Rainy Days

There's something to be said for rainy weather, even of the cool (almost cold to us middle-aged types with thinned-out blood) sort that comes to North Florida in the late autumn and winter. Just before leaving the Betty Jane for home, I snapped this picture so I could kinda remember exactly how relaxing the rainy day I'd spent aboard had been, the day I'd spent doing virtually nothing but reading (a couple chapters in one of Alan Villiers books: Cruise of the Conrad), snoozing, and eating (among other things, a BLT with plenty of mayo from the deli up near the dockmaster's office).

Of course, Betty's got reverse-cycle air-conditioning and, most likely due to her comparatively small interior, it heats things up nicely and in a hurry. And she's got a TV, too, a nice little flatscreen that we hardly ever use, at least on rainy days, because it's so toastily nice to hear the rain falling on the foredeck and flying bridge when you're warm and comfortable inside, with little need to go out into the wet.

Almost invariably, when spending rainy days onboard the Betty Jane, I'm reminded of other days, long ago, when I didn't have the luxury of being warm when the weather turned dicey. I guess one of the coldest days I can remember around boats was onboard a Great Lakes ship that was docked alongside a coal-fired electrical plant in Marquette Michigan in December. We were offloading at the time and my job entailed wandering up and down the deck of the ship figuring which holds to pull cargo from and which ballast tanks to fill. The steel deck seemed bent on extracting every last degree of warmth from my body as I conducted my affairs. And the warmth seemed to be departing straight through my feet, in spite of the fact that I was wearing pack-type boots with felt liners.

Yes, sir. It's absolutely lovely having such memories of ships and far off places, especially when you're snugged up inside your own little ship on a rainy Florida day with a rousing Villiers yarn, a bag of Oreos, and nothing much to do really...but yawn.