I fell in the ocean, right off the back of the boat! How humiliating.
My human friend, Debi, drove her dinghy to the back of our boat to pick me up for yoga. I should have known something weird was going on when Kristina didn’t put my harness on me. You can see it in the photo below. She makes me wear it, so IF I fall overboard, she can easily pick me up.
Well, I guess she forgot to put it one me.
This is the harness I should have been wearing!
Debi arrives and I get a bit excited.
“Hello,” I bark.
Debi drives close to the back of the boat and ties up. Kristina is ready with her yoga gear.
“Not today,” Kristina says. “There are wild pigs on the beach. You have to stay on board.”
I whip my head around to face Debi and she confirms the bad news. I turn too quickly and start to fall.
“Oh Oh,” I bark, but no one grabs me.
My paws slip off the first step.
“Help me,” I bark.”
I’m now on the second step and the third is not far away. Before I can let out my third bark, I’m in the water.
I know I can’t get on the back step by myself so I head to shore. Lucky for me, I’m pretty slow at the dog paddle and don’t get far.
Debi pushes off the stern and drives beside me. I’m a smart dog and turn to face her.
No here comes the problem. I’m not wearing my harness. The dingy tubes are two feet out of the water, and Debi has nothing to grab on to. She reaches under my armpits and struggles me aboard.
She’s soaked, I’m soaked, but at least I’m aboard.
“Bond, James Bond,” my husband, Matt, said. It was our first ever cockpit happy hour and we’d anchored our charter boat amongst several mushroom-shaped islands. The day started in Phuket, Thailand and ended . . . with a dream.
I raised my eyebrow at him, thinking he was trying to be as cool as his drink. “What are you talking about?”
“Right there.” He pointed with his glass. “James Bond Island, from the movie ‘The Man With the Golden Gun.’”
I turned and looked. Near the closest of the limestone islands, I saw something more interesting. Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of Bond, but a sailboat with San Francisco written across her stern caught my eye. She was anchoring right next to us.
“How did that boat get to Thailand?” I asked.
“They’re cruisers.”
“What do you mean, cruisers?” The answer changed my life.
“They live on board their boat and are sailing around the world.”
“People really do that?” I looked him in the eye with genuine curiosity. I had never read a sailing magazine, had no idea the cruising lifestyle existed, and more importantly did not realize it was my dream. “Honey, why can’t we go cruising?”
That was the moment I first heard the ‘Call of the Sea’. It occurred aboard Sweet Robin, a Jeanneau 39 chartered by friends out of Phuket. We were the ‘crew’, invited along to help do a bit of sailing and a lot of living. It was day one of our fourteen day charter, and our attitudes were already changing. After a delicious cockpit dinner of jumbo Thai prawns washed down with a Singa Gold beer, I repeated my question, “why can’t we go cruising?”
Over the next thirteen days we accidentally anchored in a ferry channel, swam to a rustic hut on an expansive white beach for the best ever sweet and sour fish, tried to barbeque while waves splashed into the cockpit, sailed out of sight of land without a GPS, and spent a very bouncy night on a lee shore. We had a moment of panic when the six-year-old on board yelled from below, “is there supposed to be this much water in here?” Relief followed as we tracked down the leak in the head. Through it all, the dream took hold.
We returned to living as expatriates in Tokyo and would be there another couple of years. I avidly read about other people’s sailing adventures and the world of cruising. Halfway through our next assignment in Germany we committed to each other that we would make the dream happen.
We took a ‘Learn to Bareboat” course in the Florida Keys and chartered in the BVIs and in Turkey. In 1999 we bought Allura, a Niagara 42 sloop, built in St. Catherine’s, Ontario.
Allura
We spent the summer on Lake Ontario learning to sail Allura and headed south in September with all other Canadian boats. We made it to Georgetown, Bahamas, just in time to celebrate the millennium with all our new cruising friends. After two seasons exploring the Bahamas, we sailed to Bonaire and ended up in Aruba for a year of windsurfing. In 2003 we cruised back to the Chesapeake, sold Allura and returned, for a while, to land life.
Now we are on Mattina, and love her just as much as Allura.
I kept the photo of the boat from San Francisco to remind us that dreams do come true, and I often wonder what that family is doing now.
Some days it’s just to hot to bear, and other days, I love the cool weather. The cold front passed through and we’re back to high temperatures.
The first thing that happens is my owner cuts my hairs. She’s always worried about me overheating, I just wish she’d taken classes on how to groom a Wheaten Terrier. I need to look my best when I head to the beach to meet the girls.
I don’t like to swim in water over my head, but there’s nothing like a cool walk in the water. So I have a little sand on my face. What’s the big deal? This shot was taken before Kristina ‘groomed’ me. I’m too embarrassed to post the after shot.
Every sailboat needs repairs or maintenance sometime. A small event like sail tape coming loose on a spreader means a trip up the mast.
When sailing the in Bahamas, there are enough calm days to ascend the mast in safety. This weather came right before a cold front.
Safety being the key. The work has to be done, but it doesn’t have to be dangerous. A good harness and bosuns chair, two halyards, two people manning the halyards, tools tied to the belt, and up you go.
I love a good cold front, but Jasper stole my stick. I want to run with it and he wants to pull at it. We both have lots of energy because it’s cold. So not cold really, but only seventy degrees instead of eighty.
“Let go!” I bark.
“No way, dude,” Jasper barks back.
I get my teeth deep in the wood and pull hard.
“Yikes,” Jasper barks. “Where’d you go?”
I run behind a tree, dart to the side and behind a another tree, but whoa . . .
There he is, waiting to take my stick again.
“No. No. No,” I bark, but he gets it and takes off.
Well I could have told her that. Kristina keeps reading me tidbits that I already know.
This is my best “feed me” stare. How hungry do I look?
Here’s what I do when I need to tell her something:
Tap on floor with my nails during the night if I need out. That seems to wake her up, but not my male human though. He sleeps through everything. If she won’t wake up I breathe in her face. First time I did that she seemed a bit startled. Humans don’t like to be woken up with someone breathing in their face I guess.
Whack my water boil against sliding glass door when I need water. Seems to really get her going at 3am.
Stare at cupboard, then at Kristina, then at cupboard where my treats are kept. She knows this means she should open the door and hand me a treat.
Give her my most intense stare when I’m hungry. I can even do this in a run by stare and she knows it’s my “feed me stare.”
Press the top of my head on the sliding glass door when I need outside quickly (if there’s an emergency – I don’t like to throw up inside.). Kristina wants me to bark in this case, but that’s too undignified for me. I’m not a barky kinda guy.
This is my “I’m not getting off the trampoline and you can’t make me” roll.
I can even ask Kristina questions with just a look.
When we’re hiking, if I come to a place on the trail where I have to make a choice on direction, I look back at Kristina and she points, telling me where to go. I’m a big eye contact guy, but I do know words too.
If we come across strangers, I glance at Kristina. If she waves away from the people, I don’t approach them. If she says “okay” I run and greet them.
Kristina says her last dog was more word oriented, and that I do better with hand signals. Whatever . . . I’m still a genius.
