I Got My Girl Back

Coxsackie, New York - 3 kilometres walked, 1 mile in dinghy

I got my girl back!

Ana and our friend Sina arrived around 4pm and man was I happy to see them. Ana looked beautiful as always, and I barely noticed her bandaged face from the two little moles she'd had removed the day before. The way she described it to me had me picturing a hybrid of the Bride of Frankenstein and the Mummy, but the Portuguese exaggeration she used in her description was excessive. Sina looked like he always does - slim, sturdy, and ready for action.

I passed the hours leading up to their arrival with a few boat jobs - cleaning out my tool and spares boxes, sucking up bilge water, reattaching the some stern flooring which had become unstuck, doing some final cabin cleaning. I also baked bread and did some writing. I may have also napped in the cockpit, bringing on the inevitible grogginess, which could have been the reason I neglected to close up all the boat hatches and bring in the cockpit cushions  before I left to meet them.

We went for a walk around town together and browsed the shops that were open - the General Store (Sina thought ten bucks for a can of designer tuna was excessive), the Paper Store (Ana was tempted by a t-shirt that said "cook-SAH-key"), and Ravish Liqours, open only on weekends, for a few hours a day, but when we peeked in there was nobody working and the tiny bar seemed to be a "help yourself" model.

We stopped at the Henry James tavern for a beverage and caught up on news. Sina is from Brantford (via a few other interesting countries) and has been a good friend of ours for years. He is an extraordinary craftsman, maker, builder, has been on SeaLight many times, and played a major role in helping me to install the solar arch and dinghy davits on the boat back in the spring. He is the person who took over Ana's job at Glenhyrst while she was away, so as freshly unemployed, was the perfect person to help me with the boat journey, which was looking less and less promising as the hours passed with no official statement forthcoming from the Canal Corporation on an opening day for the Champlain Canal. But I retained some hope that we'd hear something by Monday. If the canal would be opening within a day or two, he would stay and we'd bring the boat up to Montreal or as far as we could. If not, then we would all go home together on Monday and wait.

As we chatted and enjoyed our drinks, the trap door of the heavens opened and heavy rainshowers ensued. Anxiety took hold as I realized the rain was surely making its way into the boat, through the open hatches into the cabin but also onto Ana's loved cockpit cushions.

With a break in the rain we made a run for it and blasted back to SeaLight in the dinghy. The boat was a mess. Water had completely soaked the cockpit cushions, was all over the counter (turning the wine box into mush), and there was water covering the floor in both the heads. My careful staging of SeaLight for Ana's return was a soggy bust.

After mopping up the mess, I made dinner which turned out reasonably well and we enjoyed a meal together and stayed up way past Mariner's Midnight visiting.

I was so happy to have my girl back.