Blown out to Sea, Port San Luis

I'd really rather forget this incident than share it, but it taught/reminded me of several very important considerations.  Retaining self-confidence in a discipline after years of unuse is a dangerous thing, the marine environment is inherently unsafe -- combine the two and you are depending mostly on luck... not a best practice.

Living on a mooring is not easy!  I fell asleep early that night, at about 7:30 PM, didn’t make our usual evening trip to shore for my dogs to do their business.  I woke up about 3AM to a couple of very agitated dogs, so we hopped into the dingy, headed for shore.  The wind was pretty frisky that night. 

We’ve been having an ongoing difficulty with the outboard motor’s external (3 gal) fuel tank, which forces us to rely on the internal (1/3 gal) tank — it doesn’t take us very far. 

With the external tank full and onboard, we ran out of gas. Nothing about either tank lends itself to transferring fuel between them, best case is you spill gas all over the outboard to get 1/4 gal into it. Worst case, the dingy burns to the waterline and you end up in a burn unit.  One spark is all that separates those potential outcomes.

We have performed this awkward, messy, dangerous refueling operation a few times in the daylight, this time it was pitch black. I did have a flashlight but couldn’t hold it, position it or prop it up to make it useful. I wasn’t getting any fuel into the tank, just all over the motor, myself and the dingy. 

I couldn’t say how long these attempts to transfer fuel took, clearly way too long. I have a small anchor in the dingy for precisely such occasions but the dogs were on top of it. Never would I have dreamed how big of a mistake it was, to fail to drop that anchor when it would’ve been effective. When I realized we were in trouble the water was too deep. 

As I looked around I was in denial, surprised that the pier would be so dark. But the depth of the water and the nearby sound of the whistle buoy brought it home, we were way past the end of the pier, beyond the breakwater, in the open ocean not far from the start of the harbor’s marked channel. The wind had blown us more than 1.5 nautical miles. God damn it! In a tiny little inflatable boat, that’s a very long way!

I did have oars but they are not my friends.  I bet we drifted another half a mile fumbling with and cursing at the damn oar locks.  Fuck those things!

So human propulsion engaged, time for navigation: I correctly identified the back side of the breakwater, and the work lights of a barge servicing it. At least I knew where I was.  Visually and audibly I seemed to be advancing at least a little bit, but the whistle buoy was a two-edged sword, it getting louder could indicate I was going the right way up the coast, but it could also indicate I was being swept farther out to sea. 

Aiming for the tip of the breakwater I understood that I had to keep myself between that buoy and the wind, even if I couldn't hold my position by rowing against the weather, tying to the buoy was my last hope, the last guarantee we would be spotted.  If swept past that, with no communications, we were just a speck in the vast sea.

During all of this I saw three boats going out, one of them heading straight for us, I could see its red and green nav lights as I flashed SOS at it.  I guess I should be grateful it turned to avoid hitting us.  It emphasizes the point that out there you are on your own!  "Hey what's a 10' skiff doing in open waters at 4AM, think they might need some help?  Nah, they could probably use a flashlight that doesn't blink, but we have fish to catch."

In retrospect we drifted quite a ways while trying to signal that last boat, how ironic would it have been if my attempts to signal for help had put us past my ability to reach the buoy? 

The approach of dawn brought with it the light we needed, I finally got the little fuel tank filled. The wind was still blowing pretty good so, of course, I was covered in gasoline spray by the time it was full. The bow always gets blown downwind, thus the motor is pointed into the wind with me right behind it.

But it worked!  The motor was running again!  We headed back to shore, getting drenched in sea spray as we motored into the weather that had transported us there.  A 2-3' wind wave had cropped up and any water that splashed up when we hit a wave was driven into us by the wind.  

The dogs were none too pleased with taking water over the bow.  And Daisy just couldn’t understand why I didn’t want her to lick the gasoline off of her little paws -- but to her credit she did figure out what I wanted and she complied. Aside from her couple of attempts to leave the dingy she was a little trooper -- both were!  Their resilience and ability to adapt continues to amaze me. The faith they have in me is profound, but it clearly isn't well deserved.

I didn't check the time at dawn, but it was 7:30 AM when we got to the launch dock.

Several new personal rules were born from this misadventure:

• Always, always drop anchor whenever the engine stops for any reason.
• Always pay close attention to the weather and consider where it will take the boat, if allowed to.
• Never leave in the dingy without mobile phone and/or VHF, nor without a handheld GPS at night.
• Never consider the dogs' comfort above safety. 
• Always correct equipment malfunction, don't depend on work-arounds.
• Don't disregard gasoline safety (even though this writing may seem to do exactly that... if it had played a part I'd probably have no fingers to type this, and I'd be praying for death.)
• NEVER TAKE FOR GRANTED THAT I INTUITIVELY JUST KNOW HOW TO SAFELY DO THIS SHIT, ALWAYS THINK EVERY PASSAGE THROUGH, no matter how short or routine it may seem to be!

