Monthly Archives: July 2012

Play that Funky Music, White Boy!

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View from the anchorage off Vashon Island.

What does ‘Play that Funky Music, White Boy’ have to do with being on the boat? The answer, of course, is absolutely nothing. Unless you are anchored off of Vashon Island near Quartermaster Harbor. Then, apparently, it has everything to do with it. But I’m giving away the punch line too soon. Let’s start with yesterday.

When I refer to ‘yesterday’, I refer to a period of time that does not exist for me; a time so black that I simply remember nothing of it. Why? Because I was sleeping the entire day, sick with some kind of weird virus that hit hard and furious and then left quietly during the night. Nice of it to do this on my day off.  It attacked with a splitting headache, nausea, and sensory overload just from opening my eyes. The works. I missed a day with my mother and sister, and I missed stocking the boat for a weekend on the water. (A much needed weekend, I might add.) Sometime during this alleged ‘time’, if it really DID exist, Mike came in to hold a mirror in front of my mouth to make sure I was breathing, or so I am told. I have my doubts. I mean anyone can say anything about a time that didn’t exist. Had anyone clapped with one hand, I surely would have missed it. I was sure our weekend on the boat was history.

So this morning when I awoke with only residual soreness from being in bed for 24 hours, it was clear to me that the weekend plans were still a ‘go’. We would simply find someplace quiet to anchor that was close to home rather than several hours away.  Mike wanted to get some things done around the house before leaving, and some friends were dropping by to take some of our cast offs to their lovely daughter who is setting up her own apartment in Seattle, close to Claire! Gone from our life and on to their next life are a cool antique-ish buffet that I bought about 20 years ago at Goodwill, a ‘collectible’ old suitcase that will make an awesome coffee table, a funky orange lamp, and a beautiful little settee for which we have no place. We are making progress!

Goodbye cool old buffet and sweet little settee!

After loading the truck we began looking through the pile of stuff awaiting it’s turn for the trip to Goodwill.  We were able to say bye bye to a leather bomber jacket with a Boeing label and my friend Lynn tried to convince me that I should keep my wedding dress, a vintage Gunne Sax circa 1982. She invoked the possibility of grandchildren (they’ll probably be boys anyhow) who might want to play dressup with it but I did not waver. The poor dress has had its day in the sun and has languished in the closet ever since with no one to love it, carried from house to house out of a sense of duty.  I’ll never wear it again. The sleeves are too small.  I was unable to interest Glenn in the new gate hardware or the garden fogger, or the two volume Oxford English Dictionary, but, after all, his truck was full so no regrets there.

Mike, Lynn, and Stephanie fondle my wedding dress one last time.

We got down to the marina just after lunch and after a quick stop in the head to change out a couple of hoses, we were off.  There was no wind (maybe summer actually IS here) so we motored at 6 knots with the tide over to Vashon Island, planning to go either into Quartermaster Harbor or to Dockton. Quartermaster Harbor is always crowded, and I wasn’t interested in crowds. We motored close to Dockton, but after seeing the number of boats at anchor we decided to go to the other side of the passage and simply anchor off the shore by a copse of trees. The houses on either side looked quiet, and there was only one small fishing boat present. It looked great. Anchor set in about 20 feet of water, I broke out the hammock as the sun broke through the clouds and commenced to reading. Mike immediately fell asleep in the cabin and all was peaceful.

For those who don’t live in this area, let me say that finding a peaceful spot to anchor close to Tacoma is no easy feat. There are people and boats everywhere down here and the shore is lined with houses. Lots of people don’t mind being crammed together in an anchorage, but we go out on the water to get away. And that means away from people for the most part. It’s not that we don’t like people. Generally speaking, we do like people. But we don’t like their noise and it seems like there are always plenty of folks who don’t think about how their noise detracts from the otherwise lovely environment. We felt like we’d found gold with this anchorage: only about an hour from the marina, and quiet.

A couple of hours into the hammock swinging time, I began to hear the gentle strains of an old Michael Jackson tune. “Oh baby give me one more chance”…. My toe began to tap as it is prone to do when music has a good beat and is easy to dance to.  The sound increased. I thought it was coming from a passing sailboat. But it wasn’t’. “People all over the world, join hands, start a love train, love train…” Hey, these were my people! My decade! My hammock began to jiggle a bit as I got the binoculars to see what was happening.  They say sound travels well across the water and it surely must because the music was coming from a house on the other side of the passage and I could hear it as though it was coming from my own boat. Roberta Flack, Journey, The Village People, more Michael Jackson from the early days. If there had been room on Moonrise we could have had our own dance party. I had to make do with hammock swinging to the rhythm of the beat. There is peace and then there is peace. This worked for me.

