Call me Gilligan: The Final Chapter

I awoke to a quiet Two Harbors morning, trying to judge as I looked out the window directly over my head whether the sky was gray with early dawn or gray with clouds. From the rectangle of sky I could see, squinting through myopia, I could not tell. The rectangle was a uniform color that I could imagine turning to blue, but certainly had not yet. There was no direct light falling on the mast where it punctured the rectangle, soaring over my head. None of the other boats had started their diesels to recharge their batteries, so I knew it was before seven. I closed my eyes again and dozed off.

The next time I opened them the sky had not changed. How much time had passed? It might have been five minutes, it might have been an hour. The sky was unchanged. Overcast, then, most likely. I sat up and prarie-dogged, popping my head up out of the window/hatch to look out over the harbor. The sky was a uniform gray; the air was heavy with moisture. I crawled around and made myself presentable above-decks and made my way aft. On the way I stowed the dishes I had washed the previous evening to make room in the galley for the making of tea, then went topside to turn on the propane.

The deck was wet with dew beneath my bare feet, the water smooth, broken only by the wakes of dinghies ferrying the early risers to shore and to showers. Our dinghy joined the morning rush hour with Carol Anne and Pat aboard, leaving me to enjoy the peace of the morning.

My dish-stowing had awakened Gerald despite my best efforts to keep things quiet. There’s just no stacking plates quietly enough to avoid disturbing someone sleeping in the same room. We each secured tea and bagel and went back up topside to sip and munch and not say much, steam from the tea hovering in a cloud over the rim of my mug, while my pants absorbed the condensation on the seat cushion.

Eventually the harbor patrol (all of whom were very friendly and polite) came by and asked when we were heading out; the mooring was reserved for the next night and the boat could show up any time. Our reverie broken, Gerald and I moved about, stowing things, pulling out the safety equipment, and generally getting ready to sail. The the others returned and it wasn’t long before we were under way.

The trip back across was uneventful; in fact I took a nap for some of the trip. There was some nervousness about docking as that was where Pat had broken his wrist—same boat and same slip. After a bit of trouble at the fuel dock (tidal current and other boats made things tricky), Carol Anne piloted the 38 foot Beneteau into the slip like she had been doing it all her life. A sigh of relief, a nice late lunch, and I was back in the car again, stopping in San Pedro to leave Pat and collect the rest of my luggage from their behemoth and then away, east and south down the coast highway, back to San Diego and the adventure of finding a hotel room, as already documented.

On the way I made a couple of wrong turns, one of which led to a photo op. I used the new camera, which has a slightly less streamlined process for getting the pictures into format for posting here. I’ll try to take care of that this evening, and add pics to the entire Gilligan series.

13 thoughts on “Call me Gilligan: The Final Chapter

  1. Even in the middle of July, rush hour at Two Harbors is really silly — maybe a half-dozen dinghies headed for the showers, of which there are twice as many as people who want to take showers.

    Two Harbors is about as close to a tropical paradise as you’re going to get in the 48 contiguous states. Just be sure you get there by sailboat, not powerboat.

  2. Man, just publishing something seems to introduce all sorts of grammatical and spelling errors. I fixed a couple of the worst ones in this article.

    It’s funny how reading something in a different format will expose errors you miss in the original.

  3. Lots of talk about writing and grammar. Has anybody read the “runaway bestseller” from Britain: Eats, Shoots and Leaves ? My warehouse club had it at a good price. It really is a good read, and its a book about freakin’ *grammar* of all things. I recommend it.

  4. I’ve seen it and been tempted (after hearing about it on NPR). Just having it on the shelf (“I spent money on a book about grammar”) should establish oneself as an intellectual to be reckoned with (much as dropping NPR references does).
    Now that it’s been recommended by NPR and an internationally recognized blog, I really will go out and buy it. Thanks for pushing me over the edge.

  5. Sounds interesting. I’ll have to check it out.

    Internationally recognized? I like that. It sounds so much grander than it actually is, like calling Geek “exceptional”.

  6. I have a whole busload of grammar books, but that one sounds worth adding to the collection. (Although I originally heard the Aussie version of the joke, to which the punch line was “Eats, Roots, and Leaves.”)

  7. Jess, your first semicolon was masterfully executed. The second was not as well done, but it will do. Now you need to work on apostrophes.

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