Cruising Stride

When we first met the captain of the sailing vessel Semper Fi in Island Moorings, and for that matter a number of others during our weekends aboard, I noticed that he and we had a certain urgency to the time there. After all, we had only two nights each week to enjoy our boats. Over the next few months, almost every weekender would make many trips to the parking lot just to get from or take stuff to the car. We would pass the locals going the same direction with our "fast walk". A few weeks after Travis and Carolyn moved aboard we started to notice that something was changing. His walk was much slower and his stride much longer. Really, one can notice such stuff if one simply sits down and observes. I call it a bogue, that walk that takes over when one lives aboard. It reminds me of the stride of a heavily laden grunt. It is smooth, consistent and as I remember the goal was to step carefully so as to not slip in the mud. That bogue is the same as a grunt bogue less, of course, the load. Now that we are aboard, we now have that bogue. Nothing takes place quickly aboard a moving boat or a dock.

Move the observation post for people watching ashore, say to some sidewalk restaurant and some things start to become apparent. The locals here in KW have perfected the bogue to an art form. The cruise boat guests do not have it at all. In fact, having only a short shore leave here, they are on a mission to jump into KW for tee shirts, booze and pictures and do all of that before having to embark at the end of the day. Then there are those of us auld dawgs that have the bogue of a cruiser. It is not quite the KW brand but it is definitely unique more especially to those of us who spend time on the water on heeling decks. It is comfortable and allows enough time between steps to avoid Pelican droppings (sometimes) or fish hooks or getting in someones photo of a fantastic place. It does; however, double the time en route. If one forgets one's keys, then it takes a long time to accomplish that which weekenders can do in just a few minutes. Wait a minute, we have no car keys aboard WK. Whew, there for a second, we were back in Port A for a weekend. Had our fill of conch for a while. Think we will have burgers tonight- or not.

Some truths:

Bear thinks I look like a circus bear on our folding bicycle but since it triples my range I am over thinking about that image.

Dick D once said that booze is heavy, meaning to carry from some store to the boat. To further that, our little backpacks will hold 8 bottles of wine. That's all. Put that backpack on and then climb on the folding bicycle, and there is a small problem with cornering. The old center of gravity moves farther up and over steering can be exciting especially when trying to avoid some inattentive pedestrian who steps in front of you.