other out.  We never did figure out what they are for, but now they are very short and covered up separately with electrical tape. 

And Cara really liked my comment on the whole situation

"I didn’t like the sound of that smell."