A few days ago, we drove the Squid Wagon back into the boatyard from Florida, dog-tired from a two-day drive. “Hey! There’s someone on Honey Moon!” exclaimed Barry. Our circumnavigating friends Don and Aggie were back from Australia, having stored their boat for six months. They spent a week finishing their projects and launched the boat on the windiest day we’d seen yet.

The problem was an external deadline. When their plane landed in Los Angeles, the US Customs agent had only given them 28-day visas, barely enough time to fly across the US, paint the bottom, provision the boat, see their friends, and get out of the country.

We were sorry to see them go, and a little worried as the wind picked up even more that evening. Boats were shaking on their jackstands, large items were flying through the air, and the wind sounded like a freight train. They were probably fine; they’d sailed half the world to get here.

The next morning, I was in the office, chatting with a cruiser from Switzerland. Having a Swiss flag is kind of like having a boat with a home port in Nebraska or Wyoming. There’s no coastline, so the boat can never actually go to its home port.

Anique was behind the desk, answering the phone as Patricia and I talked. “Good morning, thank you for calling Bock Marine,” she said. Then I heard, “Margaret is right here…” and she handed me the phone.

This was a complete surprise, as I have never received a call on the office phone. I go into the office for about 5 minutes a day, always at a different time — how would someone know I was there?

It was Aggie, from Honey Moon. They’d left their boat key behind, and were wondering if we could bring it if we came into town. “Sure, I said, “how were things last night?”

“Absolutely awful!” said Aggie. It was an understatement.

It was their first night at anchor in six months, and it was a night to remember. In a 60-knot gust, they dragged anchor. Pulling it up, they found a giant muddy fishing net wrapped all around the anchor and chain. They had to back in circles to keep from fouling the prop while they struggled to cut it off. The deck knife was too dull, so Aggie went below for a sharper kitchen knife. She crawled to the foredeck, where the wind was picking Don up and bouncing him against the stays.

Sometime around then, the headsail partly unfurled. The wind caught the loose edge and began to shred it. At around 10 pm, Aggie hauled Don up the mast to wrap a spinnaker halyard around the flogging headsail.

The anchor was cleared and reset, the sail was secured, but this was no time to go below and sleep. They maintained an anchor watch all night, meaning one person had to be awake to make sure the boat didn’t drag anchor.

After a night like that, the least we could do (besides delivering their errant key) was drive them and their sail out to the sailmaker for repairs. Afterwards, they invited us to come out to the boat for a cup of tea. I looked at Barry, “Well, we were going to do some shopping, but…” “You’re not going to Wal-Mart, are you?” asked Aggie.

This was followed by some discussion about what each of us needed from Wal-Mart. They needed to put more minutes on an expired cell phone. We needed a new space heater. “We have a space heater we need to get rid of,” said Don. “You can have it.”

Now we didn’t need to go shopping, so the four of us got into their dinghy and headed for the boat. We made it about ten feet from the dock when the engine died. Don yanked and yanked the starter cord as Barry and Aggie held us off a piling. Then he said, brightly, “Here’s the problem!” The fuel hose had gotten brittle and broken off.

We let the wind push us to a nearby bulkhead, and Don rowed the dinghy back to the transient dock.

“Good old Squidley,” I said, as the four of us piled back into the van. “We really like your van!” said Aggie.

This time, we went to the marine parts store and then to Wal-Mart and Staples. It was evening when we returned, so they invited us aboard for dinner. This time, the dinghy made it without incident.

After dinner, we were sitting in the cabin when there was a noise outside. “You’d better go have a look around,” said Aggie. She calls herself the “noise police.” Don was warm and cozy, and he shook his head. “Nah, I’m sure it’s nothing.” “That’s what you said last night!” said Aggie. Laughing, he got up and stuck his head out the companionway.

“Oh, this is interesting. You’d better come up and see for yourself,” he called down.

The three of us piled into the cockpit to see. It took me a second to realize that giant white wall was a huge yacht that we’d bumped into as the current spun all the boats in the anchorage around. Oops.

After adjusting the chain to pull us away from the neighbor, we went back below. “You haven’t been cruising in a while,” I said. “You’ve gotten a bit rusty!”

When it was time for us to leave, Don got into the dinghy and started the motor. The fuel was old, and it conked out and had to be restarted. Barry and I climbed in, and Don revved the engine to keep it going. We said our goodbyes to Aggie, and she tossed down the painter.

Don put the engine in gear quickly, so it wouldn’t stall, and we zoomed away from the boat. We made it about ten feet. BOING! We were jerked to a sudden stop, like a dog that has reached the end of its leash and looks like its eyes are popping out. If a camera had been running, it would have been a candidate for “America’s Funniest Boat Videos.”

Aggie and Don are conscientious and careful cruisers. That means they secure the dinghy with not one, but two painters. Unfortunately, when we took off, neither of them remembered this fact!

I couldn’t stop laughing, all the way back to the dock. Not because of the mistake, but because of the looks on our faces. I’ll file the two-painter idea away as a smart cruising tip. I’ll file the leave-one-attached idea away, too: Under practical jokes.

You know you’re living in the South when…

YKYLITSW…someone uses the term “corned pigtails” in casual conversation.

I was chatting with Anique the other day about the big traditional Thanksgiving dinner she had planned. She was going to do a big ol’ stuffed turkey, using her Mom’s recipe for the stuffing, and a corned ham glazed with pineapple sauce.

“So what vegetables do you serve?” I asked, wondering what was considered traditional here in coastal North Carolina. She mentioned potatoes and sweet potatoes, and “collards cooked the way my Grandma used to make them, with corned pigtails.”

Huh? I didn’t want to sound like an idiot, but were the corned pigtails a separate dish, or part of the collards?

