"Capt. JG" wrote in
:

Sometimes you just can't not get help.

You don't have to worry about it on our dock. Just come in 30 minutes
after the sun is under the yardarm and they're working on their 3rd or
4th single malt Scotch or Bloody Mary. Oh, they'll stagger off to watch,
and may chortle a bit if you screw up, but they're quite harmless.

"We're over on (party boat of the day here).", they'll tell you. "Come
on over after you've finished up." This means, just like getting to the
yacht club to find out your position and score after a race, you'll need
to drop by to get your landing score that's been decided in the half hour
after their retreat. I got a 9.1 out of them.....ONCE. They're a tough
bunch to get a good score out of. Anything over 5.5 is considered
excellent. Scores go up if you land it in a ripping tide.

Oh, if you're gone a while and come back to J Dock and find a couple of
brand new, first class docklines neatly tied to your boat, all coiled up
on the dock, just tell anyone to thank whoever did it. Everyone knows
who gave you two new docklines because he didn't like the chafed ones on
HIS dock, but noone will tell you who it was, anyway. The thanks will
get back to the right person.....

No boats sink with so many people looking after them......24/7/365.

You'll also find notes stuck to your hatch like:
"Your A/C outlet was only dribbling so we cleaned your strainer Friday."
Of course, this assumes you've left it unlocked so any electromechanical
problems can be taken care of when you were gone. Noone locks their
boats, just their liquor locker. Most don't lock that, either. You come
in and notice a quart of vodka is missing. Next weekend you come in and
find 3 quarts of vodka stowed back, creating a surplus in case anyone
else runs out of vodka in a "dock party emergency". I've found things
stowed I didn't even remember ever seeing before! Someone left 4 pints
of Boddington's English Ale in the fridge. Cap'n drinks Newcastle, so I
got hooked on Boddington's. That was 3 years ago! No telling where it
came from. I actually think if you left the boat for 2 months, you'd
come back and find the cabin stuffed with various chips and snacks. "Did
you bring these?", someone will ask me. "Nope. Never seen that kind,
before. Too expensive for me." The whole dock overflows with gourmet
foods from many "sources".

We'll just have to have another oyster roast or crab cookout next
Saturday night to get rid of some of this. (Any excuse for a massive
cookout will do. I bet there's every kind of massive crab cooker ever
invented stowed around there, somewhere.) We'll stop by the seafood
place and pick up 100# of oysters and some crabs Saturday at noon.
Donations cheerfully accepted. We got a dockbox full of gloves and
oyster knives, already.

Larry
--
Take your marina dockhands sailing.....