We had signed up months earlier to go with a group of yacht club members on one of their summer trips to another yacht club. When you do this there has to be, of course, a group leader, and he or she pretty much puts things together. He contacts the other club and arranges everything, decides when and where the group will eat and what activities will take place. The rest of us don't have to do a thing. It's sorta' like when you take a cruise on the Queen Mary … you just show up and everything is taken care of for you. Nice. Maybe it's better than the Queen Mary.
It was our first trip to another club. We have made a few boat trips to other places but never an overnighter to another club.
A little nervousness sets in as the day of departure gets closer. You wonder about the weather. How big will the swells be? That, as you probably know, is kinda' a nautical term and has nothing to do with your cruise leader.
You wonder if your boat is ready. Do you have enough gas, oil?
Two days before departure you start to load the ship's stores (Navy talk). The "ship's stores" are, as you well know, the things you (might) need for the long trip. Your "mate" does most of this. She puts out your winter clothes, your summer clothes; shoes for dinner, for games; shorts for meals, play, swimming, drinking, eating. The mate also takes care to store the other important things. You need fruit to fight scurvy; you need more fruit to fight rickets, orange juice to fight off blindness and Jack Daniels to fight off everything else. Since our storage space is limited, I suggested we forget about the scurvy and rickets. The Jack should do OK with the blindness, too. If it can cause it, it should cure it, right?
The one thing that we didn't worry about was the people we were going with. We didn't actually know them but we knew of them. We had been to the Club enough to believe that boat people are friendly people. Our leaders were Tom and Joanie Deveau. Tom is pretty frisky but Joanie keeps him in line as best she can. Tom is also a joke-teller, fine golfer, expert boatman and born leader … and nice guy.
OK, so you wonder how many weeks we were gone, huh? Two days! It was a two-day trip to Antioch to the Driftwood Yacht Club. Two hours by boat. You just scoot down Indian Slough, turn left somewhere, follow the little fellow in the fishing boat for awhile, slither out into the Sacramento River, mosey left just before the big bridge and there you are.
Since you've followed the Kathleen Marie, owned by Dave and Kathy Readler, and the Loveboat (the what?), controlled by Chet and Linda Loveland (see now, the name connection … cute), you follow them now down the narrow passage between a lot of boats for docking.
Docking is, to me, the very best part. You meet more friendly people there, too. Always talking to you. "Careful, fella," you hear. "Watch it," some shout, and "look out" (you hear that a lot …). I pretty much ignore them. Heard it all before.
Then after you turn left you see that the "Admiral" (that would be Tom) and some friends are waving at you and pointing to a small slip and indicating you are supposed to put your big boat in that little spot.
Right! Like I said, docking, to me, is really the most fun part. Learned long ago the best way to handle it is to just close your eyes until you hit something. You have to buy a new boat more often than most but, hey. …
We had so much fun that we asked the group if we could go with them again.
Said they would call us. …
Post a Comment