Wedding break. Back to Dragonfly—there’s water in our boat!

We had an amazing week preparing for and helping host Danielle and Jay’s wedding on July 7. The weather was perfect, the venue and ceremony were exactly what the happy couple wanted, we all had an awesome time and almost everything went perfectly. There was a mix-up with the catering order and when the food didn’t arrive on time, we found out that it was scheduled for the following Sunday. The wedding party and parents of the bride kept their cools and quickly came up with a Plan B, with Pizza Luce to the rescue. Pizza and salad arrived shortly, fit perfectly with the Bauhaus Brew Labs location and apparently some of the guests never even realized that there was a problem. A terrific wedding story for the newlyweds! Another great experience for me was building the backdrop for the ceremony with Danielle. We constructed a frame, covered it with canvas and collected donated vases, with guests each bringing a bouquet to decorate this beautiful, memorable piece for the ceremony.

On Tuesday, we were up at 4:00 AM to catch an early flight back to Burlington, VT. Everything went smoothly, until we opened up Dragonfly and found two inches of water inside the cabin. According to the gas dock attendant, there was a big storm on July 3rd, with three-foot waves coming off the lake. Typically, transient docks in a marina are the most exposed, with the best-protected slips understandably reserved for regulars. So not only was our location less than ideal, our stern was facing the incoming waves, and water was apparently splashing in over the transom. Had we been aboard when this happened, the best course of action would have been to turn the boat around in the slip to put the waves on the bow, but alas, we weren’t there, and hadn’t planned ahead. I pumped about 25 gallons out of the cabin and bilges, then pulled the soaked carpet and cushions out to dry on the dock. Fortunately, none of our personal gear got wet and it was a hot sunny day—great for drying out a soggy boat interior, but not for working inside of it. After putting everything back together, we tested the boat’s systems to ensure that Dragonfly was still seaworthy and settled back into being aboard. We do appreciate that living on a boat is not all rainbows and sunsets, but seeing one of each before we turned in gave us a good feeling that everything was going to be okay.