Sea Venture has a parking space. Poor lovely lady must feel slightly out of place among the sport fishing vessels, gleaming and pampered, that surround her. She won’t blend.

She’s happiest at anchor in some remote and lovely spot, but sometimes life intervenes, and she, like the rest of us, doesn’t get what she wants. This is one of those times.

We, her owners, have placed her in the care of dock lines and fenders in Beaufort, NC, a 20-minute drive from home. I know, I know. She’s been our main home for so many years, she must feel an element of jealousy. But at least we’re lightening her load. Michael has made countless trips, removing all the tools, including welder and wood-working machinery, that took up most of the forward cabin. Extra clothing, bedding, towels have come out of hiding. And books. Oh, my, two full boxes of novels from the aft cabin sit in a guest bedroom here at Sleepy Creek. (Along with bags and boxes and files and…and…and stuff that must be sorted and tossed or stashed or, perhaps, returned to cupboards on board once we clean and air and do a little cosmetic work after all those sea miles.)

We’ve ordered new cushions for the cabins that never got them in the days when I was stitching and remodeling. My hard dink rests in the yard instead of on deck, and the rubber ducky will either go to West Marine for repair or have its air leak stopped somehow. Sea Venture’s due for a few weeks at the spa (notice the sad condition of her brightwork): fortunately, we can now give it to her.

Of course, those weeks must fit between jaunts to play at Cape Lookout or up the ICW. We wouldn’t want her to grow lazy. And I long to sit under the bimini once again, sipping Sumatra and watching sea antics instead of marina marvels.

 

 

These two pictures show her tied to the fuel dock just after she came in from the sea. Michael’s at-sea boots attest to the temperature out there in the Atlantic.  On the 18th, we moved around that pier to her parking place in Town Creek Marina, where she’ll sit for a month or two while we decide what’s next.