Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Today is a big day for Lucy! Gale had made up a patch of grass for her before we left north Iowa. We knew that it was going to be really hard for Lucy to make the transition from going to the bathroom outside in the yard to having to do her business on the boat, so the idea was that if we brought some real sod and put it out on the deck for her, she would eventually figure out that it was for her bathroom. Yesterday we tried to convince her to use it a few times – she would lay on it and tried to eat some of the grass, but wouldn’t “go” on it. We could tell she was thinking about jumping overboard when we were cruising through the canal at a slow speed by the way she was eyeing the shore. By the time we stopped for fuel last evening, she was fit to be tied and nearly jumped out of her skin waiting for the leash and to get to land. This morning Maureen took her right out to the grass patch on the bow and told her it was okay for her to “potty.” She laid down on it at first so we walked her around the boat and came back to it. This time she did it!! We praised her, gave her a couple of treats and went back into the cabin for breakfast. When we walked out on the deck to pull the anchor, we found that she had gone back to “poop,” too! Hurray! We know the grass won’t last forever, so the next transition will be to a fake grass mat. Stay tuned. . .
We pulled anchor at 7:36 am and motored out of port. It was a beautiful morning – somewhat cooler and breezier than yesterday. We motored most of the 41 miles to Atlantic City, but did take about 30 minutes to sail with the headsail right in front of the Atlantic City casinos. The winds were just a bit too light for the direction we wanted to go, however, we very much enjoyed having the motor off for awhile. At 4:15 pm we anchored in a small, quiet pool near Rum Point just north of the town basin where we could see the lights of most of the casinos. One small trawler came in late and anchored a ways from us.