[Rhodes22-list] Stowaways On Board!!!

[Mary Lou Troy]

Hank,
Here is our duck story. I think it's been posted here before so if 
you are an oldtimer here you can just go on to the next message.

When we moved Fretless to the Eastern Shore 7 or 8 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 still 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 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 
lazarette.

Having figured out how the duck got into the lazarette, we had to 
figure out how to keep the duck out of the lazarette.

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.


Mary Lou
1991 R22 Fretless
Rock Hall, MD


At 09:44 PM 5/18/2008, you wrote:
>Hey Gang,
>
>Well, I went down to the boat today and I didn't have any wasps, but I had
>some much larger stowaways and I can't figure out how they got there.
>
>I opened the aft lazerette and found about 8 duck eggs inside.  No nest,
>just the eggs and a few feathers.  A few of the eggs were broken and the
>odor was a bit ripe.  I tossed all of them over the side.
>
>What I can't figure out is how a duck got inside to lay the eggs?  My laz
>doesn't lock, so I'm almost wondering if someone didn't put them in their,
>but that doesn't make much sense either.
>
>Anyone have any ideas?
>
>Hank
>__________________________________________________
>Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list
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