So, four weeks ago I was cleaning and oiling the teak on my boat. There's enough teak trim to force me to do this every year and not enough to make it worth it. The process involves slathering (biodegradable) chemicals over the wood, washing it off with the hose, repeat. This is followed by painting on a thin layer of teak oil. I mention this only to suggest the afternoon of work which was going on.
Imagine my surprise when near the end of this process, as I was applying a final coat of oil near a cubby-hole near the back of the boat, out of this cubby-hole burst a an unhappy adult duck. The duck squawked, snorted, and then flew off.
As the Brits say, I was gobsmacked. What the hell was the duck doing on my boat? And why wait until the oiling portion of the activities to emerge, when I had been hosing and slathering down the quarterdeck all day? I looked in the cubby-hole (the "rope locker" for sailors) and saw five eggs. Oh boy.
Several questions: When were they laid? What is the gestation period for a duck? What kind of duck? What do they eat? Where's the dad? Can I start my boat without killing the ducklings?
Is my boat now a protected wet-land?
The most vexing problem was that the interior of my boat doesn't have a exit door out to the water; you have to step over the sides. How will the baby ducks get out? Do they swim right away or hang out on land for a bit?
For better or worse, that weekend the boat didn't leave the dock. The next weekend I was in Florida. The weekend after that the weather was terrible. All in all, after three-plus weeks, my boat hadn't moved. The gestation period for ducks is 28 days.
Last Friday was a big day on our trading desk. I got out of the office at 7 p.m. and out to the boat at 8:15 p.m. Had the usual couple of beers to decompress and listen to the Yankees beat the Devil Rays. Then a whisky. Or two.
Saturday morning, I was roused about 7 a.m. by what I took to be the sound of my bilge pump clacking. An odd sound. But I was mistaken - it was the sound of the mother duck squawking with several baby ducks cheeping.
As I looked into the cubby-hole, I realized that the problem was much worse - in the back of this area was a gap between the floor and the sides leading down into the engine compartment. And by now, all the ducklings had fallen into the bilge.
My boat was built by people who had not been involved in a lot of software test scenarios; that is, it is difficult to get into the engine compartment and do any work at all. Nevertheless, I opened up the live-well, shimmied down past the hydrolic rudder system, and scrambled on top of the fresh water tank, listening and looking for ducks.
One was swimming in the 1/2 inch of bilge water. I went up and got an empty Maxwell House coffee can, climbed back down, and eventually scooped up duckling #1. After this, the other ducks were very quiet for five minutes right when they should have been cheeping so I could find and rescue them. Twisting myself further inside, trying not to crawl on top of the marine batteries, I finally heard one, scooped it, and brought it topside. Once out, the third duckling made itself known. Back down, scraping against the fuel tanks, I quickly saw it and scooped it up.
By this time, my neighbors, Leon and Ruth had joined in the hunt. Luckily, Leon did not have to use the extra-long barbeque tongs he decided would be the perfect tool to pick up the chicks.
We had deposited the ducklings on the dock waiting for their mother to come back and do whatever she wanted when the chicks rather stupidly fell off into the water. Which, as it happens, is exactly what ducklings are supposed to do: go swimming with mom.
Out of the five original eggs, Leon reported that the mother had taken one out of the nest (my anchor ropes) the day before. One more never hatched. One of the ducks couldn't keep up with mom and was lost to her after about twenty minutes. Though Leon, Ruth, and I, found it and tried to help it get over to her mother, that didn't seem to work.
The last we saw, the mother was swimming away with two ducks in pursuit, the third one gamely trying to catch up. I will assume that, at some point, the whole family will live happily ever after. For myself, I've closed off the cubby-hole.