It’s a boat. There’s nowhere to hide. Kim and I are together all the time. All. The. Time. Which means we see everything the other does. The good. The bad. The ugly. To clarify, I cover the bad and the ugly in this relationship. It also means we no longer have our own areas of professional expertise where the other defers. When I was practicing medicine, I would go to the office and do my thing. Kim was not there to offer her opinion. There was no “Are you sure that ear is infected?” or “maybe you should consider a third generation cepalosporin given the resistance profile of this organism”. But now, it’s all out there in the open. She has cracked me open and taken an uncomfortably close look at how I operate.

One of the big things she has discovered is that I am easily distracted. Before boat life, this only came up when I missed exits while driving. But now, it’s everywhere. I tend to start playing “home movies” in my head and lose track of what I am doing. Or I try to multi-task, which doesn’t usually go well. It most often surfaces while we’re actually sailing (or motoring-when we had a motor). In our aborted attempts to actually cruise, I would start trying to configure the chartplotter and the next thing you know, I’m out of the channel headed for the shallows. It’s not pretty.

What I’ve discovered is that Kim is always on “high alert”. Every sense is on high gain all the time. Sounds. Smells. Vibrations. You name it, she’s cataloging it, tracking it down, and making sure it’s not going to kill us. That’s good, I guess, but it means I am getting up to look at stuff a lot.

These two character traits, taken together, have produced a new pattern to our conversations. There are now a set of phrases I know I am going to hear on a regular basis:

  • What’s that noise?
  • Do you smell that? (Closely followed by “Is something burning?)
  • Do you see that boat over there?
  • What’s the depth here?
  • Do you see the buoy?
  • Are you on Bob? (a reference to “Bob’s Tracks”, a course on the ICW to avoid running aground)

And, finally, and most often heard:

“JESUS, BOB!”

This is usually uttered after I have not seen the boat, not seen the buoy, or not been “on Bob” but may also be uttered while working on a project, e.g. the blowtorch comes too close to some wiring.

I really love her and she’s going to keep us alive. She’s not even using the Lord’s name in vain. It’s a prayer!

I’m changing my name. Just call me “JB”.