A Cold Look at Living Aboard - Boating Writers International

On Watch |
A Cold
Look at
Living
Aboard
A move to the north brings
back Old Man Winter’s
demons of seasons past.
F
or the last 30 years of
ocean cruising, we’ve headquartered out of the tropics. The reason for this is
simple: We suffered greatly
while living aboard in Boston for three winters as we put the
finishing touches on our self-built, 36foot ketch, Carlotta. During that time,
we endured not only living in our
messy workplace but also the scourge
of empty pockets. Poverty, salt water,
sawdust, and thin clothes are never a
good combination. Luckily, we were
young. So when we finally managed to
make our escape to the blissful Caribbean, we vowed, “Never again!”
We’ve kept that promise, up until now. This winter, we’ll live aboard
in Finike, Turkey, which is located at
36 degrees north. Why?
Our first grandchild. We’re
Although a
dedicated tropics
aquiver with the possibilidweller,
has
ties of sharing, teaching,
definitely had his
and learning. But to be honWith my wife, Carolyn,
brushes with Old
est, I’m a tad leery of coldat my side, I can do alMan Winter.
weather living on a boat
most anything.
without insulation.
The particular winter
We’re used to seeing palm trees out of morning I keep thinking about with
the portholes, not snow-capped moun- apprehension happened in the midtains. Will I enjoy snow skiing as much dle of the 1970s. That summer, we’d
as waterskiing? Snowboarding versus moved aboard our partially completed
surfboarding? Only time will tell. Yes, hull, and we were now waking up on
we’ll report back in the spring—if we the coldest day of the coldest year in
haven’t expired from hypothermia.
four decades, according to The Boston
One thing I do know for certain: Globe. We’d been frozen in 18 inches of
14 ice for over a month by this point. The
outside temperature had been below
freezing for 48 days and far below zero
for four. We had to remember to fill the
kettle with water before we went to bed
(when our Shipmate stove was glowing
cherry red) because in the morning
our water tanks would be frozen, so
our galley-sink pump wouldn’t work.
At 0630 our alarm clock sounded,
and I was forced to snake a hand momentarily out of our sleeping bag to
On Watch |
silence it. “Time to rise and shine,” I
whispered to Carolyn as I nibbled a
delicious shoulder.
Carolyn has many sterling attributes,
but being a morning person isn’t one
of them. “No way!” she grunted and
started to turn over in mock refusal.
Only she couldn’t turn over. At first,
this lack of mobility puzzled her.
” she started to ask, then sighed in
frustration. “Damn it!”
Her dark Italian hair was long, per
the peace-and-love style of the day.
Unfortunately, a large part of her lovely mane had somehow contacted the
damp hull during the night. She was
follicly frozen to the boat.
“Help!” she said plaintively. At first
I attempted to gently yank her dark
strands away without applying any
pressure to her scalp. This was neither
easy nor successful. We discussed cutting her hair with scissors, but both
of us quickly came to the conclusion
that her crown of glory would be misshapen for months if we did so.
“We’ll have to unfreeze it,” she said,
a bit panicky.
I smiled, fluttered my eyebrows seductively, and said, “The slowest method might be the best.”
She rolled her eyes and wearily,
though gingerly, shook her head. “Not
now,
And besides, we’ll be late for
work. Heat up some water, Sir Galahad.
And fire up the Shipmate while you’re at
it. This damsel is officially in distress.”
Now, you’d think that unfreezing
your wife with boiling water would be
easy as pie. It’s not. The whole side of
the hull was frozen, and the
Carolyn proves
water stopped boiling withthat winter—like
in nanoseconds of contact.
the other aspects
Except for a few teaspoons
of cruising aboard
that I splashed on her diWild Card—is
rectly. That water was still
Crystal Cove Marina in
nothing but a
state of mind.
scalding hot.
