All At Sea With The Nautical Nuts
For thousands of years, Men have felt the irresistible urge to go
far out to Sea, and many of them have died. Things got a lot
better after boats were invented.
But still, it is a very, very
dangerous thing, going to Sea. Especially with me on board. I suppose I could say that I am an experienced sailor, as I've leaned
over the rail calling dinosaurs in both the Atlantic and the Pacific.
There
are times when my pal, Jerry, manages to get me onto his sailboat. Granted, most of the times that he is successful in this endeavor
occur when the sailboat is in a dockyard somewhere, getting the lazarette
club-hauled or whatever. But sometimes, the horrible thing is
actually afloat. And therein is the kernel of my misery.
I
firmly believe that sailing can be defined as being cold, wet, miserable,
and seasick while going nowhere slowly at great expense. To
me, being on a sailboat is like being in jail with a chance of drowning.
Also,
I hate wind. Jerry doesn't mind it at all -- when it's windy,
he just tells me that it's my turn to take the tiller, while he sits
back and watches with the gleeful, evil, beady little eyes of a spiteful
goblin. In these conditions, the first hour or so is endured
with only that sail there in the front strung up (note my excellent
nautical terminology).
Last time, it was awful as I tried to
keep the boat from swinging around in a sudden, uncontrolled circle...
or falling off to wander around the wrong way, with my bowels doing
the polka. Jerry, that wizard of shaftcraft, eventually took
pity and fixed the problem. If I were a nautical man, no doubt,
I could tell you what he did. I'm not, thank God. If I
were Bosun McSalty, I daresay I could describe how we jibed with our
futtock gan'sls clewed up to the orlop bitts, and weathered her, d'ye
see, with a lee helm and all plain sail in the bilges, burn me buttocks. As it was, when some more sail got strung out, the bleedin' boat got
a lot easier to steer.
But now it is time to let you see the
true nature of sailing with my fiend (I mean, friend), Jerry:
You
must sail a grueling course, starting right near the launch ramp and
ending, as many as two hours later, right near the launch ramp. Along the way, you must battle not only waves the size of throw pillows,
but also the occasional other sailboat, some of them piloted by people
as naked as jaybirds. Tragically, a lot of these people turn
out to be, upon examination with binoculars, Men.
Braving the
abyssal deeps that sometimes reach more than four feet, I go to Sea
with my Boon Companion Jerry, his beautiful wife Fleek, and the Fabled
PC (my Scottish Spouse). The boat is unnamed (or the name changes)
because Jerry refuses to put extra money into it for frivolous items,
such as lettering, water jug, working outboard, flaregun, or sweeps
for the galley slaves kept freeze-dried in a small plastic baggy under
the "sleeps four--honest!" miniature bed.
But the vessel has
the two qualities that PC and I consider absolutely essential in our
sailing craft:
1. She has beer on board.
2. She belongs to somebody else.
There are times when Jerry takes
his sailing very seriously. He does not have his first Pina
Colada until nearly 90 seconds after we start. You have to understand
discipline, at Sea. To help you understand, I'll reprint the
Ship's Log here:
0900 We check our equipment. "I've got your binoculars," Captain Jerry says, "so we can see the
nudies."
0903 We approach a lane through the
thousands of lobster buoys. This lane is currently being utilized
by two "K" class boats. (Jerry has never explained to me why
he always classifies sailboats as "K" class). We maneuver toward
the lane while disdainfully ignoring the screams from the other boats
about rights-of-way, and other trivial nautical esoterica. Jerry
correctly refuses to be baited when the captain of one of the larger
boats shouts, "I used to cry because I had no shoes... until I met
a man who had no class!"
0912 We pull into the 19-foot wide "deep channel". The K boats come
bearing down on us. We have or Tuna Coladas in hand, but we
know that we're in for the long haul... we deflty switch to beer. Jerry has opted for liquified bison's waste gases (Budweiser), and
I'm drinking Beck's.
0918 We start falling
behind the other boats. Jerry says this is because he has a
smaller jib than the other boats. Jerry has serious jib
envy. We tell him size is not everything. He has another
beer, morosely.
0926 The following nautical
conversation takes place between Fleek and Captain Jerry:
Fleek: Everybody else is going that way.
Jerry: Yes, I know.
Fleek: Why are we going this way?
Jerry: (nothing)
0950 We have our first
[nearly] confirmed sighting of a semi-naked woman. It turns
out to be a large inflated plastic banana trailing from a K-boat.
0951 Fleek and PC, who are clearly starting
to feel the strain of the long voyage, go downstairs (is that the
term?) to take naps. Jerry and I, being Men. remain on deck,
drinking beer, and watching boats with bigger jibs pass us by
with stately roarings and gushings.
1005 At a crucial moment, I start pulling on the wrong rope, as Jerry calmly
keeps pointingwith wild jabbing motions to something out of sight
that I'm supposed to do something with; all the time his voice
is rising higher in a panicky coolness. It seems I have caused the jib to "furl", which means that it becomes even tinier than
it already is. The ship is saved by a convenient utter dead
calm which settles down over the boat for two hundred feet in every
direction. We have a beer.
1022 Fleek
comes back upstairs (?)looks around for a moment, and the following
nautical conversation takes place:
Fleek: What I wonder is, how come there are never
any other boats behind us?
Jerry: (total silence)
Fleek: I mean, how come all those other boats are in front of
us?
Jerry: (total silence)
1030 We are exhausted,
and heading for home. We have been on the water all day (well,
an hour and a half) and have seen zero naked people of any sex whatsoever. We're almost out of beer. The Sea can be a harsh and unforgiving
body of water, all right. We cannot believe that Columbus sailed
all the way across the entire ocean hundreds of years before the discovery
of aluminum cans. Of course, he had a much bigger jib.
1036 Our boat rams the dock exactly one stall down from where Jerry
had said he was headed. Jerry grunts in immense satisfaction
for the result of his navigation, and leaps out with ropes tied to
each end of the craft.
1037 We pull Jerry
from the water. One rope has snagged a cleat. We have
a beer.
1038 The wind begins to blow surely
and steadily -- exactly paralleling the shore. Jerry begins
chuntering.
1038.5Jerry speaks:
"Who wants to go sailing?"
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