This isn’t the most exciting of weekends on the boat-front.  Highlight will be having a clean hull and new anodes.  Lowlight is the corresponding hull cleaning and changing the zincs.  Well, that’s for the people.  On Beryl’s end of things, there’s a pesky cormorant who has been buzzing the boat.  Beryl chatters with a funny little bird trill of her own when the wayward bird comes close.  I’m not sure if she’s going to jump ship in chase or go running below decks to hide.  A major uncertainty.

We’ve been told that all pet owners should have a safe spot for their pets aboard to go and hide on the boat during times of duress.  We’ve not been expecting a whole lot of duress around these parts.  Ah hem…that was up until a small rental sailboat from the nearby sailing club side-swiped Mahdee’s substantial boomkin a couple days ago.  No big deal for Mahdee it was just a bit of racket.  An aside–it didn’t even scratch the paint as the smaller boat grazed the the bronze cranse iron on the end of the stick and the gobstay (a fun name for that wire which connects the boomkin to the chainplate on the boat.  Same purpose as a bobstay connecting the bowsprit to the boat’s stem) itself was scraped.  We untangled the offending boat’s sails from the boomkin and noted as he moved off—with many apologies shouted our way–that he’d lost most of his lifeline stanchions along the starboard side courtesy of Mahdee’s boomkin and sported a 6 ft knife cut through the boat’s fiberglass as he’d grazed a sharp bit of metal on the end of the dock Mahdee is presently tied alongside.  I doubt he’ll be renting those boats again for a while.  Anyway, back to Beryl.  She appears to be so calm and collected–not the sort to panic, yet the moment the loud noises ensued she ran faster than I though possible from the main saloon forward and away from the racket as far as possible.

Her hiding spot?  The darkest farthest reaches of the boat forward of the anchor locker.  It was an incredible feat to see her get there.  This says to me two things:  first, she’ll really end up seasick if she takes off for that locale in a storm.  The range of motion is huge that far forward of the center of motion of the hull; second, if the ship is sinking, Beryl will go down with it.  There’s no way that either David or I would clamber forward to try and retrieve her from that location.  Someday we’ll make and install a hard door between the fo’c’s’le and the rest of the boat.  In the meanwhile there’s not much we can do about it.  Oh, this was a good little “fire drill” in that I was able to test my method of coaxing cats out of hiding spots.  I stood in the main saloon far away from the cat and shook the container of treats.  Worked a charm, she climbed out of her spot and made her way back to the treats in no time flat.  Calm, cool, and collected.  All memories of duress gone.