The Anecdotal Life Part. 60

Well, "some days you're the windshield and some days you're the bug." Yesterday, I went out on the Chesapeake with a captain, my youngest son, and his partner. We all learned a lot. I learned a lot about what I didn't know, and never again to go without eating for hours a time, especially, when under scrutiny and social pressure. However, my marina mentor/brilliant and demonic friend who was watching with , unfortunately for me and unfortunately my teacher, an unerring, critical eye, let me know where I and subsequently the teacher, screwed up. Ahhh. It's so refreshing to be wrong again this week. I was feeling strange and awkward anyway after a successful session the week before. I did some things right, but at times I didn't know which gear to put before which. He told me. Nicely too, finally, when I hinted to him that " a soft answer would turneth away wrath".
It was strenuous work what with the dodging of blasted crab pots, and battling with the current and wind, though it really helped that we could spell each other. My son did well. I missed sideswiping a boat as I came away from my slip by some few yards and then barely missed creaming the boat next to me by some few inches and a good shove from my son.
However, at the end of the day, he stood musing at sight of oil running out of the engine and down over the front of his rental car. " I thought I smelled oil when we picked up this thing." The cap had never been on the whole way from the Flexcar rental office in Washington to Goose Harbor. Beyond belief it was that the engine didn't burn up. So we drove my good old Honda Element back to D.C. and I drove home feeling less inferior. Then I got the flaming critique from my mentor, fought with him for a bit and then got down to a healthy analysis of what went wrong. Good day for Monday morning quarterbacking, it being Monday.
Copyright: May 29, 2007

The Anecdotal Life Part. 59

Well, "ain't it a glorious day?" Three in a row even. My son, Mark, and his wife Annette, had just sent really lovely tulips with a riotous lime green vase that matched even more riotous plates from my sister in Albuquerque. It was as if an Hispanic uprising of color were erupting in one corner of my kitchen. A good call from Mark topped that day off.
On saturday I typed six and a half pages of my latest story on my boat. Finally. I have always imagined I could use the boat to write on or in. My little old computer and its battery held steady through various sized wakes and in fact, my boat battery held steady and my bilge pump etc. All was peaceful. I didn't go anywhere, but then I didn't quite want to, but the next day...
Was MOTHER'S DAY! Eric and I had pancakes and eggs at his house and if you don't think that's eventful, well you don't know Eric. He has a way of gliding abstractly through life's minutiae. Following the unnerving preparation ,we ate and he hustled me up to his office to show me how to google earth. I was my dubious nontechnical self, thinking, "Heck I can't even google mapquest correctly," but he showed me! Boy did he show me! We googled Goose Harbor where my boat is and we both gasped at the size of the shoal at the entrance to our channel and marina. No wonder there are wrecks there and then..just as you get out the gate, there's a bigger shoal on the left. We googled our cottage in Michigan and it showed the road down the hill, the cottage, the renovated old shed, the dock and our whole big gorgeous lake. We were terribly homesick after that one. Next we googled Ulan Bator, Mongolia where Eric went on business. There he encountered card players sitting on the side of the road in the dead of winter in the middle of nowhere, with an eagle as a companion. It's as though the whole world becomes a toy ball in your hands to be spun and inspected.
Then grabbing the most perfect Sunday in some time, we went to the Phillip's gallery which is just a few blocks from Eric's house and we were bowled over completely. We watched all the precursors to movie making. Some, well most, were pretty funny looking, but still fascinating. So much of their experimentation dealt with the movement of water. I saw waves and tempests I never hope to see while aboard my own boat. Sometimes it made you seasick. Earlier, just think, Eric and I sat swirling a cursor, crossing oceans to wondrous places I always dreamed of like Dubai, Kathmandu, and the Winter Palace of Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg. I had an English teacher, the like of which never to be found again, who said," Only bores are bored." Everybody loved Marty. He was always, annoyingly right.
Copyright: May 14, 2007.

The Anecdotal Life Part. 58

Well! I did it. (Or I nearly almost did it.) With a relaxed licensed teacher in the cockpit and/or on the flybridge handing out directions, I took my boat out onto the bay, turned around for home, came back through that gol-darned tricky channel, waited while the marina launched a boat, and then I docked it. I turned the boat completely around in the fairway (which always makes my heart skip a beat ) and backed in stern first. I made one mistake on the way out and my teacher helped me correct that, then I started to make a whopper of a mistake on the way in, but immediately corrected that myself.
What I would give to dock it bow first. What sort of a crime is that anyway? My engines might be better off. I know more about the depth finder and radio now. That depth finder, when first on, indicates no depth whatsoever. That's because my boat is sitting on mud! Not all the time, but more than what I would like. But whatever, what I don't know is still ......legend.
So I need to practice going out and going over 8 knots so I can work the trim tab device and I will have to learn the Loran, the Radar, and GPS. Little stuff like that. (Eek!)
Next fall I will take a piloting class followed by a second piloting course. Right now, however, its in and out until I can maneuver without having worry about the simple stuff, though from what I hear, the docking is never part of the simple stuff.
Then there is a little problem with some mistakes the marina made in launching my boat, such as a forgotten, but crucial battery charger switch and an electrical jury-rigged connection to the repair light that was too loose and never should have existed, but all that affected the automatic float, the bilge blower switch, and the bilge blower, each of which took a hit. Therefore I am lifting the hatch to remove fumes (hatch weighs a ton), using the manual switch to empty the bilge and running back and forth between Annapolis and East Baltimore to keep checking on the whole mess. But , I always stop and smile to think that I did it. I can very nearly go out to the bay and come back by myself. Never will though, because it takes a good crew behind me to do lines, yell warnings, etc. It is a terrific feeling, once one gets the feeling that something seemingly unconquerable, starts to look conquerable! I topped all that off by watching a horse named "Street Sense" do the impossible in some truly slick maneuvering! Albeit a day late, Happy Cinco de Mayo everybody!

Copyright: May 6, 2007