Winthrop,
Massachu“Stop! Stop!” she screamed.
setts, which is located
“Being frozen to the side of our new just nor’east of Boston. Everything
home is bad enough. I don’t need to be was frozen in thick ice that was under
scalded to death to see the irony!”
great pressure. Alas, there are nine-foot
“Touchy this morning, are we?”
tides in this area. As a result, our vessel,
There was a moment of silence, then our dock, and every single thing in the
a horrible crack! as our whole world harbor would periodically get temfell a couple of long, painful inches. porarily hung up as the tide dropped.
It did this, for six-hour periods, with Soon, hundreds of thousands of tons
great regularity. We tried all winter to of ice would be suspended in the air,
get used to it, but we never managed first by the barest amount, but eventuthe feat. It was unnerving.
ally by a quarter of an inch or more. To
What had just happened was this: relieve the spiking pressure of all those
We were tied to a floating dock at the tons, something had to give. Thus, the
16 ice cracked. Everything fell. It sounded
like a muffled cannon shot.
Each time it happened, I’d consciously check myself to make sure I
hadn’t peed or vomited. Then I’d look
as unconcerned and carefree as I could
manage to reassure Carolyn.
Carolyn wasn’t reassured, though,
especially since the wooden Trumpy
poweryacht just ahead of us had been
crushed by the ice and was now severely listing to port. Even our floating
dock (made with twin 10- by 12-inch
Douglas fir beams) had been cleaved
into two pieces by a relatively minor
split in the floes.
On Watch |
I was confident my vessel was strong enough, but I also realized that I now had no choice but to “keep the faith,” as we used
to say in those heady times. It was impossible to leave the harbor. I’d watched one frantic lobsterman attempt to cut his vessel
a way out with a chainsaw; a truly bizarre, Herculean project
that ended in total failure. I’d picked Crystal Cove Marina because it almost never froze, and now we were living the almost
part. For the record, I’d considered buying a bubbler system but
had been assured there was no need. “Don’t be paranoid,” was
how one harbor resident put it.
The falling tide was the most dramatic and toughest trial to deal with mentally. But the rising tide was a trickster,
too, only its prank was a silent one. There were hundreds
of solitary pilings holding all the floating docks in place. At
dead low water, the tide would slow long enough in these extremely frigid temps to freeze-grip the heavy wooden poles,
then gently lift them skyward as it began to rise. But once
the tide began to fall, the poles would now be in slightly different places, so they couldn’t just magically drop back into
their precise hole. So the pilings started to tower up and fall
over in exaggerated slow motion, the truest expression of the
phrase “freeze frame” that I’d ever seen.
At eight critical locations, there were three pilings jointed
together at the tip in a tripod shape. At first, I’d thought these
might hold. I was wrong. They started timbering down in an
awkward, ultraslow manner, too.
The marina was self-destructing before our very eyes. Our boat
was brand-new. Every penny we had was in it. We didn’t have
insurance. What would happen when the ice broke up? Would
everything be swept away? Ground to pieces? Cut to ribbons?
Yeah, you could call it stressful.
I was lost in these reveries when Carolyn dragged me back to
reality by waving. “Hey, remember me?” she said. “The girl you
keep fresh frozen?”
I redoubled my hot-water efforts to free her frozen mane. By
the time we had her unglued from the ice, the only few spots on
her skin that weren’t wet and frostbitten were scalded.
She didn’t look happy.
“No time for breakfast,” she snapped as she butt wiggled into
her faded jeans. “Let’s go, go, go,” she said hastily. “It’s not fair to
my co-workers if I’m late.”
The only problem was that we couldn’t go. The idiot who
built the companionway slide (that would be me) had carefully
crafted it to keep out water by making its tolerances precise and
small. Last night, when we had the Shipmate coal stove roaring, the snow on the cabin top had partially melted and then
refrozen. Now our sliding hatch wouldn’t.
“We’re stuck,” I said. “The hatch won’t open. Sorry.”
Carolyn glared at me. “OK,
” she said. “That’s cool. I dig
it. I can’t get out of bed, because I’m frozen to it. I can’t shower
because I’d instantly die and become a Popsicle. There’s coal
dust on my skin, and everyone keeps asking me if I smell fire.
