[Rhodes22-list] Storage on old Rhodes

[Mary Lou Troy]

Hi Ben,
Guess you just haven't been around long enough although our issue was 
(fortunately) not exactly the same. I believe I wrote it up for the 
list at the time, but this is what I wrote a couple of years ago:

"When we moved Fretless to the Eastern Shore 6 or 7 years ago, it was 
the first time we had kept the boat in a slip. We had made the 
commitment and were determined to get a lot of use out of the boat. 
We got her all settled in the slip one weekend and went away for the 
week. We came back the next weekend, planning to spend the weekend on 
the boat. We schlepped our stuff down the dock and stowed it all 
away, went off to have dinner at a restaurant in town, came back and 
sat out in the cockpit for a while.

Some time later, we put up the poptop enclosure, made up the berth in 
the cabin and turned in. I heard noises like someone walking on deck. 
I told myself I was imagining things. I heard more noises. I nudged 
Fred awake (he's next to the companionway). He didn't hear anything 
(he's somewhat deaf). He looked out and didn't see anything. I went 
back to sleep. I heard the noise again. And again. I nudged Fred 
awake. This time he was nice enough to get up and take a look around. 
He didn't see anything. We went back to bed and to sleep.

The next morning I fixed a nice breakfast and we are sitting in the 
cockpit with our orange juice and our mugs of tea sitting on the 
cockpit table. We heard a scrambling sound from the area of the 
lazarette. We looked at each other. We turned the table so that Fred 
can get to the lazarette. He cautiously opened the lid and let it 
fall right back down. "There's a duck in there!" "A duck?" "A duck!" 
We finished our breakfast contemplating how to get a duck out of the lazarette.

We cleaned up breakfast and looked in the lazarette. The duck was in 
amongst various lines, pfds and the anchor looking rather frightened. 
We decided to leave the lid of the lazarette propped open to see if 
the duck would leave on its own. We propped the lid and left.

We came back to the boat and the duck was gone having left us a duck 
egg as a present. No nest or crud, just the egg. Then we started to 
try to figure out how the duck got into the lazarette and we made a 
discovery about the boat that we had owned for 3 years. The underside 
of gunnels are open to the lazarette. Somehow the duck had figured 
out how to go under the bench seats and up under the gunnels into the 
lazarrette.

Having figured out how the duck got into the lazarrette, we had to 
figure out how to keep the duck out of the lazarrette. Off we went to 
the hardware store to buy some screening and some ...(drum roll 
please) ..... duck tape.  Taped the screening over the openings and 
ended our duck problem. Can't say what happened to the egg."

BTW, no ducks since though the tape and screening are long gone.

Best of luck with your duck.

Mary Lou
1991 R22 Fretless
Rock Hall, MD





At 11:26 AM 4/1/2010, you wrote:
>Here's an issue I haven't seen on the list before.
>
>Last weekend, I was doing some routine cleaning and maintenance in
>preparation for our annual easter weekend overnight trip.  All was going
>fine, until I saw a female mallard hop aboard.  While it amused me for a
>second, I figured out what was up as soon as she disappeared.
>
>Under the starboard seats, she sat in the middle of my coiled anchor rode on
>somewhere between 6 and 10 eggs.  I stuck my face down there, and we sat
>looking at each other, eye to eye, and inches away.  She let me take some
>pics.  Here's one --
>
>http://theskinnyonbenny.com/img/duck.jpg
>
>I'm afraid that if I sail, she'll fly off, and then she won't know where to
>find her nest.  I'm thinking of trying to move the nest (and the crumbling
>Rubbermaid that it's in) onto the dock.  I've got a giant spatula that I use
>to flip crumbly fish on the grill.  Maybe I'll put it in a sideways box or
>something.  I figure she's stupid enough not to know the difference, and I
>don't think that it will be found by a neighborhood cat or nutria if I leave
>it pretty close to where the boat is tied.
>
>Anyone have different suggestions?  (Other than making her into a gumbo)
>
>Ben S.
>Velvet Elvis
>
>
>
>
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