What I Know For Sure About Mooring

This is Part One of Who Knows How Many of “Really Important Things I’ve Learned While Living on a Boat.”
     Let’s talk about mooring, since it is appears to be a really big deal in boating circles. It involves The Big Guy driving the boat up super close to a little floaty ball, which I am supposed to lean over and catch with a hook that is attached to an expensive pole that can be anywhere from 3 feet to 30 feet long. Big pointed out that since this pole is aluminum, it is breakable, so to be careful when I laid it down. I think what he meant to say, was to be careful when I dropped it. Not taking any chances of falling overboard I stretched the sucker out to the full 30 feet, which meant I could barely point it at the mooring ball, which I had previously been instructed that I was supposed to do, as we were approaching it. Get this; not only was I to point the stick at the ball, but I was to use certain hand signals that told Big how close we were to it. None of those hand signals were supposed to include the middle finger. Mooring ball etiquette, I guess. Yeah right. By the way, he was doing the hard work of steering the boat.
     Well, and I shit you not, I hooked that ball on the first attempt. Beginners luck? I think not; I hooked it again on the second attempt, which by the way, was only minutes after my first attempt. Ditto on my third and fourth. I should mention that while I have no natural talent for actually pulling the fat, soaking wet rope out of the water, I am quite gifted at hooking it. Come to think of it, I may have even been born to hook a mooring ball!
     This is where it gets tricky, because it is not easy to carefully lay down a 30 foot aluminum pole when about 100 pounds of slimy rope is hanging off the end of it. It is much more efficient to just drop it and tune out any swear words that may be coming from the helm station where, did I mention, The Big Guy is busy steering the boat.

 Here are a few other things I’ve learned regarding mooring:
. It is probably best to not be wearing a really cute sun dress while leaning over the front of a catamaran trying to hook a mooring ball
. You will break a nail
. Skidding across the trampoline on your knees will leave a mark, and
. No matter how you tie up the mooring line, the guy steering the boat will re-tie it.

After all that hard work, I slacked and made us something easy for dinner; mushroom-swiss burgers, roasted potates with chives and truffle salt and fresh green beans with grape tomatos.   No recipe required.  I'll post one next time!