Battling the Stink

I'm in love with the weather right now. Constantly sunny and about 25 degrees. The perfect temperature for hauling Sadie's mattress out of the aft berth and scrubbing the foam and cover on the dock. I came home last night and there was a pervasive smell of mildew, poo and dog hanging about in the cabin. And the other day, a little girl came onboard, stuck her head in the aft berth and declared, "It stinks in there", the way an adult never would. That was the last straw for me. And maybe it stinks because the Yorkie uses the aft as his personal toilet if he's not under supervision. All my scrubbing and spraying and covering the mattress over the months has done little to allay that smell. Mix in a bunch of nighttime humidity and voila, you've got a poop deck! Getting the mattress out of the boat was like wrestling a Sumo. Then pretty much everyone has to come over and see what you're doing. What's that crazy dog lady up to now? Stay tuned, who knows what she might do next...

The Indifferent Muskrat

Lately while walking down the dock at night, the dogs catch the scent or sight of something and run off madly chasing the phantom scent or sight until it disappears noiselessly into the water. My human eyes and nose are not privy to whatever this creature is lurking around the dock. I assumed it must be a rat. And I was close... I was chatting to a new employee Dave, who walks up and down the docks checking for visitors to the marina. I told him about the dogs' behaviour. Dave said it must be the muskrat. He continued, "Calvin (another employee) hates that muskrat something fierce." I wondered what could provoke someone to hate a muskrat. Dave concluded, "But I think the muskrat is pretty indifferent about Calvin." Indeed, I concurred, I'm sure the muskrat is quite indifferent.

A Fall from Grace

Now that I no longer look like America's most wanted, I wanted to celebrate with a nice post about the Fall: the ephemeral nature of the seasons, the winding down of a glorious time onboard, great friends and good times, blah blah blah. What can I say, I was lacking material because of all the sunshine and butterflies flying out my ass. And then the boating blog gods sprang into action. While vacuuming the endless supply of Cocker Spaniel hair in the cockpit, the stair I was standing on collapsed. I smashed my leg and hit the fire extinguisher release lever, spraying toxic yellow powder all over EVERYTHING. Maybe it was the chemical poisoning that got me thinking about a few of my boating mishaps...

Injuries I have sustained living on a boat: too many bug bites to count, endless cuts, bruises, burns and infections, two dog bites, a cat bite (which landed me in emergency via the Police boat), a near drowning, a few insults and a concussion. All in all, nothing too serious.

Things I have lost living on a boat: a phone (everyone drops a phone in the lake at some point), shoes, a frying pan, a couple of boyfriends, a laptop, and an actual boat. The brand new laptop was an interesting story. I fell off a crooked dock after two large scotches aboard a boat with some noisy old parrots and the self proclaimed mayor of the island. Had I foreseen the future, I would have just foregone the brand new Mac Powerbook and sidled up to one of those fancy big city scotch bars and ordered two rarefied shots for $1500 a piece. Hindsight and all that.

But, come November 1, they will still have to drag me kicking and screaming back to land...