Had they been blasting rap music or some such I might have wanted to move but with Motown in the background it seemed right to have dinner outside and enjoy the music. I popped some brownies in the little oven for dessert, booty shaking to ‘Play that funky music, white boy’.  Maybe we’ve found our peaceful anchorage close to home after all. Or maybe next time we’ll anchor in front of that house and they’ll invite us over.

It's like baking in an Easy Bake oven!

I thought I had finished this post but as I was downloading the photo of the brownies, the fireworks began. Seems someone had some left over from the 4th of July and they chose tonight to set them off. Just in front of Moonrise. Fortunately, they were both pretty and short-lived, so the peaceful nature of the night was disturbed only briefly. A heron squawked and flew off, dogs barked, people cheered, and it was over. Peace returned.

 

I got this photo before the show was over.

 

 

 

 

And the Winner is… S/V Danger Kitten!

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The real Danger Kitten! Take care!

Andrew and I were having a mother/son conversation recently about the lack of a name for his boat. Andrew was telling me that he feels a little sorry for the boat. He really loves it, but he feels like he is the first owner to feel that way. Even though this little Ericson 25 was well kept and clean, he just didn’t feel like previous owners had given their hearts to the boat. And he couldn’t explain why he felt that way.

I thought it probably had something to do with the fact that the boat had no name. I mean, boats just have names. That’s all there is to it. They are named ‘things’ and this name gives them a sort of consciousness that people who love boats feel in their bones. That’s why we can talk all day long about what we want in a boat, but if the boat doesn’t feel like the right one, it’s not going to become ours. Just like Mr. Right, a boat can look good on paper, but if it doesn’t make our heart throb, we’re going to walk away. It’s beyond logic. Boat lovers know this and accept it. A boat with no name is kind of like an orphan, even if it has an owner who keeps it clean.  A boat with no name is sad.

The name sort of defines the vessel in a way, making a statement about not only the owner’s feelings, but about the qualities of the boat in terms of its personality, at least the personality the owner wants the boat to embody. Additionally it allows people to bond with the vessel in the same way they bond with, say, their pets (sort of). Boats require care, money, and attention and it’s so much easier to spend this kind of energy on something that you feel attached to rather than something that is simply a toy to play with.  So I asked Andrew what qualities he wanted to bring out in his boat.

French Danger Kitten

He had been spending quite a lot of time aboard the little boat and thought she was extra saucy with a bit of an attitude. She wanted to sail fast, but the sail plan was inefficient and pretty much not worthy of the boat’s capabilities. He thought the boat felt young and inexperienced, like no one had bothered to let it explore its limits yet. And it had an edge of danger about it, but mostly in the ‘wanting to explore the world’ kind of danger, an adventurous kind of danger. Nothing serious. He felt like he would need to keep the boat safe while it grew up a bit in this way. He felt like in spite of the boat’s small size, it had a big boat attitude. I mentioned that this could lead to trouble unless kept in check. (A fact that I know all too well.)

Later that evening he came into our bedroom, as he often will, to continue the discussion. He and Mike and I began exploring adjectives and metaphors that might lead to a name. Mike, who likes to name his projects at work, was trying to do something with the word ‘marmot’, a word which he especially likes. (Our family is a little wierd in this way. We like words.) Little, saucy, adventurous, dangerous, disgruntled (don’t know where that one came from), the list went on and it soon became clear that an animal name was needed, combined with an adjective. Sea Monkey was batted around a bit more, but it just wasn’t quite the thing. Mike suddenly blurted out ‘Danger Kitten’, and the conversation just came to a halt, because that was just brilliant. Andrew thought it was a keeper, but wasn’t quite ready to commit.

He decided to spend a little more time on the boat sailing, anchoring, bonding, and then see if the boat lived up to its name. He practiced rolling it off the tongue, saying things like ‘I’m going down to the marina to work on the Kitten’ and ‘The fuse in the Kitten blew again and I’m working on the wiring’ and ‘Danger Kitten and I are going out.’ It didn’t hurt that the name provided endless amusement when talking to his girlfriend, especially in front of her parents. My son has an excellent sense of humor.

