Red Sky

Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.  We did.  We battened down as scuttling slabs of hard darkness slid close over us shutting out the sun, setting our houseboat neighbor’s sundeck chairs skittering across the deck and tripping over the rail into the water in the 35 knot gusts of needle driven rain.  It has taken seven years, but finally, it seems, perhaps we have learned to secure all decks as the wind buffets and rips, looking for a loose strap or edge of canvas to exploit.  The looser lines on the Bluewater Yacht next to us allow the flat bottom boat to horse around its slip bucking, twisting, and bouncing, like a bronco coming out of the chute.  It reins up suddenly as it hits the end of its springy nylon line then slingshots back the other way only to spring forward once again as the line takes up.  If not careful, while watching this other boat out our pilothouse windows lounging back and forth, my visual sense can confuse and trick my brain into believing it is Skinwalker moving and not the other vessel.  It is an easy elusion to have.  When the rain halts I will attempt to share with our neighbor how to keep his furniture on the boat and to secure spring lines to keep from surging fore and aft and prevent his boat from twisting like soft licorice rope from side to side.

The storm intensity has slowed.  The rain is now a soft patter.  Water trickling off the decks is a sweet tinkling as it splashes like musical notes into the bay.  The dirty humidity of the early morning is cleansed; the air is now cool and feels inexplicably dryer than before the storm.  In all its complicity nature is simple.  There is nothing stronger.  There is nothing more beautiful.  It is neither forgiving nor vengeful.  It takes no captives and has no friends.  Weather is not a creature or a god. Weather is a constant.  If we must humanize weather it is the muscle of Mother Nature.

Monday, OMG already, Monday we depart, northbound for Baltimore.  The winter of being done to by physicians is over.  Body parts prodded, pinched, cut, replaced, repaired and inspected in general, should provide another fifty thousand miles of unwarranted service.

We are leaving earlier this year so that those we have forgotten, ignored or have not met on our quick downhill trek in October will be enjoyed as we flow north gauging our progress by the receding edge of a nasty winter.  We urge those of you on our Intracoastal path who wishes to share a flagon of grog or a plastic cup of cheap box wine to put an email in our box.  Cruising, after all is said and done, is about people.

Monday.  Hmmm.  Come to think of it, all the necessary oils and waters of our girls in the engine room, Leila and Liela, have been tended and they are happy.  The ship stores have been replenished.  (Read rum, box wine and “tator tots”.)  What the hell.  I think, to keep the crew from getting complacent, we will leave tomorrow, Saturday Morning.

Bones

Urban Pirate Ship Fearless

Aka Wayne Flatt

MV Skinwalker

Its morning in the marina

Its morning in the marina.  The sun has already warmed the pilothouse. We open the doors and windows.

The sounds of the marina are clear through the quiet wet air. Water is gurgling from the shower sump on a boat next to us. The cruisers in a boat on the other side are congenially sharing pieces of news to each other from the local paper over coffee. He burnt his lip on the edge of a ceramic cup, she giggles the admonishment of caring. The dragging scrape of filp-flops along the dock announces Hojo, in her flannel jama's with shower kit in one hand and a coffee cup in the other, reluctantly easing her way to the shower room for morning ablutions. Sometimes she stays in the little room longer than others would like. Ray, the owner, brings out the leaf-blower and lays it down, probably realizing it is too early for the noise. He walks the docks instead checking lines and angle of boats in the water looking for hints of danger or a bilge pump not working properly. The burgler alarm at the tiki bar next to the boat next to us goes off suggesting the first employee has arrived to set up for a busy day of serving beer and food to those sitting out on the deck in the warm sun cooled just right by a zephyr of a breeze that the air pressure overhead will not allow to build today. Small fish break water next to the boat, a comorant greedilly ducks beneath the water seeking what comorants seek, while a lone Brown Pelican glides on a pressure wave created by pinching air between him and the water only inches below him, his wing tips dimple the water on the down stroke. Unseen runners on the road behind us hidden by the stand of mangroves talk in passing with little bumps in their voice when a heel hits the pavement. A scratchy throated dove coos in response to the vulgar grind of a garbage truck mashing its load with its compactor. The man on the back whistles to the driver and the intermittent backup warning tone attempts to imitate the dove. Lynn tells me it is time for me to help color her hair.

Nothing is happening this morning, but morning.

Bones