Captain's Log

Skinwalker Log December 19, 2006, Tuesday, 0845 hrs

Ortona, Florida at Turkey Creek

The boat chore list grows longer than completed entries in our maintenance log. Why is that? I ponder this question frequently over rum concoctions of some exotic design. We simply must learn how to take it easy instead of worry over future issues concerning life or death while underway. I have taken to reading while securely in the grasp of my iPod headset while sipping on my afternoon Mojito’s simply to stay calm.

Thanks to Don Desmond my brother-in-law for sharing that life saving recipe and the gift of the iPod with 3600 songs. Don is one of those true type “A” individual. I strongly suspect he sleeps faster than I have ever moved. Don deserves a complete email to himself one of these days, but I don’t do speed reading emails.

It’s not easy being me.

There are some mornings when the signal is not strong enough for our AirCard to pick up a signal leaving me without my morning email fix to go with my coffee. I am stranded then on the foredeck or the fantail forced to endure nature’s trials and cadence as it passes before my eyes. Hello, Fishing Long Legs. Mr. Alligator, what big teeth you have. Senor snake, does your momma know you eat like that?

It’s not easy being me when the scent of pig parts and lentils cooking seeks me out or when the fresh baking of bread wafts fragrant in the early afternoon or the soft sizzle of a thick roast on the barbecue announces that the drippings are blending with the beans under it.

It’s difficult to get comfortable when sunning on the slightly tilted foredeck with only a 4” foam pad for a pillow. It’s hard to get to the chips, dip and diet coke with lime set almost out of reach. It not easy being me, I tell you.

It is not easy living with a woman who never stops smiling, except to giggle at my jokes, and, at the slightest suggestion of any adventure, laughs yes. It’s not easy living with a woman who serves three hots and a cuddly cot. You think its easy being with a mistress that never likes to shop department stores, but loves fried chicken, catfish, ribs and rat cheese from a hardware store? My sweetness gives hair stylists seven minutes to cut her hair. Seven minutes up and out, finished or not. You think that’s easy for me? I only just walked in the door of the hardware store.

For me life is not easy with a Capt’n Lynnie who could navigate through the straits of Magellan, thread ice bergs, submerged rocks, mud flats, sand bars, yet get us to and from every waterfront bar on the east coast sober or drunk. It’s not easy when she decides to take her clothes off for an evening dip in the Smith Falls anchorage in the moonlight.

No my life aboard Skinwalker with Capt’n Lynnie is not all fun and games—there is some serious consumption of wine and rum in the still of the night where the He Coon walks first by the light of day. You think my life is easy, don’t you?

Wayne & Lynn Flatt