Mother’s Day begins when I drop the wife at Oakland Airport to fly to Portland to hang with her daughter.
I had imagined sailing out to Clipper Cove for a night on anchor. I thought I’d do a quick spray off undo the mooring lines and go. Once I started spraying the boat off the reality of an unrelenting winter of rain tossed a wrench into the works.
Little bits of dirt cling to the deck, there is this fiberglass feature called non-skid, little dappled sections of deck that traps tenaciously grippy dapples of dirt that are removed only by intense brushing with various kinds of brushes.
It’s a dirty job, someone has to do it, there are no “nasty” women within my global reality so instead the man-splainer did it, all the while I explained to myself how necessary cleanliness is to boat-li-ness.
Boating neighbor Will Smith dropped by to chat, not that Will Smith, but odd that you ask the Will Smith boating neighbor that did drop by enjoys my father’s name. My pop was Will Smith, sometimes earlier in life Willee Smith, properly pronounced Willard Smith, but few of us say the name Willard aloud in polite company, fearing the wrath of some unforeseen event.
You might ask how long does it take to scrub a boat to within an inch of its life or your life— scrubbing commenced at 11 and went on without letup until 4. The boat didn’t cry— Uncle— but after 5 hours of rigorous manual scrubbing with tough, thick, strong bristled brushes I had to raise the surrender flag.
A quick walk up to Gus’s to stock the boats empty cupboards and upon return a great layabout will be the grand agenda item for this now so much cleaner day.
The Lefty O’Doul Draw Bridge siren has just sounded. Halyards are clanking against their masts, and all that is right and good about sea lions barking blots the incoming fog.
You want a boat, you best be ready to scrub off the dirt trapped in the non-skid, ready or not it will test you.
