#1 PineAweigh 2019 “Shakedown Cruise”
PineAweigh Adventure 2019
#1 “Shakedown Cruise”
“SH . . !” yelled Dave, as he ran from the boat to the end of PineAweigh’s dock finger, rushing to turn off the water faucet. This, the first swear word of our boating season. Normally, swear words are rare between us. As he ran the distance, his ever alert wife leaned from the sofa, opened the rear starboard salon window, reached to the narrow deck walkway where the tank filling hole is, and pulled the spewing hose free.
Picture in your mind a flooded rice paddy. Bring that vision to our boat where, without the benefit of something to grow, the bottom of the boat bilge-well filled with water. Picture Dave muttering, fairly unhappy with himself for not more carefully monitoring the 120 gallon water tank, allowing the tank to overfill. Now hear the noisy bilge pumps sending fresh water from the well into the Sound. The pumps on our plump 1980 Bayliner Bodega do not hum, they snarl. Thusly, our 21st PineAweigh ShakeDown Cruise began—with a swear and a snarl. But, once underway, Diesel engines purring, Blake Island on our minds, contentment settled in.
Day One—docked, dog walked, dinner underway:
“Did we fuel up last season before we tucked PineAweigh away?” I asked.
“Hummmm, let me check.”
“Did we pump out the toilet tanks?”
“Hummm, I don’t remember. Do you? Let me check.”
“I have two drill chargers but I can’t find either one. Have you seen . . .” he queried.
“Two what?”
“Do you remember where we stowed the extra toothbrushes?”
“Hummmmmmmmm
“Or the new squeeze mop?”
“Hey,” called Dave from the stateroom this morning as he pulled his German eiderdown off our purported-to-be-Queen-sized-bed.
“What?” I asked from the salon where for hours, p.j.ed and eiderdown bundled, I enjoyed coffee and books; listened to rain hit the flybridge overhead and to geese honking; watched raindrops erase the raccoon tracks left on the cockpit during the night by marauding, masked sneaks; and as light entered the world, realized the three deer I saw in the meadow were, rather, three stumps near the island’s Long house.
“What?” I repeated.
“Let’s just use one of the eiderdowns tonight, and see if that solves the Skoshi situation.”
The Skoshi situation is this: Aging, miniature poodle, Skoshi, loves eiderdowns. Usually, he sleeps on his own two blanket near my feet but when an eiderdown appears, when TWO appeared last night, Skoshi spent a great portion of his sleeping hours hounding and hoarding the gloriously deep and warm sources of cover. It was dog-heaven, his small-footed tromp treading between the edges of two, count them, TWO, eiderdowns. He burrowed from this one to that, that one to this, to his to hers and hers to his, owning it all, seeking the overlapping edges with his rooting nose; curling up here, then there. Who knows how many times he shifted spots. Tonight, our bed will be made with one shared eiderdown upon which Skoshi can claim a corner.
Shakedown Cruise: Day One. Done. These things accomplished:
Buy the State Park Pass
Test on-board heaters, heads, radios, and electrical equipment
Keep doors and windows shut if we leave the boat—against visiting raccoons
Keep the logbook current
Search the beach for agate and irresistible rocks
Begin general housekeeping:
Barb—start at the forepeak and gradually work back, room by room
Dave—work where one finds engines, generator, inverter; filters and wires and lines and hoses and batteries and manifolds and exhaust pipes and tools, and barrels of I don’t know what, and, well, bilge water.
Stow one eiderdown
