Ahoy vey! by  Barb’s Dog, Dusk Taub

It all started when Barb was reading the island Facebook page and saw a picture of a pretty little boat for sale. “This is it, Dusk,” she told me. “We’ve been trying to get the Hub to think about retiring, but he just calls it ‘the R-word’ and keeps going to work. But if we can get him interested in sailing, he might consider R-wording for good.”

I wanted to believe her, but the truth is we’ve been down this path before. Music, theater, restaurants with exotic menus, and a particularly disturbing flirtation with him trying to get me to communicate using buttons that say human words when a paw presses them—nothing inspired any R-Wordage.

So I just looked up at Barb, perked my ears, and patted her leg with my paw. Sadly she doesn’t speak fluent dog, so she had no idea I was telling her that this could not end well.

“I’m glad you agree with me, Dusk. As always.” She tapped the phone and the pretty boat picture went off to visit with the Hub, along with Barb’s message that people on islands should have boats.

To everyone’s shock (well, mine anyway), they bought the little boat. The Hub, who comes from a sailing family, pictured himself flying along with full sails and a boat leaning into the wind. Barb pictured herself lounging on the deck, wearing glamorous sunglasses and sipping a drink. I pictured myself safe at home.

My first hint that things had gone very wrong was when we parked at the beach but did NOT take my tennis ball. I was in shock, which explains how Barb was able to strap me into a humiliating doggy lifejacket. It wrapped around my personal bits, oddly tight in places that had always roamed free. I sat down and refused to move. That’s when I became aware of the worst part. My new jacket-o-shame had a handle on the back. Humans could simply pick me up and carry me along like a furry black and white handbag. O the shame!

The Hub was excited though. He got hold of a tiny inflated thing about the size of my bed and threw it into the water. “Hop in,” he told us. Barb looked dubious, but she climbed into the little floating doggy bed. Seeing a chubby old lady who walks with a stick trying to hop onto a floating cushion was like driving past a horrific accident, still happening before my eyes. I couldn’t look away as Barb landed on her dodgy knee and somehow curled up in a little ball to make room for me.

I had my doubts, but when the Hub reached for my humiliating lifejacket handle, I jumped into the boat. Barb let out a scream of agony, but it wasn’t my fault I landed on her bum knee. The woman isn’t exactly a slender slip of a thing if you know what I mean. She said some words I’m not sure I’ve heard before, but grabbed me before I could come to my senses and hop back onto dry land.

Then the Hub hopped into the little boat. Right onto Barb’s bad knee that I’d just vacated. She said more of those new words. Barb and I were huddled on the floor while the Hub got the little metal seat. He grabbed the oars and started rowing us. After a few minutes, I decided sailing wasn’t so bad. It was quiet—at least once Barb stopped saying all those new words—and smelled interesting.

I should have known better. The Hub rowed the floaty cushion out to the pretty little boat we’d seen in the picture. All of us looked up at the tiny ladder leading into the boat above us. Then we looked at my paws. The ones without opposable thumbs for ladder-grasping.

I’ve always thought Barb liked me, but apparently she was still holding a grudge about the bum knee incident. Some people are so judgy. She shoved me towards the Hub’s reaching hand. In what was, hands down, the most humiliating event of my life—even worse than the projectile vomit/diarrhea episode in the backseat of Barb’s new car, or the time I accidentally nipped at the cat and she attempted to remove my face—the Hub picked me up by my lifejacket handle, waving me in the air for the entire island to see. My paws dangled and I may have made a very small wee before he set me down on the boat.

But I got over that pretty fast by watching Barb hop up onto the boat. Did I say hop? That was like saying a hippo was doing ballet steps. She clung to the teensy ladder for dear life, finally heaving herself onto the boat with a few more of those new words.

The Hub ignored us, and instead started barking (see how I did that?) orders in what I think might have been a different language. Apparently he wanted us to do things involving sheets, painter, pulpit, jib, and even tender. Barb and I tried to stay out of the way, and just let him have his fun.

To our amazement, he knew what he was doing and had sails up and that little boat headed out of the harbor long before Barb knew what he meant by those words. He asked Barb to “take” the tiller, a long stick that apparently steered the boat as he climbed onto the hood of the boat to mess around with one of the ridiculously large number of strings that seemed to be hanging from everything.

“Port!” he called.

Barb and I looked at him.

“Left! Steer left!” He pointed to the long stick. Barb obediently pushed it all the way to the left and the boat swung into the path of a much bigger boat. “PORT!” he screamed. “Pull the tiller all the way to the right. It goes the opposite direction to the way you want to head.”

“Some man thought that one up,” Barb muttered as she swung the stick over until it hit me. I whimpered and dropped to the deck. We both gave the Hub the LOOK. He decided the string he was working on could wait, and came back to take the tiller thing from Barb.

I learned several things that day. Say you want to head from point A to point B. In almost every other form of transportation, you would point your vehicle (or your feet) in the direction of Point B and head out. In a boat, you go a bit toward the side of B, and just when you start to zip along nicely, you turn AWAY and sail to the other side. Apparently you get points for doing all of this so fast the boat tips toward one side and then when you turn, it tips to the other. If you have a furry butt, you can just forget about staying on those smooth plastic benches along the side, and just know you’ll be pitched onto the floor every time the Hub turns the boat. Which he does constantly, because sailors find that weirdly enjoyable.

I also learned what happens when you make enough turns to get your boat out of the harbor and into the sea (or in our case, the Firth). All of a sudden, the boat was bouncing, both up and down and side to side. Barb’s face turned a color I recognized from the neighbor kids’ big box of crayons as being halfway between Seagreen and Asparagus.

“Toilet!” she grunted at the Hub.

“Head!” he yelled, pointing into the cabin below.

I watched with interest as she staggered down the ladder and over to a little alcove discretely hidden behind a curtain. She swept back the curtain to reveal…

It didn’t look like any head I’d ever seen. Barb’s asparagus-colored face took on a shiny glow. “Oh hell no!” She staggered over to the miniscule kitchen and grabbed a saucepan.

When she finally came back up to the deck, Barb didn’t mention the R-word. By now, the Hub had turned the boat around and was zigzagging back toward the harbor. I figured we would be saying a quick goodbye to the little boat.

And then it happened.

“Look!” The Hub pointed off to the port (or maybe starboard, who knows?) side. “Dolphins!”

It was true. We all watched in stunned amazement as a pod of dolphins cavorted around the boat, leaping into the air and probably mocking us in our stodgy little boat that couldn’t even jump out of the water. Nobody said a word or even used their opposable thumbs to take a picture. We just watched and made memories.

We talked about the magic dolphins all the way back to the harbor, which was actually quite close as the dolphin swims but a major hours-long journey as the little boat sails. And that’s one of the other things I learned about sailing. It’s possible to go from point A to B, but it will take about twice as long as walking and even when you get there, you’ll have to fuss for hours with weirdly-named boat strings and bits before you can actually get off the boat.

Barb hardly even used her interesting new words as she climbed down onto the floating dog bed. I would have liked to use ALL those words as the Hub handed me down by my lifejacket handle. Instead, I waited until the Hub was rowing us back to the shore before putting my paw on Barb’s good knee.

“So, how did you like the boat?” she asked the Hub.

He told her it was okay, as long as it didn’t interfere with his work. Did she know what day it would come out of the water for the winter, because he really had to get some work done.

Barb sighed and gave up on the R-word. “But we’ll always have dolphins.”