"Well, it's belongs to the lake now..."

I really wish I had been that mature, that calm, that wise when a errant job sheet wrapped itself around our port dorade box, tearing it loose from the deck, and tossing it into Lake Union.

It was our first daysail of the season and it was going well. We have not been off the dock for months, due to heavy schedules, some maintenance work, and really uncooperative weather. But we need to get off the dock, as our sail last weekend so aptly demonstrates.

Skill that we had developed over the previous season(s) have gotten rusty. I didn't communicate well to Kerry and we weren't watching the jibsheet well enough when we tacked.

This is what an intact dorade box and vent look like. We used to have two:

Intact starboard dorade box and vent.

The port side? It doesn't quite look as good.

Missing dorade box and vent, apparently held down by a few screws and some rotting plywood??!

Sometimes, sometimes, I just want to strangle whoever did this. Now, I could follow suit and just put the screws for the new box and vent into a place where the wood isn't rotted. Yeah, that would work just fine.

I think now.

So, I'm redesigning the whole mess.

I'm going with solid teak boxes, two brand new ones. I'm also shopping for the vents. I can get them in plastic, stainless, brass or bronze, in order of ascending co$t. In addition, I'm designing, and will have made, a set of rails that prevent sheets from snagging the vents again.

Nothing is more heartbreaking than ripping a piece of your lovely home off the deck and tossing it into the deep, especially if it's completely preventable.

Welcome to the not so fun aspect of owning a boat. It's not all sipping margaritas at anchor and watching the sun set.

More to come on this, what may end up being, a thousand-dollar saga -- and that is by budgeting and doing all the work myself.

Did I mention that the solid, cast-bronze vents can cost as much as a $1,000.00 each?

You bet I'm budgeting.