Danger Kitten with sword and boots. En guarde!

I believe Andrew is truly in love with his boat. Now that it has personality, it’s even more apparent how much he is enjoying her. He’s practically a live aboard and I know he is already planning how far he can go with this boat.  He left on Friday and has been anchoring here and there, just enjoying being out on Danger Kitten, sometimes with a friend, sometimes alone. He was supposed to come home today, but called and said he won’t be home for a few more days. Let the adventuring begin! If he can bother to get home for a few days, we’ll have a christening party and look for someone to design a logo for the boat. Now, if only I could interest him in writing a blog.

S/V Danger Kitten, a little boat with a big attitude!

Access Denied!

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This kind of traffic is reason enough to move.

We should have just turned the truck around and gone home. This is what I was thinking as we sat in gridlocked traffic on the entrance ramp to I-5. We were driving our friend’s big 1992 Ford 250 pick up truck down to the marina to pick up Puddler. Puddler needs a bottom job and our friends, Chere and Edwin, who leave their truck at our house in exchange for our occasional use of said truck, will be selling this truck at the end of July. We felt anxious to bring Puddler home before that happens and today was a ‘free’ day. We had nothing else planned.

As we approached the freeway we saw that traffic was stacked up in the right hand lane for a least a mile but was moving freely in the other two lanes. Apparently there was an air show at McChord AFB and hundreds of people thought they might actually drive to the show to see it, meaning that traffic would be impacted for miles. We were entering the freeway just before the exit to McChord, so everyone who wanted to go past that exit was in the left two lanes. Mike had to make a split second decision about whether to turn around and go back, or whether to brave the entrance ramp to the highway. He chose the latter. It occurred to us both that the Universe was trying to tell us something about how this day was going to go, but the siren call of Puddler’s need was simply too powerful. We soldiered on. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

After sitting at a dead stop, teeth grinding, for a full 10 minutes, slowly a couple of cars on the ramp bravely worked their way around the traffic, inching up to the front to cut over into the lanes that were moving. Smart people, I thought. They get where they are going, which is NOT, apparently, to the air show, and free up space on the ramp for other cars whose drivers want a place to sit and nap.

Me: “Look, honey. That car has made it past all of these suckers going to the airshow and is now merrily driving down the highway unencumbered! What a smart person!”

Mike: (as he is inching his way forward to do the same thing) “Oh, sure and everyone sitting in this line thinks he is a complete ass because he has cut in line like he is more important than they are.”

Me: “No, they don’t. He isn’t going the same place as everyone in this line. He is making room for others who want to go to the airshow. He’s getting out of everyone’s way.”

Mike: “Well, they don’t know that. They just think he is self-important and should wait his turn like everyone else.”

I wait silently while my spouse does the intelligent thing by colluding with another driver to cross the small grassy median between the ramp and the lane of stacked up traffic. They both make it just fine and the other guy is off and running, but there is now a disturbance in The Force around my husband, who apparently feels guilty because other people are still sitting on the ramp. This disturbance has attracted the attention of our local constabulary. Literally out of nowhere a very loud robotic voice shouts ‘MOVE OUT OF THE WAY! THE MEDIAN IS FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY AND IS NOT FOR YOU TO DRIVE ON!!’   Guiltily, Mike gets out of the way for one of  the Washington Highway Patrol’s finest, who drives by without even a nod in his direction, likely on his way to his favorite lunch spot. If that cop could see Puddler’s bottom, he’d agree that this IS an emergency and stop harassing reasonable people who are just trying to get out of everyone else’s way and move on down the road.

As we manage to reach the speed limit, we sigh with relief and say a prayer of thanks to the traffic Gods who took care of that little hurdle. We decide we’ll park down at the Thea Foss Park at the end of the waterway, walk to the marina, and row puddler down to the public ramp for dingies and kayaks.

We sail by this little park every time we leave the marina.

