Sea Legs

As Tim mentioned in the previous post, the wind was howling pretty much all weekend at the lake, and being as he was tied up with a marina motorcycle ride, I decided to work on the side curtains for the dodger. I finished only one side as the project turned out to be a little more time-consuming than I thought it would be (there's a surprise - a boat project taking longer than expected?), but I had a good time anyway, with Crosby Stills Nash and Young on Pandora in the background. It was warm enough to leave all the ports and the hatches and companionway open and we didn't even need the screens since the mud daubers seem to have gone to ground for the winter and all the flies have dizzily fallen to the deck. I sewed away while the boat heeled 15° in the 30+ knot winds, climbing up and down the companionway steps a hundred times to fit, cut, fit, sew, fit, sew, and after cleaning everything up at the end of the day and beginning to cook dinner, it occurred to me that this was likely what a mooring or anchorage was going to be like in the ocean and that I had managed to work all day without any difficulty. It felt pretty good to have my sea legs, even though it was only on our little lake. Of course, even on our little lake the 2 foot waves were enough to toss a small Hunter so badly that they launched their anchor off the boat and tore up their anchor bracket and sent them flying back in the channel so fast that they missed the turn the first time and had to do it again. Even though there wasn't any sailing going on, it was a good weekend. But then...any weekend on the boat is a most excellent weekend.