All in a day’s work…

After cruising for 61 miles (at 8 miles per hour), the dogs x3 were ready to go ashore to take care of business. Meanwhile, I was ready for dinner. To help get everything done, we decided to divide and conquer. Lisa stayed at the boat and prepared the evening meal. I took the dogs in the dinghy and ashore we went. A cement boat ramp was a little distance away, but I didn’t want to scrape my electric motor on the bottom. Instead, we found a nice soft bank on the stream to beach the dinghy. Part way up the bank, I lost my footing on the wet mud, but no fear — the bow line for the dinghy was in my hand (or so I thought). Turns out, the leash for Moose is the same sort of black rope as the dinghy bow line. In the end, Moose & I landed on the shore, and the other two dogs (Violet & Olive) launched into the freezing cold stream on the dinghy by themselves. To make it more interesting, Lisa & I still had our mooring intercom headsets on from anchoring the big boat. ‘Uh oh…oh no!’, Lisa heard on the headset. ‘Uh…what’s wrong?’, she replied. ‘Well the good news is, I’m on the shore with Moose…the bad news is, the other two dogs are adrift together on the dinghy in the stream without me!’ ‘Should I pull up the anchor and bring the big boat? Do I need to radio the Coast Guard? Is this Pan-Pan or Mayday?’ ‘No worries, I’ve got this…’ I assured her. ‘How can I help?’ ‘Make a warm dinner, and maybe have some towels ready…’ At three months shy of my 60th birthday, I hadn’t planned on aquatic heroics in the fading December twilight. Since Chuck Norris Texas Ranger wasn’t anywhere in sight, I had to come up with something on my own. After breaking a few sticks on the bank trying to pull the dinghy in to no avail, the limbs of a fallen sapling were just stout enough to support me gingerly inching out over the water and finally leaping (more like a Fosbury flop) into the dinghy and driving it ashore. All I could hear in my mooring intercom headset was hysterical laughter as Lisa watched and listened from afar on the big boat. In the end, the pups did their business and we all got back to the big boat safely. The only casualty was a very muddy pair of size 13 boots. Dinner was delicious. I used my recent deeds of daring do as an excuse to have ice cream for dessert. I offered some to Lisa, but she said her side was still hurting from laughing so hard…perhaps an ice pack instead. 😉