MISS PINEAWEIGH IS AILING.

She’s old, you know. She was birthed, slipped bare-bottomed, to Puget Sound in 1980. When we first saw her in 1997, she was suffering. Her spirit was broken, she was a smelly mess, she was tied fast to a dock by an owner who mostly lounged on her decks, soaking in sun and suds.

Bayliner had built this beautiful 40’ model with a 14’ beam and a 360° view from windows wrapped round her helm, saloon, and galley. Two heads, forepeak bunks, convertible dinette, spiral staircase to the aft master stateroom, roomy flybridge, stair from there to the bow, 44’ tip to tip, and in this particular boat, twin diesel Volvo engines. Bayliner called her kind, “Bodega.” The Bodega’s name when we bought her was, “Grendolyn.”

Grendolyn didn’t work for us, but it’s considered bad luck to change a boat’s name, so we moved that name to a small wooden pig in the galley, Grendolyn Galley Pig. PineAweigh is old, you know. She’s been freed from squalor thanks to hours and hours of care. She’s mostly well repaired, but she’s not been without her aches and pains; some major, some not.

Friday, July 12, 2019, in near perfect mid-morning cruising conditions—calm water, warm sunshine, soft clouds, favorable tide, sweet breeze, low rpm for a quiet, slow passage from Blake Island to Gig Harbor, I’m driving from the flybridge, Skoshi snoozed on the passenger bench beside me. You know, near perfect.

“Barb!” Shouted Dave from the cockpit, “We have a problem.” And, surely, we did. 

Dave had turned on the cold water facet in the back head and steam poured out. Right, steam. From the cold faucet.

“See Dave run.” It was like the first-grade story book. “See Dave run with the big flashlight.” “Hear Dave yell to Barbara, ‘Turn off the port engine!’” Which she did. “See Dave think fast, move fast. See Dave instantly stabilize a situation.”

This sweet Miss PineAweigh is ailing. She developed a crack in an exhaust elbow and, in this case, to such a point that escaping exhaust rose to heat the cold water tube running through her innards, sending steam to the faucet.

The elbow problem is between Miss PineAweigh and doctor Dave but taking the boat into the harbor on one engine in a rising wind while Dave jerry-rigged the elbow with a jack and a wet towel wrap, was mine.

The Bodega, slow on one engine, goes nuts in wind. She doesn’t like it. I don’t either. I didn’t like dodging kayakers, the gondola, the double-masted tall ship coming my way, the hot-dog’er leaving the Tavern dock, the wind and summer temperature rising while Dave mastered the temporary fix. It didn’t take long in clock-time, that harbor handicap. It felt like eternity before I started the port engine, backed into our dock, and we locked down lines. It will be a few days later than originally planned but with PineAweigh once mended, the Adventure will resume.