I can’t even have a cup of tea because we’ve used all the water
in the kettle unthawing my hair, except for the bit we used to
scald me. And now we can’t leave our floating igloo because
our well-intentioned-but-admittedly-dumb igloo builder didn’t
factor in some basic igloo-construction data. Am I getting it
about right?”
“I see no reason to accentuate the negative,” I said without
conviction. “But yeah, you’re factually spot on.”
18 “The technical name for this is ‘pleasure boating,’ isn’t it?” she
asked. “What sort of a sicko named it that? The same guy who
made up ‘life insurance’? The same dude who came up with the
good old oxymoron ‘military intelligence’?”
There are times to say nothing. This was one. She glared. I
grinned and attempted to warm my damp hands by blowing
on them.
“Perhaps we can escape through the forward hatch,” I said,
logically. “If I can jiggle the sheets of plywood on deck off and
cut the lines holding the tarp.”
This we managed to do, but it was a multistep process and
took us quite a while. Worse, I severely damaged our wooden
hatch and its mahogany carlin in the process.
We both noticed. Neither of us stated what was obvious, that
the whole idea behind living aboard in the winter was to save
money to improve the boat, not destroy it while so doing.
Were we getting ahead or falling behind financially? Mentally? Marriage-wise? Just the hatch would take days and dollars to repair. There was a thin line between clever economy and
complete idiocy. I’d evidently lost sight of it.
I must have looked sad. Carolyn’s eyes squinted as she looked
at me.
“Come on,” I said as I sprinted up the steep ramp onto the
high wharf. “I’m parked close to the alley, and you know how
great our car heater works!”
I’d paid the manager of Marine Hardware and Supply, Ross
Cavalrie, $24 for a 1965 Chevy station wagon, and it had a heater that could, as we’d say back then, melt Nixon’s heart.
But when we got to it, there was a slight problem with the car.
It was exactly where I’d parked it, and it was completely undamaged. I’m sure it would’ve cranked up the moment I turned the
key. But it was, alas, completely buried under a mountain of
plowed snow. Winthrop had declared an official snow emergency, and this allowed the plow drivers to act in the best interests of
the majority by knowingly plowing in cars.
It would take a week to shovel our vehicle out of the sudden,
unexpected glacier that enveloped it.
“&*#@!” I yelled and kicked the snow mountain with my
boot. Until now, I’d been OK with our circumstances. But this
was the last straw. How much could a man take? Why did I
always make life so difficult for everyone? We were just trying
to go to work to earn the money to finish the boat. “&*#@!” I
screamed again, fuming and frustrated.
Carolyn slid silently up beside me, put her arm in mine, and
said brightly, “Come on,
It’s only six blocks to the bus stop.
We can make it. Now, tell me about Tahiti.”
“Tahiti?” I said, confused, as she turned me, and we pushed
on down the snowy road toward the distant transportation.
“Yeah,” she said. “Or Moorea. It doesn’t matter. Even South
Florida will do!”
“Well, it’s warm in Tahiti,” I said, counting my lucky marital stars and grinning widely as we strolled. “And since there’s
fish in the sea and fruit on the trees, you don’t have to have a
shore job. Time isn’t much of a factor, either, since there’s no
card to punch. Nobody’s in a rush. Polynesians are friendly.
Tahitians, in particular, are very loving and very sensuous
people, and they.…”
and Carolyn report that they’re once again sharing the
same sleeping bag aboard their present boat, Wild Card.
19
On Watch |
’s Muse
Wild Card’s salt-stained
inkslinger examines his
many influences.
H
appy, sane, welladjusted people pick
their
professions.
Artists, on the other
hand, are chosen by
theirs. I was a young
lad walking beside my giant father,
and taking three steps for his every
one, when my profession tapped me. I
remember it clearly. I was holding on
to his massive hand with my tiny one;
holding on to just his thumb, actually,
which felt as big as a tree trunk in my
tiny palm. We were standing in front
of a small grocery shop just outside
the shipyard where our family schooner was hauled. The shopkeeper was
talking about some hero who’d just
climbed a tall mountain. “That must
be the hardest thing in the world to
do,” said the merchant.
