I wake up at a gloriously late 6:30, happy that we don’t have to travel anywhere for a few days. It is a clear, warm morning and I get set up in the cockpit with a hot chicory drink and my laptop and do some writing.
Spending so much time on the boat really tunes your ears to the sounds the boat should and should not be making. The hum of the engine while underway should be just so – if it wavers, then something is going wrong, or about to go wrong. The sound of the wind on the sails (not that we’ve heard much of that this trip…) changes with different points of sail and you can hear when you are getting at too close of an angle to the wind. The air conditioner produces a symphony of sounds and it becomes easy to tell when it’s sucked up a wad of lily pads and is about to choke.
The one sound I notice this morning is the bilge pump. Or rather, no sound of it. It should be running periodically to drain the water created by the air conditioner. But this morning it is not so I open up the bilge to investigate. Sure enough, it is underwater and not working. I wiggle it. I flip the breaker on and off. I check the wiring and the voltage. I clean the impeller. Everything looks fine but it just does not work properly. I can get it to run if I turn it upside down, but when I flip it back over it sucks for a second then stops.
Time to go bilge pump shopping.
Daryl is up for the ride to the Dock Shoppe as he never passes up an opportunity to blow some coin at a marine store. But before leaving, our friends Chris and Miriam from Newport arrive in their 37’ Marinette aluminum cruiser powerboat and we help them to get docked. They’ve been cruising around for a week or so and decided to come and join us for the weekend. Their condo is right next to where our boat is docked at Newport and they can look down on us from their deck. I sometimes see Miriam peeking down at me through the bathroom window when I’m taking a shower and she’s usually giggling. I suspect I know what she’s giggling about, but I usually just wave then slowly draw the curtain.
Daryl and I jump in the dinghy and motor out of the islands and across the frantic, wavy Toronto Inner Harbour to the marine store which is located on a small barge at the end of an industrial jetty on the easternmost side. Unless you are a boater in need of parts, you would never, ever be able to find this place, nor just happen to pass by it. It is also past a prehistoric lift bride, which happens to be going up as we enter to let through a tug pushing a barge, who is coming up on us fast.
We pick up the parts we need then motor back to the boat but take the winding island route this time which is a bit slower, but scenic and calm. After installing the new bilge pump and discovering it is behaving exactly the same as the old one, I give up and take the dinghy back across the bay to pick up our friends Angela and Sheila from Brantford, who are coming out to join us for a day. I find them waving at me from beside the Empire Sandy schooner so they load into the dinghy and we cruise back to the boat for a burger lunch then an extended chill out session at the pool.
As we’re walking back to the boat we bump into our friends and learn they have been scavenging (and perhaps plucking?) feathers all afternoon from the pimped out male peacock. Miriam has a handful of four foot long feathers, that she’s strutting around like Mrs. Thurston Howell the Third. Lydia has one between her teeth and sashays like a matador down the dock. Daryl has one pinned in his dapper hat, complementing his million dollar smile. Chris has one slid into the belt buckle loop of his shorts, inviting pelvic glances just like Robert Plant did with that red rose in his low cut jeans when Led Zeppelin played Stairway to Heaven, but Chris’s version is way sexier. I haven’t seen the daddy peacock today but I expect he now looks like he’s got the mange, patchy and unkempt, with half of his feathers missing. After seeing this bonanza of colour, Angela decides she needs a feather as a fashion accessory for an upcoming event so Ana finds two dock rats and sends them off plucking.
After a dinghy ride through the islands, the four of us enjoy a slow and relaxed dinner and drinks at the yacht club restaurant like the fancy folks that we are, then we all meet up in the air conditioned inner digestive system of SeaLight, otherwise known as the main salon. We usually gather in the cockpit, but tonight we try something new. I pull up Spotify on my phone and start with the most appropriate song I could think of as we reflected on today’s events, a new one from Katy Perry, and I turn it to maximum volume:
I want to see your peacock, cock, cock, your peacock, cock. Your peacock, cock, cock, your peacock.
I want to see your peacock, cock, cock, your peacock, cock. Your peacock, cock, cock, your peacock.
I notice the huge bottle of Kraken that Marty and I tried to kill back in Kingston still has a bit left so I split it into two cups, four ounces each, keeping one for myself and giving one to Chris as I don’t think he’s ever experienced a Kraken smackdown, but I think he’s going to really like it.
The party is really heating up as my playlist winds through other high octane fowl tunes and there are more clothes being tossed around, but then Daryl asks me about the electrical problem on the boat and the three men start discussing battery terminals, short circuits, breakers, then we start taking the boat apart and testing stuff, which just kills the mood. Someone mentions mapping out the electrical schematic and that instantly drives Sheila and Angela to bed and they don’t even bother gathering up their clothes so I guess I’ll have to sweep up all the bras, garter belts, and stockings later and return them to their respective owners.
The remaining partygoers move over to Chris and Miriam’s boat where the conversation focuses on the burgee (this is a flag for recreation boating clubs) we need to create for the LOL – Lake Ontario Loopers, which will be awarded to anybody from the club who does a similar circumnavigation of the full lake. We’re thinking it should have images of a gas can spilling fuel onto a goby fish and a swan, the earth on fire, definitely a peacock, and maybe an extra long wiener dog wrapping around the whole thing.
Man, that Kraken produces some good ideas!
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