First Mate

May 30 - Launch +1

Took Dylan out on the boat for a quick run down to the mouth of the Weweantic River and back.  At first, he did not want to go -- for all his bravado, the guy is a bit intimidated by new things.  But I let him bring along his beloved fishing pole (sort of like his Linus blanket), and that helped.  First, he tried fishing from the dock, without success.  I suggested he might have better luck out on the boat, closer to the river channel, where the fish were swimming.  We rowed the dinghy out.  He did not have any luck at the mooring either, but then he suggested we take the boat out onto the Bay to try his luck there.

I told him what he would need to do to cast off the mooring lines, and what he would need to do to grab and secure those lines when we returned to the mooring.  He listened attentively, paraphrased the directions back to me, and said he was confident and ready.  Running the engine on dead slow, we threaded our way through the partially submerged rocks, out of the protected shelter of the cove, and into the river channel.  I let him drive.  He really liked that.  He forgot all about fishing....

Dylan was a quick study as far as navigation buoys were concerned. He sometimes confuses his right side with his left, but he understood clearly which side the green and red channel markers were supposed to be on the way out and on the way back in.

He asked me about the crew of a boat: captain, officers, and crew.  He asked if he could be an officer. I told him that since he was the first one to go out with me on the boat, he earned the post of "First Mate," and rewarded him with a luggage tag from West Marine.  He has since carried that damn tag around the house with him all the time.

"If you are the Captain, and I am the First Mate, then what is Mom?" he asked.  I explained what an Admiral was.  He mulled that over for a while, and then concluded: "So basically the Admiral stays at home and bosses everyone around."