We were sailing due south along a
line of longitude - forget which one right now but it's not important -- and guess who we ran into? Cruisingdad.
Actually, we saw a large plume of smoke on the horizon and being a curious lot, and being out of beer, we decided to head toward it. DavidPM was using some sort of a
compass that you hold up to your eye. He noticed that the bearing was changing slightly over time. So we plotted a course to intercept. (A few hours before, CapitalistNYC covered the bearing
compass with pencil lead, so poor David had a ring around his eye the rest of the day. A good practival joke, I wish you could have seen it.)
QuickMick had me convinced it was an old fashioned whaler that was rendering some blubber. Then we thought it was a small island with a bonfire. In fact it was a sailboat, quite a bit bigger than our own. Closer still and we could make out a bar-b-que on the afterdeck.
As someone famous probably said about bar-b-ques, "where there's smoke, there's beer" so we trimmed the sails to catch him as fast as we could. I think if he noticed us that he would have sailed away, but he was so intent on brushing something onto a big juicy steak that we surprised him with our hail. He almost dropped his martini too -- olives and all. Man that guy likes to travel in style.
So we formed-up a nice raiding party and grappled onto his boat then climbed aboard. The woman all bee-lined for his shower while the men bee-lined for his bar. Such a nice guy, he didn't mind that we drank all his rum. He kept trying to convince us to all go swimming at the same time - something about taking a group picture -- but when Caleb noticed that he didn't have the swim
ladder down we all got suspicious.
We took turns telling CD all the jokes we knew, until he was laughing hysterically. This wasn't easy since all our material comes from sailing forums and CD had heard them all before. Then we entertained him with skits, cherades and our own version of American Idol. "Catamaran Idol" we called it. (St Anna won with a stunning rendition of "I've got to be me".) Smack tried to sing "Turn Me Loose" again but we said that we'd seen it already.
We sang and drank and had a great time. There was never a mess because we threw all the empty bottles forward.
CapitalistNYC put pencil lead on CDs
binoculars, camera and anything else he could think of. I stopped him when he was putting crazy glue on the head
pump handle. At least if he was stuck there he could relieve himself, but CD has helped me in the past and I didn't want him to have to sit the rest of the trip out.
The party went on for a day and a half. In the end we left a hungover CD with a very messy boat, half-drained water tanks, most of his food in disarray if not eaten, much of his liquor gone, and his bow was noticably lower in the water. A very successful raid. And I'll never forget how fast he is at raising sails and getting underway. It took him less than 30 seconds from waving goodbye to reaching upwind at full speed. Those boats can really move.
Comparing notes later, we found that each of us had "accidently" left with a couple bottles in each pocket. I think when we saw his stock of about a thousand bottles, we figured he wouldn't mind. Besides, we'll pay him back next time he's in town, right?
Thanks CD, that was a good time. You really know how to party.
By the way, I think I'm wearing your boat shoes, so you can stop looking for them.
Regards,
Brad
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