LandfallVoyages

We’ve got a bilge that’s impenetrably dark and seriously, deep enough to hide bodies in. For real. We haven’t actually field tested this particularly handy feature. Yet. Still, it’s nice to know we could take on a crapload of water and it would mostly just spiral down into the uncharted territory of the deepest parts of the bilge where its new job description would include things like making the boat more stable and not fucking up the engine.

Nala is simultaneously fascinated and totally freaked out that there’s  a huge engine compartment hiding underneath our mild-mannered deck plates. When we adopted her from Woods Humane Society (Hi guys!). They thought she was maybe a Queensland Heeler/Miniature Pinscher mix. Turns out she’s actually a Queensland/Basenji mix. We’re eighty-five and a half percent  sure she’s also got a smattering of Mountain Goat in there somewhere. Or maybe an invisible jet pack because she unceremoniously flouts the laws of physics on a regular basis. She hops and jumps and bounds around with complete disregard for things like, oh I don’t know…GRAVITY or coefficients of FRICTION.

Shortly after we moved aboard,  she was bouncing around, channeling her inner mountain goat as per usual when she came to the sudden and dismaying realization that you can’t always  hop yourself nimbly across the open engine room hatch with no slip-ups or repercussions.  Yeah, the thing that lives in the deep dark bilge stuck a tractor beam on her ass and nearly dragged her down into it’s watery depths. Ipso facto, she now treats all open hatches with extreme wariness and suspicion. Not a bad thing, actually.

And yet, she cannot pull herself away for long. She’s obsessed and utterly convinced that alongside the horrible bilgemonster,  there is also a kind of rare and wonderful Squeaky Bird who lives down there in the deep dark bilge and if she’s just patient enough, one of these times she’ll get lucky and finally get a look at the darn thing. I don’t have the heart to tell her it’s just the check valve on our automatic bilge pump squealing a bit when the thing starts up. She’s perpetually optimistic and completely steadfast in this belief.  There is no dissuading her and really, who would do such a thing? It’d be like telling your little brother that Santa Claus isn’t real, it’s just Daddy in a Santa suit. Which I would not do–again, who would do such a horrible thing?!…on a side note: Ian, sorry about ruining the whole Santa thing for you. My bad. I suck.

Anyways, one day while we were tied up at the Morro Bay Yacht Club dock, Nala had stretched herself out up on deck in her very favorite spot behind the wheel, when Guaneen’s bilge pump fired up and shot out the exact same squeakling siren song as ours does. Nala launched herself off our boat and onto Guaneen so fast I’m not sure her feet ever actually touched the dock.  She lost.  her. mind.  We’re talking nothing left but quivering mass of delirious euphoria. I did not know her little stub of a tail could wiggle the backside of her goofy self so close to the speed of light.

Not just one, but two –two whole Squeaky Birds, right in the bilge!