Vero Beach Municipal Marina Mooring Field, Vero Beach, Florida, USA

Sometimes, while reading the email Trawler & Trawling list, I find reason to engage with the members on a topic that I may, or come to think of it, may
not have knowledge. I am including this response to a thread that was discussing the values of using burlap bags full of straw or hay as fenders
to protect the sides of your boat from what they disparagingly described as the often rough, scummy, dirty, nasty walls of some locks. Now I happen to
like the texture and the dank, wet odor of the locks on the Tombigbee and the Tennessee River as well as those on the Caloosahatchie. I find it
engaging. It is a unique form of life that has found a home and as directed from a well known source "gone forth and multiplied".

I don't know what this primordial green stuff is, animal or vegetable, male or female, communal or one big loner. I don't really care, to tell you the
truth, When I am in their/its waterfront home I find no reason to insult this life form by attempting to label it.

I have, after all, been through this all before when attempting to communicate with the nightmarish unidentified growth found in our teenage
sons rooms years ago. I understand completely why children are frightened of the dark and the likelihood of creatures under their bed or in the
closet. Those creatures are real!

Of course, by the time the child grows into a young adult they have come to terms and formed an alliance with these monstrous beasties. That alliance,
I suggest, is exactly why teenagers become such impossible monsters themselves. They have lived with these alien life forms under their bunk
for years. It is only natural that these ugly little creatures have become the child's role models leading them through the formative years. I believe
this is how our children and teenagers evolve into such little monsters.

It's the stuff that grows in their rooms.

But now back to the response of the burlap fenders filled with straw

This is NOT a flame toward anyone, simply a different philosophy. I respect those that can keep even fenders in Bristol clean condition. I can't. I
won't. I don't cover my furniture with plastic either.

Straw and plastic breakdown, as pointed out. Straw can rot and stink. It also has a huge capacity for carrying little creatures that can grow into
bigger creatures that can carry unsuspecting crew off into the dark, dark night. Ask any teenager.

The day after we finished painting Skinwalker, a couple of years ago, I picked up and threw a two inch by four inch by five foot chunk of wood at
the freshly painted hull. True story. It nicked and slightly scuffed the paint. I didn't have to worry about it anymore. Best of all, the damage was
completed on my terms.

I justify my fenders being used naked and roughly, and left stained, mildly dirty and scuffed by suggesting I have a cruising boat not a yacht. As an
excuse it works most of the time.

My fenders are veterans of civil wars fought and won in the locks of the Tennessee and Tombigbee waterways. Some day they will emerge, hopefully,
victorious from hard contested battles in the locks of foreign countries, such as New York, oh, sorry, such as Canada.

My fenders have earned their scars, the saber like slits impregnated with now dry slime. The lock burns from protecting the gloriousness of their
floating home port, the mighty, the good, the benevolent MV Skinwalker.  These small yet vigorously strong, protective creatures deserve their scars,
they have earned their stains. May the appropriate gods bless and reward these sacrificial lambs for their dedication to our cause celebre.

Scumming in the pilothouse,

Capt'n Lynnie and Skinwalker