Anytime any vessel is untied, lives are literally on the line!  My failure to follow any of these rules could easily have been fatal!  What if I had dropped the fuel tank trying to pour from it?  I might still be missing!  Who would've even noticed, until the 1st when rent was due?  How could they even guess where to look -- not that it would've mattered, we had no fresh water on board.  Eesh what a horrible way to die, baking in the sun, freezing at night, kicking myself for being so careless and stupid for 3-5 days, waiting for dehydration to finish us off... yikes!

Just how lucky it is, that I am still here to write this, is not lost on me in the least!  This activity was insanely risky in multiple ways, I should never have allowed it to happen! Devastation was close at hand, only barely did we cheat it. 

The object lessons are: 

• Stop the boat using any means possible whenever you lose control of its propulsion or steerage -- NEVER try to fix it first, stopping is job #1.
• Don't under-estimate how far the weather can take you, no water is truly protected. 
• Maintain awareness of where you are at all times, don't let yourself become completely distracted.
• A dingy is not a toy, it must be piloted responsibly, no passage is trivial.
• If left to its own devices, nature will have its way.

Cetacean Captivity Is Wrong!

Imagine your family gathering with everyone present, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, siblings and little babies, all together enjoying the love.  A group of terrorist thugs, that call themselves “hunters” comes crashing in, armed with LRAD sound weapons.  The weaponized sound is so loud it hurts everyone’s ears and heads, making it impossible to even think.  The “hunters” use the terrible noise to herd everyone into a small alcove, and they drop a net across the only way out.  One of your relatives panics, runs headlong into the net, trying to escape, and hangs himself in it. The rest look on in terror and cry in despair.

More thugs called “trainers” enter the alcove; they don’t have any weapons but are still very creepy!   They examine and grope each of you without consent, for reasons not immediately clear. After they’ve finished molesting everyone, the “trainers” select you and two of your cousins to be “performers” because you are young and good looking.  You have no say in the matter, it’s a done deal.  Over time you will figure out that they have detained the three of you for life.

With their bounty now in hand (that would be you) the “hunters” then proceed to ruthlessly MURDER nearly ALL of the rest of your family, two or three at a time.  They have pointed steel rods that they shove into the backs of your loved ones’ heads as you listen to them cry and scream their last screams.  Corks are stuffed into the wound tracks to reduce the flow of blood, but even so the alcove runs red. 

The only ones that seem to be spared are the very young, but it’s only momentary as they too are doomed.  The “hunters” have a kill quota and the babies don’t have enough meat on them to be worth butchering, so the “hunters” chase the babies away and abandon them somewhere, leaving them to starve to death or to be eaten by predators.

In reality your murdered family members were the "lucky" ones, you’re going to be held captive for the rest of your life, forced to do the “trainers’” bidding.  You'll always be kept hungry so you're more obedient, forced to perform demeaning "tricks" on command and coerced into "kissing" degenerates that pay for you, like some kind of whore.  Your body is no longer your own, they do to you whatever they please.

You'll be exposed to chemicals that irritate your skin. The food they do provide you with won't have sufficient water to keep you hydrated, so they'll have to force a tube down your throat for that every few days so that you don’t drop dead.  They will inject you with mood-altering drugs, trying to compensate for all the stress they cause.

EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR AS LONG AS YOU LIVE, YOU ARE LONELY, MOURNING YOUR DEAD FAMILY THAT YOU LOVED, IN CAPTIVITY, GROVELING FOR SCRAPS OF FOOD YOU DON'T LIKE, UNTIL FINALLY THE SWEET RELEASE OF DEATH IS YOUR REWARD.

That is EXACTLY how the captive dolphin industry works, no exaggeration, no drama, that is real life for the dolphins, beluga whales and other small cetaceans used, exploited and abused by marine theme parks and other tourist attractions.  Anytime you buy a ticket or attend a show, you are directly supporting this horror.  PLEASE BOYCOTT ANY CORPORATION THAT KEEPS EVEN ONE CAPTIVE CETACEAN, FOR ANY REASON!  

Even the so-called “rescue” organizations that aren’t truly dedicated to returning all of them to the wild, that don’t place them in marine sanctuaries as worst case alternative, and/or those that do put cetaceans on public display, for any length of time, ever – BOYCOTT, BOYCOTT, BOYCOTT!  (The ones that disingenuously pretend to be acting in the best interests of the cetaceans are the worst of the worst.)

