21 September 2007

Not Put Away

A friend of mine sent me this picture of Lady Bug at Angel Island. Nice picture, shows how beautiful the day was. But it struck me...I'm pretty fastidious about cleaning the boat up when I get back to the marina, why did I leave her all messed up at the dock at Angel Island?

This is the equivalent of leaving your house all showered and shaved, going to work and immediately messing up your hair, untucking your shirt, loosening your tie and spilling coffee on your pants. What the hell? That's not very seamanlike.

How hard would it have been to flake the main and the jib properly, tie them down neatly, and leave my boat making a better impression. Lord knows she's competing with much newer, nicer and more expensive boats for attention at the dock, why handicap her further?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Shame on you.

Carol Anne said...

When we leave Black Magic short-term at a dock, we don't bother with silly tidying-up; we simply tie a couple of strings around the sails to keep a sudden gust from blowing them around.

Now, if we're leaving the boat overnight, we usually do roll the sails and tie them neatly. This is especially true of the mainsail, because it can do some damage if it gets loose.

What you were doing was leaving the sails in position to deploy rapidly, so you could get underway as soon as possible after you were done with lunch -- or so if conditions changed suddenly, you could dash to the boat and set sail immediately.

Zen said...

Carol Anne...do not encourage him :-)