October 4-10

WORK, WORK, WORK!!!

This week was a blur since we both worked many, many hours –both leaving and returning to the boat in the dark. Dick put in a little over 80 hours, Moira over 72. During the set up of the show we were fed 3 very good meals at a small restaurant, but during the two boat shows we were responsible for our own meals and usually came back to the boat for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or bowl of cereal and would promptly fall asleep. Although we didn’t have a day off during the Sailboat Show, we still managed to find time to spend lots of money getting big items like a solar panel, AIS, pactor modem, and a sewing machine in addition to many, many other things. Never got a chance to see any of the boats, but that is a maybe a good thing since we always end up comparing them to our boat and find out what we might be missing!

We did manage to put on our show for some folks. On one of the evenings after a long work day when we were heading back to the boat, Moira lost her balance while getting into the dinghy and managed to knock Dick’s glasses off. We both watched as his glasses arched up and plopped into the water and sink rather quickly. The murky water didn’t allow us to spot them, but Dick thought he had a good idea where they had landed. Returning to Equinox, we tore it apart looking for his other pair, but weren’t able to find them. Not haven’t planned for that expense, Dick decided he would tried to dive for them the next afternoon. He first used a lead line and thought the water was about 4 ft. He returned to the boat and put on his wet suit and then came back to the dinghy dock. At this point the Pride of Baltimore is right next to the dinghy dock and people are starting to get interested in what we are doing rather than then lecture happening on the deck of the ship. Dick used our small dinghy anchor as a weight to get him down, but it wasn’t enough. We just stayed on the surface kicking his feet. Moira went to get some additional weights from the boat show work space and returned with some large weights. Lifting all those floors came in handy!!! Dick slipped those down the string and used that to guide himself down. By now the tide was rising and the water was at least 6-7 feet. Dick couldn’t see anything on the bottom until his nose was almost in the muck so he started feeling around. As he started coming up and down for breaths of air, more folks started to watch from the deck of the Pride. Dick was getting exhausted and said he would try one more time. Unbelievable, he was able to find them by touch that last time!!! Needless to say, both the crowd watching and we were thrilled!! After that all Dick wanted to do was to take a shower to get rid of all that horrible water he had been in. Of course, we also found his other glasses about a week later.