Interesting Community

What with that rip in the mainsail, the constant stream of winter storms, and lack of time, I just haven't been sailing. The new sails are due to arrive in two weeks, my dogwoods are turning pink, and the kid is getting older so these should all be solved soon and I'll be back out on the water..

In the meantime, I just have to enjoy that floating community known as 'the docks". I went down at lunch to air out the boat and consider carpet samples, eyeing those clouds to the south suspiciously. I was so pre-occupied I almost walked right by the guy with the sunk fishing boat. Luckily he stopped me and asked for help. The first thing I said to him, "I thought you had a bilge pump?" since I see the damn thing going every time I'm down there. He sheepishly replied that he forgot to plug it in (answering my next question, "you don't have any live electricity down there do you?"

He was trying to lift the boat out by hand pulling on docklines. Docklines are designed to be stretchy and was doing very little good so I went to get some old halyards that at least would hold some shape for him. Then his girlfriend kept standing on the bow while we lifted the stern...it took some convincing that she was letting in as much water as we were able to get out with that method. For some reason, he refused to take the 300 pound engine off the back of the boat so we had that working against us. Finally when the cleats were starting to come out of the dock, we decided that we should take advantage of being in the Berkeley slums and start collecting styrofoam blocks. Sure enough, there was enough crap floating around the docks to get both the transom and bow above water enough that the pump took hold and we floated her.

When I left the pump was plugged in and working. No discussion of fixing the leak in the boat but one battle at a time I guess.