We are almost there when Mike gets off the wrong exit and we are stopped by road construction. I sigh heavily. Mike rolls his eyes and takes his foot off the brake to accelerate. We’ll have to turn around and go back. Then we hear the noise. It is coming from the engine compartment, I think. It’s sort of a grinding noise, with undertones of  ‘death rattle’ and light notes of burning rubber smell.  I glance at Mike, who I fear is on the verge of hysteria. He’s either going to laugh maniacally or begin cursing. His jaw is set. He pulls over, opens the hood and does some man  stuff. Then closes the hood and decides it was probably the brakes; that they need new pads, and that whatever was making that deathly rattle has gone away now. A veil of denial descends upon us and we both agree that all we want is to get safely to the marina, collect our little boat, and go home.  We carry on.

Down at the park the weather is fine and we enjoy a brisk walk to the marina, only having our way blocked a couple of times by a huge gang of Harley riders and more construction. We enjoy a pleasant row down to the park from Moonrise and arrive just as some kayakers are launching. As we pull Puddler out of the water, a man from their group offers to help pull the dingy up the considerable slope to the curb. Excellent! Things are looking up! Mike goes and gets the truck and we load Puddler into the back, ready to go! We love how easy it is to hoist her up into the bed of this behemoth and just shut the gate. She fits like a proverbial glove! Mike inserts the key into the ignition and turns the key. Click. We look at one another. He turns it again. Click. We are parked sideways in a loading zone.

In my mind I think ‘Great. The starter has gone out.’.  Now I know why we should have turned around and gone back home before we ever thought about getting on that highway. Shades of a 1964 Ford Fairlane begin a slow dance in my memory. It’s all coming back to me now. 1980. The Ford. The Starter. The trip from Hell. My frozen feet.   This must be what it’s like to have flashbacks. That’s a story for another day. At least that Ford was red.

Puddler fits so very nicely in the back of this truck! If you are going to be stuck with a non-starting truck, this is the view you want.

At Mike’s request I rummage around behind the seat and find some jumper cables. I know they are not going to help, but it’s worth a try. A couple drives up with a large aluminum canoe on top of their newer truck ( also a Ford, I might add). Roger and Erin Legg from Tacoma are bringing her family canoe down for a little paddling and Roger agrees to help Mike see if the car can be jump started. Of course, it cannot. So they do some other man type stuff under the hood, trying to find some kind of voodoo magic that will work, but finally agree that it’s something about the starter. I could have told them that, but men, after all, have their own ways of knowing.

Roger chants man voodoo words while Mike spits into the engine. Erin acts as their 'familiar'. The magic does not work. The Ford does not start.

The crescent wrench Mike found in the glove box failed to work its magic on this starter, no matter how many times Mike struck the thing with the wrench, and no matter what 'magic' words he shouted.

We chat for a bit and I find out that Erin is a student in the School Counseling program at University of Puget Sound and, since I used to have student interns from that program, that’s pretty cool. She used to teach English in Prague and since we have a daughter who longs to have a job where she can travel, that’s pretty cool, too. Mike and Roger have histories with the Air Force in common and they both look like they know something about cars. At least old cars.  We exchange contact info and help them launch their canoe. I think to myself that if we’re going to be stranded with a huge, broken truck in a loading zone with Puddler in the back, feeling like a couple of Okies,  at least it’s nice to meet friendly people with whom we have something in common. It’s always best to try to find something good in these situations.

After contacting our friends and their insurance company, we decide I would row Puddler back to her place by Moonrise. Her bottom, while foul, will have to wait for another day. Mike will stay with the truck visiting with passers-by until the tow company comes and our friend, Chere, picks us up and takes us to lunch. The tide is with me and I have another pleasant row back down the Foss Waterway, back to Moonrise and a little time to myself on the boat.

I'm supposed to be looking forlorn, but what I'm really thinking is 'Excellent! On the water at last!'

Lunch with Chere was delightful. It was great to visit with her as it’s been too long since we had coffee together. So what if I overindulged in carbohydrates? Just another nail in this day’s coffin.  We drove back to our place and Chere stayed to walk around the garden for a bit and finish our visit. Mike retired to the bedroom for his much-needed nap. When Chere left I made myself useful by loading up the car with a bunch of crap to take to Goodwill. After a day like this it’s nice to end on a positive note. I figured the day was done, nothing else could happen. I was well on my way to putting this day in perspective until Mike joined me in the garage and said one thing:

“I have food poisoning.”

And that is where we stand. At least I ordered the fish.