“No,” said my father, who was at the
time struggling with an article he was
writing for Yachting. “Writing a simple
declarative sentence is the hardest
thing in the world to do.”
18 From that moment on, there was
never any doubt in my mind what I
wanted to do: sail the ocean blue. With
a loving wife on my lap. And a tiller in
one hand. And a pen in the other.
My sisters, Carole Borges and Gale
Whitbeck, taught me to read aboard
the schooner Elizabeth. “It says ‘Oink,’”
Gale would recite from the dog-eared
Dick-and-Jane Calvert textbook. Carole would chime from memory, “Is it
a cow?”
“No, no!” I’d cry in delight, rapidly
swiveling my little-boy hips with the
pure physical pleasure of it. “A cow
goes ‘Moooo!’”
“Is it a rooster?” asked Gale.
“No, no!” I’d shout with glee. “That’s
a cock-a-doodle-do! It’s a pig, silly sisters. A big, fat pig!”
“Shhh!” they’d shush me. “Mother’s
writing in the forecabin!”
And she was always writing each
morning; editing, revising, crossing
out, throwing away, humming with
glee, organizing her photographs,
struggling with captions, swearing
under her breath, and occasionally
just collapsing on her typewriter and
crying forlornly. Mother’s book, actually a huge, twine-tied manuscript
of our 1950s Mississippi trip aboard
Elizabeth, was like a sixth
crewmember.
I knew early that it took
tears to birth a story.
Pensacola was a U.S.
Navy town, filled with eager sailors. My job was to
be my sisters’ chaperone.
But I made it quickly apparent to the sailors that I
could be bribed—with an
expensive fountain pen. I
soon had dozens of them;
Parkers, Crosses, and Watermans. I carried them in
rubber-banded bundles
inside a ditty bag. And I
watched my wonderfully
wicked sisters and their
“friends” like a silent, unblinking camera.
When you call a writer a
voyeur, it’s a compliment.
I must’ve been around 7
years old when we lived in Carrabelle,
a small fishing village on the Florida
Panhandle. I didn’t know it, but we
were dead broke. Because of this,
these were the best years of my youth.
My father, our mate Joey, and I spent
all our time together hunting and
gathering along the shore. We netted
mullet, trapped crabs, and caught fish
all day, then gigged flounders (while
wading with a bright-white hissing
lantern) all night.
I’d play with my pens, my special
linen stationery, and my exotic inks
from India on the foredeck of Elizabeth, just like girls would play with
dolls and other boys would play with
guns. (I didn’t realize it then, but my
pens were my guns.)
Poverty is tribal. The rich can afford isolation. The poor have to band
together to survive. Each evening, the
reeking, smiling, toothless, shiftless
commercial fishermen would gather
around our galley table, and the sea
stories would begin. Each would take
his turn. I heard tales of weathering
60-foot waves off Campeche, of boats
rolled while shooting the bar in Belize,
of innocents tossed into a Cuban jail
just for having some fun.
They had fish and we needed food,
On Watch |
so my mother was only too happy to cook; they were just as
happy to sit. Carole would chop the onions for the salad. Gale
would try to rinse the fish stink off the hold ice that we’d use for
our weak iced tea.
Later, the ladies would retire forward. I got to stay up if I didn’t
make a sound. Sacks of Bugler and Bull Durham would come
out, and the men would roll their smokes. A pint of whiskey in a
paper bag would magically appear and begin to circumnavigate
the table. Each man would take his pull directly from the bottle,
then smack his lips loudly in appreciation. The stories would
begin anew: of whores, hurricanes, and the utter capriciousness
of death. And of how ashore, the bastards with the briefcases
would rob you faster than you could say, “Where’s my change?”