Are torture, murder and destruction of families consistent with your values, all for the sake of mere entertainment?  Your actions are what truly define your morals and ethics.  Talk is cheap and words are meaningless when you are willing to overlook the brutality and injustice committed in the course of providing something you effectively support.  Your money and attendance are effectively an endorsement of one of the most heinous ongoing acts in the history of our species.  

Either you boycott 100%, or you cannot consider yourself to be a decent human, it really is that cut and dried, it really is that simple.  There is no middle ground!

The Legend of the Beer Clock

Circa 1985 my dad, my old friend Phil and myself were sitting in a dive bar called The Cabana in Chula Vista, drinking one-liter mugs of ice cold beer.  About ¾ the way through mug #6 dad decided it was time for him to go; I pointed at his not-empty mug and said, “beer clock.” 

Dad introduced us kids to the beer clock at an early age, the basic premise is that the beer clock reads “time to go” when the pitcher or glass is empty, and most importantly, not before.  When I invoked it he laughed, acquiesced to the authority of the beer clock, chugged the rest of his beer and stayed to drink three more liters of beer with us.

I told him that I was carrying on the fine tradition of the beer clock with my kid, who was about five at the time.  Dad wasn’t often given to displays of emotion, but on this occasion I saw him hurriedly brush a tear away, a couple more streamed past… I don’t know why but my eyes started to leak too… he said something funny that included the word fuck, gave me a hug and the moment passed.  But every once in a while I wonder what touched him so deeply, on that drunken night so very long ago…

Many years have come and gone, dad passed away (RIP Old Dude,) my kids are now grown, but despite consuming extreme amounts of alcohol that day, the memory of the moment remains clear as day in my mind.

A side note: I lived 20 miles away from Chula Vista.  We had just drank 9 liters of beer in a sitting, we were well past the legal limit; Phil had driven flawlessly over 19.9 of those 20 miles...  Literally a block from where I lived, Phil punched the accelerator momentarily to spin his rear tires in the gutter we were crossing.  A cop that happened to be there noticed his “exhibition of speed” and red-lighted us as he parked across the street from my apartment.  But of course it didn’t matter, we were fucked up, Phil was arrested for DUI, and I, unable to STFU, had to spend 6 hours in detox. 

(Doesn’t if fucking matter that we live right the fuck here?  As it turned out, no, it did not.  Phil was booked, released and set free to roam the city street hours before I was.  I wasn’t charged with any crime, but the detox people held my driver’s license and I was told I’d be prosecuted for drunk in public if I left early.  Talk about a buzz kill… I was pissed the fuck off, and then some.)

Dandiana and Captain Asshole

I was delivering a sailboat from La Paz to San Diego, circa 1990, they were building the first high-rise hotels in Cabo San Lucas at the time, and there was still an anchorage in the inner harbor (now long gone.) It was fairly crowded that day, all sailboats, enjoying the party atmosphere, when a 75' all stainless steel power boat named Dandiana comes lumbering in on one engine. Fuck!

Several of us hailed them but apparently they weren't monitoring VHF, all trying to tell them it wouldn't swing with us, there wasn't room. The captain was oblivious, dropped his hook and within 5 minutes multiple boats had to fend off the shiny monster. 

We finally convinced the idiot he had to move, as we all shifted fenders to the side nearest him, but now neither engine would start.  This left us to manage the chaos as best we could for an hour and a half, as the tide changed directions, until vessel assist made it over. 

As if on cue a fresh breeze cropped up as they raised anchor, this boat had a mile of freeboard, his exit was anything but graceful.  It did enough damage to one boat to disrupt their plans. 

The engine problem: silicon in the fuel.

So Capt. Asshole, as he came to be called, was stuck in Cabo for 3 days, anchored in the outer harbor,  while repairs were made.  He managed to piss off the whole town just about, in that short time. 

The minute his fuel system was cleaned out, he was late for the open sea. He throttled up before his anchor was all the way on board, snagged hawser lines of two separate moorings, each with a hapless boat attached. Those two boats converged as he tried to power through.

Channel 16 was exploding, as usual he wasn't listening. Someone in a dingy got in front of him (barely moving at this point) and he throttled back but apparently left it in gear. All the displaced and stretched ground tackle pulled him backwards into the lines as they were trying to settle, both props caught them and wrapped up tight!

He had already burned his bridges with the local repair and supply people, so they used their chance to even the score, forced him to pay the ones he had stiffed, plus some exorbitant charges for divers to get him untangled. 

