A 60% Chance of Golden Showers

Sunday October 10, 2012

Before leaving home yesterday I thought to myself, ‘It’s probably going to be really cold tonight, I should bring an extra blanket or two to keep us warm’, but Matt convinced me that with the sheet, blanket, and sleeping bag that we already had aboard, we would be warm enough.  Wrong!!  Although I had actually overheated once or twice at the beginning of the night when temps were still in the 60’s outside and I was overdressed in a long sleeve shirt, sweatpants and socks, by the early morning hours when it had descent into the low 50’s I was shaking and huddling waiting for the sun to come up.  I can only imagine how cold the poor dog got with only a light coat, half her body hair and no body fat to keep her warm through the night.  After a little whining on her part (it wouldn’t be a morning on the boat without it) we brought her up to the v-berth with us where she could warm up.  As usual, within five minutes she had her gangly limbs spread everywhere, forcing Matt and I to the far corners of the berth.

That didn’t last too long and pretty soon we were up and about.  Matt had taken her back up to the deck to ‘go potty’ but it still seemed that she wasn’t having any of that.  We decided to wait a little longer before taking her to shore, again hoping that if she really had to go bad enough she’d do it on the boat and we could praise her for it.  One more time we waited outside with her for an hour while nothing happened.  We realized we couldn’t do this all day and threw her in the dinghy for a trip in.  During the ride Mazzii was in the back behind the seat with Matt, but with her paws on the inflated side she was acting like she was either going to jump out or into the front with me.  Just as I was telling Matt that he would be the one to go fishing for her if she went overboard he yelled out ‘Oh my god, she’s peeing!!’.  Sure enough I looked down to see a golden shower hitting the bottom of the dinghy.  Matt and I quickly lifted our legs as Mazzii continued to go for literally 30-45 seconds.  I expected the look on her face to be one of shame and fear, same as it has been the few times she’s had accidents in the house, but this was one of pure bliss and relief.  The real joy for me is that the pee was falling directly onto Matt’s sandal which he had not put on for the ride over.  I don’t think he found it as humorous as I did.  Once on land we let Mazzii do her other business and brought the dinghy back to the boat to be doused with buckets and buckets of water.

All this and it was still only 11:30 in the morning.  Again there was no wind to sail on, so Matt decided to run up to Home Depot and buy the drill bits he needed so we could get the windlass close to install.  My job while he was gone was to use a rust removing chemical to rid us of the rust spots near the anchor locker which formed when Matt drilled holes into the anchor shank, but not all the metal scraps had been wiped up.  I hate scrubbing.  Nothing ever gets cleaned from my scrubbing because I don’t have the muscle to back it up.  But I dutifully sat up at the bow while Matt ran errands, trying to get the last bit of rust up.  Needless to say, it will have to be worked on again.  Luckily when he got back he needed that area to install the windlass and I was downgraded to tool fetcher and screwdriver holder.  While working the wind slowly started to pick up enough to where I needed to throw a fleece over just the t-shirt and shorts I had been wearing.  So after all the holes had been drilled and lunch had been consumed, we opted to go for another sail.

Just wanting to stay on Muskegon Lake again we went down the full stretch and back, slowly adding more layers of clothes as the wind topped out around 18 knots.  The only semi-interesting thing to happen was while we were just cruising along lazily and watched the depth go from 35 ft to 12 ft in about 10 seconds.  We knew there were some very shallow areas in this lake where boats have run aground, and decided to do a quick tack to head back in the direction we were coming from.  As soon as Matt spun the boat around I was busy winching in the line for the headsail trying to tighten it.  Again with my lack of strenght, it was taking awhile.  Matt kept hollering for me to hurry up, but  I thought it was only because he likes things done quick or was trying to turn me into a top notch sailor.  But as I looked up I saw we were on a collision course with a boat only a few hundred feet from us and he needed the sail trimmed so he could steer us away from it.  Pulling every ounce of energy I had, I swung the winch handle around as fast as I could and Matt was able to steer us into safety.  That little incident didn’t deter us from sailing the rest of the afternoon, but once we got on  course and turned around again we started to think a warm relaxing evening on the couch sound appealing and headed in for the afternoon.