The cabin would get so quiet. The men were like gunslingers,
shooting with their sea yarns for the conversational spotlight.
At this level of society, you don’t have much to be proud of; a
reputation for a silver tongue puts food on your plate and whiskey on your tongue.
“Did I ever tell you about the time we brought Cap’n Mackey
back on ice aboard the Lucky Strike?” Barefoot Benny would
ask. We’d heard it a dozen times, but were just as eager to hear it
again, so we said nothing.
“Well, the Lucky Strike was anything but,” Benny would say,
and we’d all lean into to him to catch the full flavor of his velvet words. “She had more leaks than a sieve, and the only thing
keeping her together were the roaches holding hands! Yes, sirree! All the crew of that accursed boat could afford to wear was
a frown. That’s right! Even Mackey himself couldn’t afford to
pay attention. Which is why they hit Two Fathom rock off Hard
Chance. It was just after midnight, peel’n the green, and the barometer had already dropped down into the bilge.”
I marveled at how Barefoot Benny worked the crowd. He
could slow or speed them up; he could make them laugh or
cry at will. I was in awe. I wanted to tell stories like that so bad
I could cry.
It was around this time that I discovered a man who is, in
my humble opinion, one of the most important literary stars
in America, a true shaper of our culture: Edward Stratemeyer,
the mastermind behind the production of the Hardy Boys,
the Rover Boys, the Nancy Drew, and the Tom Swift series of
books. I devoured all of these. Then one day, a horrible thing
happened. It was like I was listening to a symphony and some
clumsy ox bumped the record player, and the needle scratched
and skipped.
I went to school for the first time at the age of 10, a copy of
Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer (with the dirty parts underlined
in crayon) in the back of my sailing shorts. The first few hours
of my educational career were spent listening to my father ferociously argue with the principal of the Mary White grammar
school in St. Pete. We were between a rock and a hard place; a
truant officer had forced me into school, but the school wouldn’t
accept me because we didn’t pay taxes or have a car registered
in the state of Florida. So my all-important first impression was
of being forced into doing something I didn’t want to do—in a
place that didn’t want to have me do it.
In the ensuing five years of the formal education I was
forced to endure ashore, I fell in love with two very important
people: Mark Twain and John Steinbeck. I loved Mark Twain
from the first sentence. He, too, was a waterman outlaw interested in storytelling, boats, adventure, and Becky Thatcher.
Me, too! And John Steinbeck wrote about my peeps, the very
20 On Watch | Cap’n Fatty Goodlander
same wonderful, interesting, endearing
misfits who passed out each evening in
Elizabeth’s cockpit!
I carried a notebook and three pens
at all times. Everything that happened
to me, I wrote down. Even as I was beaten into unconsciousness on the mean
streets of Chicago, I carefully noted the
words of my tormentors: “Don’t kick that
dude—stomp on that dude!” was the last
bit of pithy dialogue I remember before
waking up in the emergency room.
At 15, I purchased Corina. At 16, my
wife, Carolyn, came aboard to sew up
some curtains, and she’s been sewing
happiness into my life ever since. We
sailed away at 18, in 1970, and we’ve never looked back.
I was still a teenager when I discovered Larry King, a Jewish comedian
who wrote a delightful series of humor
books that tried to be funny in every
sentence. He got paid in laughs. Interesting. Plus, he could say things with
humor that he wouldn’t be allowed
to otherwise. I started reading Dick
Bradley in Motor Boating & Sailing. He
was a riot. And he could laugh at himself as much as at others. Cap’n Percy
in National Fisherman often cracked
me up, too. There was Joshua Slocum.
My favorite cruising book of all time
is Cruise of the Diablesse by Frederick
A. Fenger. I enjoyed Sir Francis Chichester, Harry Pidgeon, Bill Robinson,
Voss, the Pardeys, Robin Knox-Johnston, and Bernard Moitessier.
