Ducking For Cover

So there I was...a couple miles out in Lake Ontario last Monday on the way to my next harbor that would take five hours to reach.  I knew the weather wasn't going to be great but the lake was proving to be more aggressive than had been predicted.  Waves were standing three to four feet high and unlike the long rolling ocean waves that I'm used to,  these were sharp and very close together.  I was taking a terrible pounding and items that I thought I'd secured were flying around the cabin as spray from the waves was washing over the deck and windshield to where I was having trouble seeing.  Problem is that it's my custom not to turn back once I've set my course for a destination.  This has created some wild trips over the years.  Then the duck spoke to me.  Kim had put this stuffed toy duck on the boat that resides on my desk in the main cabin.  When you plop the duck down firmly on a hard surface it starts to quack and quack and quack.  Said duck went flying across the cabin at one point and the quacking started.  In duck language, which I must know, he was saying, "Are you some kind of idiot.  What are we doing out here?  Forget that you're tearing your not so young body apart but this 35 year old boat can't take this kind of punishment any more.  Swallow your pride and turn this boat around."  I listened to the duck and it's a good thing I did because the weather continued to deteriorate.  So I made the trip today, two days later, and the seas were flat with no wind but there was fog most of the way limiting my sight to about a quarter mile.  I was about 25 miles offshore and driving from the upper helm station when the flies attacked.  Hundreds and hundreds of flies.  They were landing all over me and I had to retreat to the lower helm station in the main cabin.  It was like some horror movie as they were covering every screen and window trying to get in.  They were finding small openings and for the rest of the trip I was killing flies with the fly swatter.  Dead flies everywhere.  They don't put this stuff in the brochures at the boat shows and this time the duck never said a word.