Memorial Day weekend 2003- the big boating weekend that wasn't. In fact, we are finding it very hard to believe that as we write this we are already into the first week of June. It feels so much more like April. Usually, we get a jump-start on the Memorial Day weekend by casting off Friday evening. Even with the poor weather over the last few years on Memorial Day weekends, we have always provisioned the boat and made the attempt. This year, we just gave in and stayed home.

To start with, we had a late start. We are one of the few boating couples who can't blame a marina for our late start to the season. As always, Willis Marina in Huntington had our boat in the water by the 15th of May as planned. It's just that Bob didn't check off the box on the work order to have the engine re-commissioned. As neither one of us is very mechanical, we had the engine decommissioned in the fall. Now that the boat is back in the water again, we had to have the boat re-commissioned. And even though we are more than willing to hand over more money to the marine industry, they weren't going to take that money until we checked the little re-commission box on the work order. So, we lost another week because of our negligence to check the little box.

Speaking of checking off that little box. Good friends of ours had their boat in winter storage at a different marina last year. Spring came around and they had some work done before re-launching the boat. The day their boat was scheduled to be launched, they arrived at the marina just in time to see their boat in the cradle. They had checked off the box to have the hull of the boat waxed. From a distance, looking at the boat it appeared to have stripes from water running down the hull from the toe rail. Upon closer inspection, they found that indeed the boat had been waxed. It had been waxed right over the dirty stripes, and had not been cleaned first. They had neglected to check off the box indicating for the boat to be washed first. Who would have ever thought?

On the Thursday before the big Memorial Day weekend, we were told our boat was ready. Within a few hours from the phone call, we were sailing our way back to Oyster Bay from Huntington Harbor. Before we left, we needed to refill the fuel tank. We did a poor job docking the boat, but certainly not our worst. The launch operator at the fuel dock told us "not to worry. It takes a while to learn how to dock when you're new to boating." We didn't think we did that bad. And we certainly didn't tell him that we have been boating for ten years. Anyway, we did a good job pulling away from the dock. We quickly motored out to the Sound, and sailed towards Oyster Bay. As we tacked South just off of the tip of Lloyd Point, we started to motor the remainder of the way as we were directly into the wind and weren't ready to tack our way back to the mooring field.

As we passed the Sand Hole, we saw a friend's boat sailing along. It had been cloudy all day, but just as we passed them the sun came out just long enough for us to take a photo of their boat with the sun setting behind them. Within a few minutes, the sun was gone and never appeared for the entire holiday weekend.

Bob and Shelley-Sue Williams can be reached at swpny@aol.com.