Journal Entry 123 / 0320 The date was Nenime' 11, and that meant I had a promise to keep.Journal Entry 123 / 0320 The date was Nenime' 11, and that meant I had a promise to keep. Not the kind of promise I'd begrudge, but certainly a responsibility I didn't particularly enjoy having just because I don't like responsibility. But I awoke early and checked the weather to make sure that at least the morning promised to be warm and sunny, which it thankfully would. I smiled and, trying desperately not to awaken P'nyssa, stuffed the gear I'd want for the day into a waterproof bag. I made my way to the roof and leapt down the controlled-G slide to the lagoon sands, then out to the beach. Off shore about half-a-kilometer away was the Succubus, my sailboat. I looked through the glasses at her to make sure that there wasn't anything visibly wrong with her from here, threw the bag around my shoulders and dove into the calm ocean. The swim was hardly difficult; the bag was mostly buoyant and I'm in reasonably good shape. I reached her and swam between the center and starboard hulls to the back where the ladder was dropped. As I swam I checked for barnacles and rot (Okay, they're technically not barnacles, since all Pendorian life is diverged from Terran development in the Pleistocene era; they still smell bad and screw up the dynamics of boat hulls), and there didn't seem to be much of either. I clambered up the ladder and onto the rear deck, hauling the bag up after I had decent footing. The Succubus seemed to be in working order, and the water and food stocks were still more than sufficient for the short outing I was about to take her on. I unwrapped the protective canvas from the sail and checked the lines. That's when I realized I had forgotten... Oh, hell, I thought. I ran forward and pulled up the forward storage compartment. Damn! I had forgotten to bring the new jib in, all I had were these two jibs from previous vessels, one of which was too damned large for this boat, and the other was far far too small. |