Much as I had hoped to, I did not get back after the weekend aboard Cerberus, my never-ending project sloop. Instead, all I had to show for three days of work in a Connecticut boatyard, where it has been sitting for more than a year, was a wasp sting on my right arm.
After getting a new engine installed and running at long last, I was working on some electricals — Cerberus is nearing 50 years since it was built — that had crapped out. As I bent down to route a new wire through a bulkhead, the wasp, which had been crawling on the galley countertop, went into defense mode and hit me with what felt like an electric shock.
Wasps like old boats. While fiddling with something below the port lazarette on Saturday, I found a mud-dauber condominium in a corner. In another place, a similar family of wasps had colonized a spot just about the VHF radio. But unless one happens to physically irritate them, they do not seem interested in unprovoked attacks.
After stinging my arm, the wasp in question appeared to go about its business as if nothing had happened. Instead of smashing it to get even, I watched as it continued its movement along the counter, then up some of the wires I had pulled from behind a control panel. It eventually came to rest on the VHF handheld microphone, which I gently lifted through the companionway and placed outside on the cabin roof. I did not know what it did after that, flew away to explore somewhere more peaceful, I supposed.
Weather permitting, Cerberus should get launched sometime this week, and I’ll sail it across Long Island Sound with one of my children. The wasps, I hope, will not be along for the passage, but you never know; there are a lot of places they could hide on an old boat.