I went rowing yesterday for the first time in a year. Okay, I had paddled inflatable dinghies during that time, but deflatables are not real boats and therefore do not count. Yesterday I rowed an honest to goodness rowboat. Miraculously, all my troubles melted away with each stroke of the oars. How I had missed rowing! Life, which had already been steadily improving anyway, is now suddenly completely all better! I had such a great time rowing yesterday that I went back to do it again today, going much further.

Until I sold it last year, I had the same hard dinghy and the same set of oars for twelve years. The formula was simple. In up to 30 knots of wind, I could go places in the dinghy. Over 30 knots, I got blown away. During that ‘rowing decade’ I had been offered hundreds of tows from others in dinghies with outboards, and gotten almost as many surprised looks when I turned them all down. I lived to row. I often wondered if I went sailing simply to anchor the big boat and row around a new piece of water in the dinghy.

It’s not that I have anything personal against outboards. Most cruising folks I know have them. I have even sailed aboard several boats equipped with inflatables and outboards. All I can say is, if any landlubbers out there have the idea that cruising is all about lounging on tropical beaches, it’s not. It’s all about fixing the outboard. Over and over and over, until the sun goes down and the skeeters come out and you have to give up on that beach because you can’t get there; rowing an inflatable is like rowing an egg.

I’ll stick with my hassle free oars attached to a proper rowing dinghy any day of the week, leading me to think, that if I am this passionate about rowing, maybe I should save the aggravation, expense, and hard work of getting another cruising sailboat together and simply get a good rowing boat to row around the world!

This cruiser is trying to avoid the dead outboard

syndrome by carrying two at once.

HOWEVER,

That simply lead to two dead motors at once!

Pass the oars, please, I have to go rowing.

Blasphemy

Having lived on a boat for most of the last six years, I have lost touch with a lot of modern advances. For example, back in the old days, when a smoke detector needed a new battery, it screamed an annoying beep at you every minute until you beat it to death with a broom handle, because it was a holiday weekend, all the stores were closed, you were fresh out of 9 volt batteries, and you decided that catching on fire and not knowing it would be highly preferable to hearing that piercing noise every minute.

This weekend, while staying in the home of friends, cat sitting for their two wildly entertaining felines, I heard the voice of GOD coming from above. Finally, proof positive! God IS a woman. And god wants us to know that the battery is low. She told me that intermittently for the better part of a day, while I pondered. And then, she stopped saying it, leading me to wonder…Did Jesus show up with a battery charger? Praise be, I was saved, since I had no idea how I was going to ascend to those lofty heights of that cathedral ceiling with a new battery.

In this country, where we are judged by how big our house is, what type of car we drive, what we do for a living, and how big and numerous are our toys, I find myself with none of the 'stuff' that qualifies me as a valuable member of society. As a matter of fact, at the moment my life is all loose and floppy like poorly tuned rigging.

I may have contributed very little to the economy, but I have something much more worthwhile than a load of possessions. I have friends. Wonderful, colorful, lively, helpful friends. Friends who support me and tell me when I’m brilliant, and who slap me silly and say ‘stop being a dumbass’ when I don’t reef when I should. Recently, after my metaphorical boat washed up on the beach, I found the mother lode of friendship.

I arrived in the coastal town on a Saturday evening. I walked the waterfront from end to end, breathing the clean salt air, and then went to the local hangout on the docks to have a beer. This used to work well. You could sit down alone with a beer, and within an hour there would be ten or more like minded people, some you knew and some you didn’t, clustered around telling tall tales as only sailors can do. By the end of the evening, those you didn’t know had become part of your circle of close friends.

As I ordered my beer, I thought, ‘it’s been ten years since I’ve been in this town. I bet it’s all changed, and I will sit here alone drinking beer. How pathetic will that be?’ Three sips later, and what do I see, but two dear friends zipping towards the dock in their dinghy.

Later that night, ten of us clustered around a food laden table discussing boats, life, and the pursuit of happiness. The next day, I went sailing with one of my new friends. The day after that, another friend called to offer part time work. And today, I’m meeting a friend who has friends who may have a place for me to stay for a while. The ever expanding circle widens.

That’s what friends are for. I wouldn’t trade them for all the ‘stuff’ in the world.

Rescue Diver

When I was going for my advanced diving certificate, one of the classes covered rescue diving. We were supposed to swim up to the victim, and say, “my name is so-and-so. I am medically trained and am here to help you.”

There were those of us in the class who changed that to, “I am mentally deranged, and am here to help you finish drowning.

I wonder if that has anything to do with why I never finished the course?

More likely, it’s the fact that while I was training to become a dive master, so I could work in partnership with my fiancé the scuba instructor, he got married. Talk about impatience; he married a woman who was already a dive master, and who spoke no English. I suppose that worked well, since he spoke no Japanese. After that, my days were filled with plotting ways to do him a serious injury, steal his boat so I could carry on sailing instead of being left on the dock, and mass quantities of margaritas.

In the end, when I tapered off the margaritas, I came to the conclusion that there would be no advantage to risking life in prison by getting his boat a la ‘And the Sea Will Tell,’ method. I simply went away and got my own damn boat.

Still, after all these years, I haven’t learned. That boat I owned came and went, and once again I tried sailing with someone. Then I went and got another damn boat, which I also enjoyed immensely, until salt water once again corroded that switch in my brain, so that I short circuited and sold that boat too. Then came the serial sailing, where I tried sailing with two different someones, one right after the other. The first broke my heart; I never meant to lose him in the fog. The second refused to reef so that I could keep my balance, causing me to breathe a sigh of relief when he finally let go the sheets and sailed over the dark horizon.

Now that I’m left boatless again, with nothing but mass quantities of guilt, and not even any margaritas, I think of all the unintentionally injured parties involved, including myself. I can’t help but wonder, it couldn't be as simple as a serious case of sunstroke, could it? I thought I was a together, stable person, able to accomplish whatever I set my mind to. I got this idea about myself mainly because all my wonderful family and friends tell me that this is what I am.

I do know that I am a heard headed fool who still believes in love with that one special person, despite some pretty impressive sinkings from making the same navigational errors over and over. But at the moment, there’s nothing to do but GET MY OWN DAMN BOAT AND GO SAILING.

Consider it done.

Along Came a Spider

People who know and love me say, ‘it’s not your fault, he just wasn’t the right guy.’ I hear it often, and am getting tired of hearing it as often as I hear the joke, ‘Kit’s man of the year.’ Which ain’t exactly accurate, because most of them don’t last that long. Like a serial killer, by the time I’m finished with a guy, there’s nothing left but an empty carcass that I’ve sucked the life force right out of. But no charges are brought because the empty shell is still walking and talking so it isn’t exactly a capital crime.

When I start out, my intentions are good. I don’t set out to chop them up into little pieces, really I don’t. But what can I say, I am woman.

And alitloff to boot.