[Public-List] Spring at last...

[Gordon Laco]

Hello friends,

So spring came at last… after a few false starts SURPRISE’s winter cover came off, and Neptune or Posiedon or whatever sent a little rain to wash the winter’s accumulation of dust off the decks.  Oh what a pleasure it was to give the cockpit coamings a light sanding followed by a coat of varnish… The companionway washboards looked good but they got there spring recoat as well.   

Looking at the mast, i replaced the jib halyard block and moused its shackle with seizing wire.  I’d forgotten to replace the bulb in the masthead light with an LED, but a few minutes attention and that was done too.  

Here in Georgian Bay we only need to do anti-fouling paint every second year, so a quick touch up around the waterline and in way of the prop’s slipstream and that job was done.  

The re-wiring job turned out to be incredibly easy to do, and completely without surprises, practically doing itself while I sipped a beer watching the tools fly about.

The birds chirped merrily ‘chirrup… chirrup…  chirrup’ and I saw happy squirrels frolicking, playing volley ball with an acorn.   Looking out on the bay from SURPRISE’s deck, I could see Canada Geese swimming in pairs chatting with pairs of mallard ducks, and a cheerfully chubby beaver wearing a construction worker’s hard hat swam by towing a little barge full of building materials.   

Suzy Quattro, her bass electric guitar pushed over onto her back, wearing black leather jeans and a white silk blouse appeared in the cockpit along with Stevie Nicks in her ‘Rhiannon’ outfit… they’d heard I was a great sailor and really wanted to meet me…their eyes blazed with admiration.    Right behind them came Anne Wilson from Heart, wearing her ‘Crazy on you’ outfit.  Huh, I thought, all of them at once?  Weird, but what the hell.

POP!  I woke up on the couch from a nap.  I haven’t seen the boat for ages except for a quick visit to the marina (with special permission) to check her tarp in the storm… no work has been done, nor can be done, due to the pandemic shut down.

Alas alas alas...

Gord Laco
#426 Surprise