tadhana: social butterflying.

it's been THAT kind of week. of course, we had dinner at chip and barbara's home after tom and chip brought "sweet pea" to the corrotoman. the next day, our friends from the SAIL rally, david and brenda, arrived at regatta point, and we all had dinner on TADHANA. the next day, we had dinner on their boat, L'ATTITUDE IX. also, our friends, mike and ann of TRAVELING SOUL, arrived at regatta point. they have a new kitty named spot (mike is a star trek fan and spot is named after lt. commander data's cat). she is a bengal and just absolutely beautiful! of course, we had to see her and mike and ann had to see aurora, too. aurora was curious and wanted to play (her first cat) but it wasn't really a good idea even though spot's claws were mostly sheathed. they got to sniff each other at least. the next day, we had dinner out with them and left the children at home.

aurora got her shot #2 this week. one more puppy shot to go and then the rest will be annual maintenance.

one "normal" work day and then all of a sudden it was friday and we left in the morning for little bay. on friday night, we were only three boats at the anchorage and all three of us were from regatta point! we got aurora to wade by carrying her out to a sandbar a little ways away from the beach. she wasn't particularly thrilled about the whole thing and was even more disgusted with the quick fresh water rinse when we got back to the boat, however, she was salty and sandy and i wasn't about to let her in like that.

the next day, more boats showed up at the anchorage, including one more from our marina. it was VERY windy the whole day, too. we also crossed a milestone - aurora finally went swimming! tom was all for breaking it to her gently. secretly, i thought the best way was to do it the way my father did with my brother and me - he threw us in and said "swim!" but, anyway, we brought aurora back to the sandbar (tide was coming in) and walked around in ankle deep water which started getting a little deeper and then all of a sudden, she was swimming when the ground dropped out from underneath her. she won't go in voluntarily though. tom thought that was enough for the day but as we were leaving the sandbar, i made him walk to a little bit deeper water, picked up aurora, walked in myself and then put her down where her feet wouldn't touch the bottom and said to tom "call her." so, there, we now have our sea beagle #2 - all that fussing around for something that comes naturally to them good grief. then, of course, we had to do it again to get the video.

video of aurora swimming.

the other "first" was a REAL bath, with baby shampoo. she smelled like a watermelon after that! i wanted her clean though because we were having happy hour on HALCYON, our movie-star-looking neighbor's boat. it was a big group, too, all of us from the same marina. well, and it would have been a perfect weekend except that our generator went kaput. after we got back from happy hour, tom worked on the generator. the error message had said "no raw water flow" and tom changed the water pump and impeller.

yes, tom did find all the missing pieces!

but after all of that, we were still getting an error message so it looks like it might be a sensor failure. there was definite raw water flow! luckily, our batteries were pretty charged up before the generator conked out so we were in good shape for the rest of the night. we were headed home the next day anyway. like everyone says - it's a boat, there's always something.

back at regatta point, we cleaned the boat and then tom went out in the dinghy to drop some crab floats to mark the channel. apparently, boats are running aground in the broad creek channel. gee, it must be because they are OUT of the channel, no? we have never had a problem. the red side is clearly marked so tom dropped some fluorescent green crab floats on the other side. while he was out doing that, i pulled out all of our rugs onto the dock and scrubbed and hosed them down. love those l. l. bean waterhog mats - so easy to clean!

the other "first" is that now that we know aurora can swim, i didn't bother leashing her as we walked down the dock. in fact, we went for a long walk without a leash. like i said to tom, so far, whipping her into boat dog shape seems to have been relatively easy! she is really coming along and she is getting to be a big girl :)