March 15, 2014.

The other night Christy and I were sitting in the cockpit just before sunset. We've got about 20 knots of breeze with a knot or better of current running through the anchorage. I heard this scraping sound just as Christy leapt to her feet and said “Tucker just fell off the boat”. Crap.

I jumped up and ran aft and climbed down onto the swim platform just as Tucker swept by. We both had momentary brain fade as we yelled for him to swim towards the boat rather than away from it. We forgot he's stone deaf and he looked like Mark Spitz as he swam down current. Shit.

I tossed my reading glasses onto the boat and as I dove in after him. As I was entering the water I was aware that my toss had been short and my glasses were now in the water too. Damn It. I'm a good swimmer and the judges would have given me great scores on the dive except for one thing. My “layin' around” shorts are a bit loose and were immediately wrapped around my ankles as I gracefully sliced into the water. This is almost getting funny.

I grabbed Aquadog and found that I couldn't swim against the current with him struggling in one arm and my shorts trying to tie my legs together. So I turned him around and got him started towards the boat while I stayed behind him. Independently we were both able to make the short swim back to the boat.

He got a quick fresh water rinse and Christy treated him to the blow dryer. So this little snippet of our lives had a happy ending.

Michael Phelps gets the spa treatment

Last night Tucker, a bottle of rum and I were having a conversation after Christy went to bed. I wanted to just how the hell after 8 years onboard, he falls off the boat. He looks at me and tells me that its my fault. Excuse me? My fault? How in the hell do you figure that?

He says that since we applied a new coat of oil to the woodwork, including the caprail we should have warned him it might be slippery should he decide to put his front feet up on it. I was like “ Oh no, you were right here on the boat when we did it, you had to see it”. He said he was napping and hadn't seen the work being done. He insisted that at the very least we should have hung a sign. Really, a sign?

I pointed out that he couldn't read so what good would a sign have done. He pointed out that he also couldn't talk yet here we were. Okay, score a point for the furry thumbless one. I asked him to be more careful and went to bed....