Okay.....the title of my blog is based on the name of my husband's boat. We sat around for a week tossing out possible names, arguing the pros and cons of each, wishing we had a really clever choice to settle on along the lines of "Cutty's Ark." We finally went with Arrrgh!!!, or so I thought. When the paperwork came back from the state, I discovered that DH had opted to change the spelling. I STILL give him a hard time about it.
The Arrr!!! is a 32 foot Bayfield sailboat. It's a cutter, which means it has two foresails (jibs) and a main sail. She's having her 20th birthday this year. Bayfields were made in Canada, so when it was time to do some serious looking for a new old boat, we went to the Toronto area to take a look at several that were for sail. Let me tell you, there's a LOT to learn about buying a boat in Canada and bringing it to the USA. We found out about it the hard way. :-(
Fred is so addicted to boating that he makes a boat widow of me from about May 15th to October 15th. I've been on the Arrr!!! a number of times. The year we bought her, I helped motor her upriver to the harbor where we moor her in Chicago. It was a beautiful day in June, and we made it through the locks without any problems, despite being novices.
Last year I went with to put her in the water, and it started raining just outside the locks where we stopped to have the mast shipped. It went downhill from there. The water on the harbor side of the lock was horribly choppy, and got worse closer to the mooring. We hooked up to the mooring ball and were rocking so roughly that I could barely keep to my feet. I began to contemplate whether I could make it to shore if I hurled myself over the side of the boat and swam for it Ya gotta know I'm not that great a swimmer.
It must have been the word "hurl" that did me in, because I got to worship the galley sink god. Again, and again, and again. FINALLY the tender came for us, and I realized they wanted me to jump from this madly rocking boat to THAT madly rocking boat. It wasn't a matter of courage. By then, I was so sick that I really didn't care much what happened to me. PLEASE GOD......DROWN ME!!!
The cheery boaters on the tender all reached out their hands to me and I THREW myself at them. They pulled me in, and I huddled in one corner praying that the trip wouldn't be long.
He can have his boat, and I'll garden and quilt and blog. I'm never gonna sail on a small sailboat again. Give me the Statendam, anytime! lol