Though school had almost convinced
me that I was an idiot, a wonderful, magical thing happened to redirect me to The
Literary Path. After a few years of cruising in the Caribbean, we leisurely drove
up the U.S. East Coast, and a scene was
repeated almost exactly three times: An
old friend would be delighted to see us;
he’d reach under his chair and grab a
shoebox (pillow case, gym bag) full of
my rubber-banded and indexed letters
(which he’d obviously read many times);
he’d call his best friend over; his best
friend (who’d never met me) would love
me, too. Perhaps some of my sentences
weren’t so bad after all?
Thousands of sea miles ensued, and
Carolyn and I were enthralled by thewritings of the young Harry Crews, early
Stephen King, and Charles Bukowski.
And Hunter S. Thompson, Elmore Leonard, and James Lee Burke.
Eventually, I began writing, sparingly
at first. Then soon I was writing four
hours a day, five days a week, when not
at sea. I began to send out my articles.
“Homing pigeons” my wife called them,
because they always came straight back
home. Then one day, a thin envelope arrived, too thin to contain the original
manuscript. I stared at it for a long, long
while. Then I made a jerky move to open
it, and stopped. I stared at it some more,
then finally opened it. Forty dollars. I
snapped it closed quick, as if the text
might escape. I blinked. I took a deep
breath. I shivered. I made sure no one
was watching. Then all those years of
frustration came gushing out of me, like
a broken dam. I cried.
and Carolyn
are dividing
time between Wild Card in Turkey and their new
granddaughter, Sokú, in Amsterdam. Their new book,
will be published in early 2011.
22 On Watch |
What Would Miss
Manners Say?
When it comes to quayside
diplomacy, the Cap’n has a
way of making a splash.
I
must admit that before I became a confirmed Med Head, I
was intimidated by going stern
to along the waterfront of Monte Carlo, Porto Fino, or the yacht
club in Sardinia. I figured that
all those yachty-snotty, blue-blazer
types aboard their megayachts would
openly laugh at me. Now I’m used to
it—being openly laughed at, I mean.
There’s nothing quite as humbling
as attempting to moor stern to before a jeering crowd of Euro-sado
sailors. The more they’d shout out
their usual advice—“Sell her, you
farmer!” and “You’re hopeless, mate!”
and “At least take your national flag
down!”—the more nervous I’d get.
But not any more. Now, I’m Zen
calm. I’ve finally come to peace with
12 the entire Euro stern-to scene.
the flow. The first thing I do, even beFirst off, Europeans aren’t poor. They fore getting out the fenders, is distribcould provide docks, slips, and berths ute neat piles of my Blue Card insuras all other sane, rational regions on ance forms (prevented from blowing
Earth do. But they do not. Obviously, away by autographed copies of my
they have their sick little reasons. The latest cruising book) around my cabin
sad, gelcoat-bruising fact is that these top for the convenience of the crews
Euro-rabble actually prefer the nightly who’ll soon be gathering aboard for
bedlam that docking stern to virtually cocktails and legal contact info. Yes, liguarantees in a crowded, well-used ability insurance is mandatory here—
harbor. They delight in the sensuous no bloody wonder!
sounds of torn fiberglass,
In addition, I flip on
dented steel, gouged aluthe cockpit speakers and
Headed ashore,
minum, and scraped wood.
punch up our docking
Carolyn
shows
It turns them on. It’s cheap
soundtrack, which conthat tying stern
entertainment for their acsists of loud crowd noisto on Wild Card
tion-starved masses. Where
es from a heavyweight
requires a leap
else do you have a chance
prize fight overlaid with
of faith in more
of seeing a London C.E.O.
the sound of car crashes,
ways than one.
aboard his £20-million,
building demolitions, and
Guernsey-registered
hymajor earthquakes. It’s imperyacht burst into tears of frustration portant to have the correct ambiance
while screaming cruel obscenities at while tying stern to. I find that the
his dazed and confused trophy wife of mood music helps everyone get in the
the moment? Only in the “ultrasophis- proper mood.
ticated” Mediterranean.
