Leaving or Not Leaving

Leaving the dock and throwing off the ties that bind is something that most of us dream about. It sounds easy enough and in theory it is...then reality rears its ugly head.

Last time we left the dock we allowed the bow to swing free of the dock and held the aft a little until the bow cleared the boat in front of us. Oh dear, we should have released that aft line a little sooner as the dinghy secured on the davits hits the electic box on the dock. No harm no foul.

Many boats this season find that on their return to get the boat ready, the boat is anything but ready. The transmission is leaking, there is oil in the bilge, the engine is frozen, the instruments don't turn on and the list is endless. A rule of thumb is the at any given moment there are five things wrong with your boat, unfortunately you only know about two of them.

So it was not a big surprize when Up Jinks started to leave that their anchor was a firmly being held in place in a tangle of lines and other anchors. It took 45 minutes and four guys diving the anchor and dinghies being used as tugs to get them out. But they are out now and it is just a memory.

Lyric was tugged away from the dock without a hitch and then the radio signaled a message. All instrumentation has failed. Back on the dock they discover that water got in the antenna and shorted out the system. They are hoping that it will be dry in the morning and they can leave. If not someone is flying back to the States and will bring back the needed replacement in about a week.

We got our mail packet and are finishing up some pesky projects and hope to leave sometime next week. We don't like to give a specific date or time as it appears never to work. So in preparation of our, dare I say it, "departure" we tried our lights out tonight. All navigation lights on and working. Then the anchor light, which refused to light our entire cruising season last year shone like the proverbial star atop the Christmas tree. We are convinced that it really is a "marina" light and not an "anchor" light at all.

Hope springs eternal in the heart of a cruiser and so we push on with our plans. Please don't tell anyone.