So I went to the Piggly Wiggly. Next to the collards was a big refrigerated case of things I don’t normally eat. Lard, and fatback (which looked like more lard), and something called “streak of lean” (that also looked like more lard). At the end of the table: A big heap of salted pigtails. But not corned ones.

I went back to Anique once again. “They only had salted pigtails.” She laughed at my inexperience with strange pig parts. “Corned, salted — it’s the same thing.”

YKYLITSW…a black widow spider crawls into your Britta pitcher.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to a heavy frost. Ice on the water bucket told me it had been super-cold overnight. I went out to get coffee from our outdoor kitchen and glanced at the Britta pitcher, which I figured had also frozen.

Our Britta is missing its lid, and there was something black in the top. A big, bulbous spider, curled up, apparently dead from the cold. I stared in surprise at the red hourglass on its — her — abdomen. I’d never seen a black widow before, but I recognized it immediately.

I used a stick to poke her and turn her over. Then I left her there, thinking “Barry has to see this!”

The sun came out, the world warmed, and Barry went over to see my dead spider. When he came back, he asked me, “Was she wiggling when you found her? She’s wiggling now.”

All I could say was, “Eek! Good thing I didn’t poke her with my finger.”

The next time I walked over, she was walking around in the top of the pitcher. The thought of her escaping and running around in my outdoor kitchen was disturbing, so I put a glass jar over her. A few hours later, she seemed dead again, and I capped the jar.

I told my friends I had saved the dead black widow, thinking to send it to someone. They howled with laughter. “Someone you don’t like a lot? How many enemies have you got?” “No, no,” I protested, “maybe a youngster with an insect collection, or…oh, never mind!”

YKYLITSW…signs have appeared in your neighborhood advertising “Flight-Trained Bobwhites.”

I have no idea what these are. Barry says I should call the phone number on the sign, just to find out. I wonder if they’re related to corned pigtails?

Most of the boats in the yard stand mutely on their jackstands, leaving us to wonder, “What’s the story here?” Our only clues are the boat’s position, her condition, home port, and the detritus on the ground underneath. That, plus a little watching, snooping, and gossiping.

At 27 tons, the ketch Wind Lore towered over us on her jackstands. I’d once parked the Squid Wagon in her shadow to do an oil change, and wondered about the varnished teak and homeport of Shelburne, Nova Scotia. She was in excellent condition, and there was nothing stored underneath to give us clues.

Then, one Sunday morning, our watching yielded some information. In a flurry of activity, a white PT Cruiser pulled up and a family piled out. They stood looking up at the boat, taking pictures. Then they drove away.

“Hmmm…maybe that boat’s for sale?” I wondered out loud.

A few hours later, a beige Toyota Camry arrived with what looked like a rocket launcher on top. Three more people got out, this time climbing onto the boat via a very tall ladder.

Now I had two pieces of information, and I said, confidently. “Those must be the owners, getting it ready for the sale.”

I was absolutely and completely wrong.

That day, we met Rick and Mary Jane, Wind Lore’s owners, and Frank, Mary Jane’s father. They had about a week of projects on their list, and then they planned to launch the boat and cruise down to New Smyrna Beach, Florida.

But what about the people in the PT Cruiser? Like us, Rick and Mary Jane were mystified. Barry and I still marvel at the coincidence, having boatyard strangers take such an interest in that particular boat just hours before Rick and Mary Jane arrived.

The next day, we received a coveted invitation to climb the sky-scraping ladder for a visit aboard the boat. Sitting in the salon with a glass of wine, the companionway seemed very familiar — Rick pointed out that it was a Formosa, the model of boat featured in the cult sailing film Captain Ron. We all laughed about the fact that the crazy engine room in the movie wasn’t authentic, it was a set. And the infamous shower scene wasn’t filmed on the boat, either. Dang.

In the next few days, among conversations about projects and people and boats and places, I asked an innocent question. “Will you leave your car here when you go to Florida?”

“We’ll have to come up and get it, I guess,” said Rick. “You want to take a road trip?”

“Oh, yes!” I sang out. Barry was looking askance at me, but he knows that I won’t miss any opportunity to visit my Dad in Florida.

After Wind Lore slipped her lines and headed south, a massive cold front came through, making their trip down the ICW a chilly one. Back on Flutterby, our progress was slowed — our Awlfair wouldn’t “kick,” and it was no use applying paint in these temperatures. Not to mention how miserable we were, personally, huddling in the van with a tiny space heater.

Finally, the cold eased, but then came torrential rains, three inches in one night. When we awoke on Election Day, our boat sat between the Intracoastal Waterway and something I call “Lake Bock.” In the past, I’ve jokingly called our location “puddlefront.” We took off our socks and wore sandals, wading through ankle-deep water as we packed the car.

Then we got into the Camry with the rocket launcher (actually a rooftop gear carrier) on the top and headed for I-95. When we arrived at New Smyrna Beach and Wind Lore, 11 hours later, Mary Jane had dinner for us, and our Canadian friends were patient with us as we watched the election returns.

At some point in the evening, Mary Jane turned to me and asked, “Did you know we just had an election?” I was embarrassed. “Er, not really.” Less than a month ago, the Canadians held a Federal election, just as important to them as ours is to us. Turnout was the lowest in Canadian election history, perhaps because of all the noisy campaigning going on just to the south.

The following morning, I awoke refreshed after a night on their glamorous boat. I looked around at the hand-carved teak doors, the sunshine pouring into the spacious salon, and the palm trees ashore. I could hardly believe my luck as I put my jeans and raincoat away and changed into shorts.

Rick and Mary Jane thanked us profusely for saving them a trip back to North Carolina for their car, but that seemed unnecessary to me. The pleasure, actually, is ours.