Next, I sail down the line just off the
So I’ve gradually learned to go with bows of the Med-moored yachts, feint-
On Watch |
ing a dive or two into several of the available holes. This draws out all the bow intimidators, the big guys with big necks, big
muscles, and small I.Q.s who try to stare
you away while flexing their pecs and
jamming walkie-talkies up to their ears.
If there’s any yacht foolish enough to
be using a nylon rode instead of chain,
I slide over the cordage to jauntily mark
it with Wild Card’s distinctive
When tying up
blue anti-fouling. If I’m feeling
stern to doesn’t
particularly chipper, I run over
go well—well,
the springy rode hard enough to
sel, an Endurance 35 ketch,
there are anthwang! its startled skipper on
only backed to starboard.
chor chains to
deck for the upcoming show.
But as limiting as that was,
be sorted out.
Of course, you can’t stern to
at least its prop walk was
correctly in the European Union
predictable. Wild Card, my
without the proper gear. For instance, you S&S-designed Hughes, acts sort of like a
need double the amount of scope you’d Ouija board when put in reverse gear: It’s
use in the States. Why? Because if you foul as if it’s following perverse, destructive
one or two anchors, it can get personal. directions from the Other Side. I have no
But if you foul a dozen or so, well, it’s like a idea which way it’ll go. None. Maybe it’s
party at the United Nations.
influenced by lunar cycles or sunspots or
I have a confession to make: My boat something? All I know is, putting my vesdoesn’t reverse worth a darn. It does sel into reverse creates instant chaos. Picmany things well, but all of them are in ture a slo-mo video of a bucking bronco
a forward direction. Of course, many run backward, and that’s how my vessel
boats don’t back well. My previous ves- behaves. It immediately twists violently
14 and arcs into the nearest, most recently
painted vessel worth more than $5 million.
Yes, I have a throttle. Yes, I can control
my engine’s thrust. But the more I use
it, the more I have to use it. Just when I
avoid one collision, I’ve set up another
two. And, of course, each time I start and
stop for a moment, I’m rudderless. This
allows the wind to take us, and the wind
invariably takes us somewhere uglier
than the awful place we were just in.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The
first goal is to attract a crowd of waterfront loungers. If you’re going to do
thousands of dollars of damage to man-
kind’s most expensive toys, you may as
well have an audience.
Part of the trick, naturally, is to appear
cool, calm, and collected as the Medmooring madness goes down.
I have a Very Loud Power Hailer to
ensure that everyone in the harbor (and
in the next one, for that matter) can hear
how calm I am.
“Anchor down, babe,” I say in a calm
and professional voice while smiling
evilly as the massive sound waves blow
my wife forward into the bow rail and
almost tear off her bikini. The only drawback (or advantage, depending on your
viewpoint) to using this V.L.P.H. is that
it’s so loud that I can’t hear any foredeck
feedback from my wife. But that usually
doesn’t matter. She eventually gets her
point across with violent vertical jabs of
her middle fingers or by kissing her open
palm and patting her derrière.
“Reversing,” I calmly announce, so she
can begin to pay out scope.
Two is the ideal number of crew while
Med mooring, for it makes the lines of
blame much clearer. Each person is absolutely sure why the carefully orchestrated
maneuver went so horribly wrong: the
other crewmember.
I also like to encourage audience participation, so I don’t deploy my fenders
until the entire crowd of dock gawkers
are screaming at the top of their lungs,
“Fenders, you fool!”
This both creates a festive mood and
allows me to dash forward and leave the
helm to tend itself.
My fenders are all set to go, of course,
but I pump them up with far too much
air, and so as I dash around flipping them
over the lifelines, they bounce right back
aboard. I can stretch out this skit for as
long as I need to.
Of course, we’re still in reverse.
The trick at this point, as perfected by
the French, is simply to pretend not to
notice the severity of your plight. Instead
of dashing for a boat hook to fend off, I
just run a hand through what’s left of my
hair while nonchalantly straightening
my ascot. Wearing an ascot while Med
mooring is, in the local lingo, de rigueur.
