At the Fishing Competition

When I was eleven years old, a friend invited me up to her cottage one summer weekend. We had a great time - swimming in the lake, riding around in her dad´s motorboat, running around in the sunshine. And fishing. I´d never been fishing before, but I understood the basics: add worm to hook, drop in water, wait for bite then reel in. Pretty easy.

So my friend and I took our bait and our rods and plonked ourselves down at the end of the dock. The wooden boards were pleasantly warm beneath us. We dangled our feet over the edge, wormed up and threw in our lines.

It didn´t take long to get a nibble. Proud of my great accomplishment, I reeled in my line. There was a sunfish on the end of my hook. I grabbed the fishing glove - a studded green plastic thing that let me hold the fish without getting sliced on its spines. Out came the hook, and I threw my sunfish back in the water.

My friend and I kept fishing. She caught one, and back it went. I got another nibble. I reeled in another sunfish. I peered at it closely.
"I think this is the same fish," I said. "Yes, look, you can see where the hook went through last time." I threw my fish back in. Stupid fish. You would think getting a hook through the face twice in a row would take some of the fun away from eating a delicious worm.

Costumes, Hats and Other Odd Traditions

Let's start today with a quiz. Complete the following sentence: Tuesday was ________.

Most of you will have finished that off with phrases like "rainy" or "a pretty good day". But if you are Australian, you definitely said: Tuesday was Melbourne Cup. Still lost? It's a horse race. More accurately, it is the horse race that brings the nation to a standstill.

For a race that lasts less than 200 seconds, that is a pretty impressive feat. Not only is it a public holiday in Melbourne, but the rest of the country shuts down (officially or not) from about noon onwards in order to drink champagne, watch pop stars perform, and wear funny hats.

Tackling Leaks and Selling the Dream

Amy: Girls, they are going to be here in half an hour.  I need you to tidy up the cockpit.

Indy: Who?

Amy: Those people... Dave's friends. Like we talked about at breakfast? It doesn't matter. Just tidy up.

Indy & Stylish: Okay, Mom.

Papillon: Hee hee hee.

Amy: Why are you laughing?  Let's see, I need to cut up some baguette--

Papillon: I have a surprise for you.

Amy: What? No. No surprises. I have an unknown quantity of Kiwis arriving in thirty minutes.  I have to finish getting ready.

[pause]

Amy: What is that dripping noise?

Papillon: Chortle!

Amy: Girls! I need to take the companionway stairs off.  Don't come down this... girls?

[Looks outside. The girls are playing with friends on the dock.]

Amy: Stylish and Indy! Get this cockpit tidied!  And don't come down the... never mind.

[Puts in boards to avoid a fall. Removes stairs. Removes floorboard. Locates drip with a flashlight.]

Amy: Why is it dripping there? The water isn't running.  The sump pump is off.  Everything is off.

[Removes two more floorboards. Sticks head into bilge.]

Amy: Okay, it is coming from somewhere forward on the port side. Hmm. I did laundry earlier; maybe the hose leaked.

[Checks laundry locker. Dry as a bone.]

Amy: Let's try the galley.

[Removes galley floorboard. A small river is running aft.]

Amy. Aha.  By which I mean, unprintable.

[Looks at the salon.  Removing the port side floorboard necessitates removing two other floorboards first and judicious use of a shim.]

-creeeaaaak-

Amy: [balancing the six-foot board]  There we go.  And let's see what we UNPRINTABLE!

Boatsitting

After sitting in an airplane for twenty-seven hours with two increasingly rangy kids, there was only one thing I wanted when I got back to Noumea.  It wasn't a hot shower (although I needed it.)  It wasn't a good night's sleep on a horizontal surface (although I needed that even more.)  All I wanted as we pulled up to the marina was to see Papillon afloat.  Steal my luggage and cancel my credit cards, but please don't let my boat be resting in the mud.

Not that I left my home unattended: I asked a friend to keep an eye on Papillon.  But the problem with asking other cruisers to watch your boat is that, well, they're cruisers.  They cruise.  And so, a week into my vacation, I got an email that looked something like this:

Troubleshooting the Generator, Lady Style

When Erik went back to work, Papillon became My Boat.  By which I mean, Papillon became My Problem.  With my resident handyman thousands of miles away, anything that broke was going to be my responsibility.  And it was just a matter of time before something bad happened.  This is a boat, after all.  So when the generator died this week, I wasn't surprised.

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm not very handy.  As Erik kindly puts it, I'm not a natural tool user.  No arguments here.  But, being the big boss that I am now, I thought I could show some maturity and give this a whirl.  I've watched Erik fix the genset before, usually in my role as Tool Monkey.  I may not be able to do it as quickly as he could, but surely I could start the troubleshooting process.  At worst, I would be setting a good example for my girls.

How to begin?  First, I fell back on my scientific training: I gathered data.  What did I know?  When I tried the system a second time, it died after five minutes, just like the first go-around.  No sputtering, just sudden death.  So probably not lack of fuel.  I checked the temperature.  Aha.  Too high.  Probably a cooling system issue, then.

But it was barely seven o'clock: time to get the kids off to school.  I met our carpool moms in the parking lot, and mentioned my issue.  Immediately, they both offered up their husbands to help me.
"Oh no," I said, "I'm okay for now, but I'll let you know if I need some help."  What a nice gesture, I thought.  People are so kind.

Hitching a Ride Through the Lagoon

I have been living aboard this buoyant piece of formed aluminum for more than three years now, and I don't mind admitting that I am still figuring this whole sailing game out.  Once upon a time, friends tried to lure us back home back home with the carrot that the beautiful lots down the street from their house were for sale.  We joked that we would just dig a big hole, put Papillon in it and watch everyone's property value plummet.  But now, while we wait for the endless Christmas holidays to be over and our thrust bearing assembly doodads to arrive, I kind of feel like Papillon is sitting in that hole.  As December wore on, our neighbours sailed out, one by one, for holiday adventures on the lagoon.  And we sat.  We stayed.  We sighed.

But last week, some new friends invited us out on their boat for the afternoon.  And it was a revelation to your correspondent.  This opened a whole new world to me: the world of Mooching a Ride On Someone Else's Boat. 

Erik took the tiller at the earliest opportunity.