Remember that one time, when you went sailing? The waves were bigger than you thought they were going to be, weren’t they? Not only were they bigger, but they were coming from in front of the beam, not from behind it, where they were supposed to be coming from. Right? Remember that?
You relied on the predictions, and set out for a sunny “3-hour tour”, which turned out to be an 8-hour trek with waves breaking over your bow. Oh, and because you believed the predictions, you left the front door open for the breeze. And because you were getting seasick, you stayed up at the helm station all morning. So you didn’t know that seawater came through the front door, flooded the salon, and ran down the companionway steps into the starboard hull.
Your husband went inside to get coffee, and said, “there’s a problem in here! There’s water all over the floor!!” He figured it out and closed the door. After your ginger candy/Coca Cola cocktail kicked in, you started to feel better. So, you cleaned up the floor and went back to the helm station for the rest of the day. Remember that?
After you dropped the anchor, you decided to look into the food bilges. Remember how everything looked good upon your cursory inspection? “It’s a miracle the water didn’t flow into the food bilges”, you said. Until a week later, when you noticed a funny smell in the boat that you couldn’t pinpoint. It went on for a week. “What the hell is that smell?”, you kept asking. Then one day, you needed a can of soup. So, you opened up the food bilge in front of the door, took out a can of soup, and saw two inches of rancid seawater sloshing among the newly rusted cans. You opened the other two food bilges and saw the same thing! And that smell…!
Remember? We all laughed and laughed…
January 2022