The primrose path refers to a life of ease and pleasure, or to a course of action that seems easy and appropriate but can actually end in calamity.
Day three (Saturday) dawned bright and early. CoastieGuy and my Better Half took the truck into town to try to get the necessary parts to fix the portlights.
We knew we would not leave the dock today or anytime soon; the pressing issue was to keep water on the outside of the boat. 30 minutes later they returned, having forgotten to bring one of the portlight dogs for comparison…
All 4 of us climbed into the truck and we drove to a diner for breakfast. After some down-home Southern cooking we all felt better physically though, mentally, I can only speak for myself.
We drove to the Strip Mall Extraordinaire where the boys went to the hardware store, I walked across the parking lot to the mega-giant soul sucking store that has everything, and Dad stayed in the truck.
It was starting to sprinkle as I was walking and 2 minutes after I got inside I heard a really strange noise. It sounded like a huge fan spraying marbles across the roof. It turns out that sound was rain and lots of it. Again.
I got the miscellaneous things I needed (cutting board! Dish sponge! Bowl! Dish towels!) and called Dad to come pick me up. It was raining so hard that the parking lot was flooded and it was hard to see. I got soaked just running out to the truck. What fun times!
The boys took a little longer and by the time they were done it had stopped raining. Stupid weather.
We drove to the Marine store to try to find boating-specific things. No portlight dogs but we did manage to spend a whole bunch of money.
On the way back to the boat it rained again; so hard that we had to slow down to a crawl because the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up. Stupid weather.
Once back at the boat the boys started working on fixing the portlights.
The sink still wasn’t draining and the water in it was getting pretty nasty. We speculated on what was causing the problem. Was the water on the outside of the boat pushing against the pipe to the extent that the water inside couldn’t drain? Was it plugged and we would have to tear the boat apart (again) to access it and clear the lines? Had they painted over the through-hull during our paint job and the water would just sit in the lines until we get hauled out? We knew that it had been working during our three day cleaning fest (back when we were young and idealistic) so this was a recent problem.
We needed to go to the hardware store yet again so the three of us left Dad napping and drove in to town. I called The Commune to explain the situation while the boys shopped. Among their purchased was a tiny plunger (along with aluminum angle-iron, a hack saw and myriad screws).
We drove back to the boat and the first thing my Better Half did was to plunge that stupid sink. It worked! Our one victory! Our one success! It seems the boatyard had thrown so much shit down the drain that the pipes had gotten clogged. At least it wasn’t anything worse. It was awfully nice to have a working sink.
CoastieGuy did some work on the worst offending portlights. We squirted them with our water fill hose to check for leaks. It was a slow process since there were a lot of leaks…
I made dinner (pork and beans with beer) and we sat around the table looking at each other and trying to make light of the situation. There wasn’t much light to be made.
The Yankee Feast I had provided for the indigenous bugs had made my foot and ankle swell up to the point where I couldn’t stand on it and my ankle bone disappeared under puffy, itchy, red skin. I sat on the settee with a baggie of ice pirated from the “refrigerator”.
That was day three.
Sailing Devilfish 