Do you see the beauty of this? Since I
left the helm, I can’t be held responsible!
Of course, clever fox that I am, I’m se-
cretly peeking at the large, fat-transomed
sloop on which Wild Card is now bearing down. At the last second, I yell to
the wifey, “Belay the anchor rode! Now!
Quick! Too late! Oh, dear!”
The last bit of this statement, if your
timing is right, is lost in the sounds of
the crash.
Casual observers, glancing momentarily at Wild Card, might think I have
a Monitor windvane on my transom.
Not really. I have a very well-engineered
stainless-steel battering ram with many
sharp protrusions.
In this particular instance, since first
blood was a dark-blue 57-footer from
Marseille, its crew was attempting to
fend us off with one hand. Most of them
hadn’t had time to put down their Gitanes. I used my best Euro-merica manners: I shook each outstretched hand and
profusely kissed both cheeks.
Needless to say, I didn’t mention any
topside damage to their vessel. Instead,
I just glanced at where we’d impacted
and said breezily, “She used to be painted
white, no?”
Next, I turned and addressed the crowd
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On Watch |
on the dock. Since it was primarily male,
I stated the obvious: “My wife’s fault.”
The wind had caught us by this point
and jammed us down on a large steel vessel from Berlin. It was awash with large,
heavy-set, naked Germans.
Their topsides were pretty high; I could
tell because the sailors were fending off
our spreaders.
I love the Greek attitude. One local fellow attempted to reassure me by shout-
ing out happily, “Don’t worry! We’ll bill
the E.U. for all the damage!”
This didn’t get a rise out of the nearby
Dutch vessel. They tend to be very laidback. Nothing bothers them, unless the
collision knocks over their cockpit bong.
The Italians are similar, You have to hit
them pretty violently before they’ll allow
the spaghetti sauce to get cold.
By this point, Wild Card was close
enough to the quay to throw a stern line.
I estimated the distance at 15 feet, so I selected a pre-dampened 12-footer; gosh,
that was fun soaking the crowd! Eventually, I tired. So I increased the throttle
enough to get within 10 feet of the cement breakwater and tossed both lines to
large groups of eager, young landlubbers.
“Hold her!” I screamed as I suddenly
took Wild Card out of reverse.
The heavy, outstretched chain rode
instantly snatched her forward. Just as I
thought: The lubbers couldn’t let go in
time and were now harbor swimmers.
“Extra points!” I gloated to myself.
I jammed it back in reverse and chased
them up and onto the German boat’s
swim platform.
“Please!” begged our new frantic
French friends on the once-blue sloop.
“Hit us in the same area, si vous plait!”
Oh, we had a grand time tied stern
to. About every half an hour, one of the
boats would drag—just to keep it fun, as
the harbor master put it.
Every departing yacht would lift its anchor off the bottom only a foot or so, then
fish for as many other anchor chains as
they could foul within their allotted departure time. Points were awarded for best
wake, greatest number of vessels damaged,
most creative crew (the Austrians with the
sharpened boat hooks took this one), and
loudest impact. There was even a cumulative Lifetime Achievement award to be
given away at the end of the summer.
At one point, we were towed almost
out of the harbor by a large Russian yacht
whose rather insensitive skipper sniffed,
“Frankly, your vessel was so small and
soft and shabby that I thought it was an
insignificant pool toy left tethered to the
stern by one of the owner’s children!”
Finally, night fell. All the Euro-yachties
went out to dinner, paying meal tabs that
could erase some countries’ national
debt—even before the dessert cart and
brandies arrived.
“I just can’t resist a man younger than
100 years old wearing an ascot,” my wife
said, pulling me belowdecks by mine.
“But the French will see,” I countered,
as I nodded at the open companionway
filled with leering gawkers.
“Voyeurs!” she giggled.
“I wish there were two of you,” I whispered into her ear.
“Ménage à trois!” she grinned.
and Carolyn
, tongues firmly
in cheek, are currently, as they put it, “off their meds
in the Med.”
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