Dropsies...

Besides the boat driving, the captains take turns doing "blue shirt" days where we do maintenance and boat repairs. I had two of those days last week and had a case of the dropsies... first was the prop on our rescue boat. No one fessed up to it, but the prop on that boat got chewed up. I was replacing the prop and... yep, right in 18 feet of water. We do have a diver/dock hand, but it was his day off. Then, two days later, I was working on whipping a mark into a dock line. We need that mark so the dock hands know where to put the dock line on the cleat... there's just enough room for the two cruiseboats at the dock, and line spacing is crucial. I had just finished the whipping, stood up, and the line caught the radio on my belt... flipping it in slow motion well out of my reach and... splash. It was a long walk back to the office to tell the assistant manager that I had just chucked more company property into the drink. Sigh. The pat on the shoulder and the "Well, that happens when you work on the water..." speech didn't make me feel any less stupid.

So, while they get another radio ordered for me, I've had to borrow a radio from one of the off-duty captains. One of them didn't find it funny when I said, "I'll treat it like my own." ;-)

Also, during one of those windy days, I did use our rescue boat to get a family who had swamped their rental canoe. A young couple and their 5 year old son... they were wet and cold, but not hurt. The dock hand and I got them into the boat, then turned the canoe over so we could dump the water out of it and hauled that up on the stern of the boat. That little guy will have something to talk about when they tell what they did on their summer vacation.

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We started out the day yesterday with our monthly drills... each captain and first mate has to do man overboard and fire drills on both boats each month. I had five first mates on my boat, and they practiced what would have been a very bad day on the water: on the way out, they were expecting a man overboard... when all of a sudden, we had a (simulated) engine fire. Then a man overboard. They were expecting the fire scenerio when we switched boats, but not the two people overboard. It was a good workout, and they all performed well. They also took turns getting the boats back with an incapacitated captain. Good training.

On the really bright side, Joan came along for the dinner cruise last night. After a very nice meal and a lovely warm evening, I did put her to work when we got back to the dock... with two cruiseboats and no dock hands, we normally put the stern on the dock and have the first mate hop off to catch lines. Our boat came in first, I put the first mate on the dock; while he tied off our boat, Joan hopped off and caught lines for the other cruiseboat.

First day of this work week and I didn't drop a single thing in the water! One in a row.