The night of lawlessness on channel 16 was pretty comical, he likely never heard any of it... properly it would've been humbling (but he'd have to give a damn for that to be the case.)

He left the harbor the next day, angry as hell, but with no one but himself to blame.  And as we watched him rumble away, everyone in Cabo was hoping that awful boat would sink in deep water.

Reproductive Numerics (Math meets Sex and fucks it really hard)

Fertility clinics measure semen quality in terms of millions of spermatozoa's per milliliter. Good numbers are around 40-90 million, which means that 1 liter of jiz from a healthy, fertile man contains something on the order of 75 billion sperms. The typical human issue of semen is approximately 2 to 7 milliliters per ejaculation.

For the purpose of this theory we want a conservative male number, so let's say our conservative spudge factory makes it up to a production level of 15 million spermatozoa's per milliliter (15M spz/ml) by age 15, and produces consistently at this level until he's 40 (aka, for 25 years.) Let's further specify that he busts his nuts about 4 times a week, each shot yielding on average 3 ml of fluid.

(25 years * 200 ejaculations per year) * (3 ml * 15,000,000 spermatozoa's) = 225,000,000,000 lifetime sperm production. That's like 28 times the population of the entire earth! And it's much, much lower than real life, a typical male 40 years ago produced 10 times that at least... but for the purposes of this theory, it will be:

Male lifetime gamete production: 225,000,000,000.

Now for our hypothetical female subject, we want a very liberal estimate, so let's say super mom starts bleeding at 10 years of age, and ovulates until she is 60 -- 50 years. For round numbers let's say she produces 100 eggs per year, which would be 8 point something eggs each menstrual period. (In other words, 8 times as much as normal.)

100 eggs per year * 50 years = 5,000. In reality she could only possibly carry a small fraction of those eggs to term... but for the purposes of this theory, it will be:

Female lifetime gamete production: 5,000.

So, wimpy little namby-pamby conservative male, whose low sperm count would be seen as a real problem for a couple trying to have babies, out-produces super-fertile egg-slinging wonder-female, 45 million times over:

Gamete production mismatch factor: 45,000,000

Now, historically and in nature, what happens when a producer of something is effortlessly producing millions of times more of that something than it could ever use? Distribution, of course. Prices drop, and the main duty of that producer becomes getting rid of that something, any and every way it possibly can!

Oops, did we shoot 100 million of them on her belly? Uh oh, did we wipe-up 100 million with a dirty sock? So what, who cares, we'll make another 200 million by tomorrow. It only takes one: we send-up 100 million. For sure, best case, 99,999,999 are sent to die; worst case, they all die, but we make so fucking many of them every damn day, that it just doesn't matter.

The other side of the equation guards her eggs carefully, she has only a very limited number, she can't afford to waste any of them. Compound that with the physical burden of carrying a fetus to term, and the word 'selective' doesn't even begin to describe her mindset! When picking a sperm producer, she feels she has no room for error, she instinctively knows she's got to make each one count. (Ironically most women will tend to make stupid decisions for wrong reasons, but I digress...)

So what conclusions can we draw from these formulae?

We can estimate that females will be 45 million times more selective than males.

The female typically seeks a single male.

The male has no actual limit in mind, logistics and practicality are his only limiting factors.

The male will exercise almost no judgment at all when choosing a receptacle for his seed.

The female will be so selective, she may even change her mind while in the process of receiving an issue, and will play other bullshit games as well, in her confusion and fear that's brought on by her inherently intense selectivity. The level of judgment she will exercise is so extreme that it will all but consume her.

The Struggle Within

There lies this conflict that's forever going on inside me
My Mind routinely has a clear, rational grasp of the situation at hand
While my Heart is always deeply confused, yet very persuasive
My Mind tells my Heart that it's stupid, but my Heart doesn't care
It has these visions, beautiful little dreams
And it would do anything to make just one into reality

When my Heart is on a mission it's in full control
My Mind knows that trying to manage my Heart
is a useless waste of energy once it's on a roll

The only time my Mind truly prevails is when my Heart is broken
but that's such a calamity it's like being king of nothing
So my Mind will always try to fix my Heart when it breaks
even though it knows it will lose command
the moment my Heart is even partially restored

They both need each other but neither will admit
they're too focused on each other's shortcomings to realize
that it takes them both to make me whole
Perhaps because so seldom it is they see me that way
though which is cause, or which is effect, I can never tell

My Mind thinks my Heart is just a reckless vagabond
That never really knows what it wants
Yet would squander everything for which they've worked
in an instant without thinking
in exchange for the mere chance of some shining moment
it can't begin to explain
or flight of fancy it won't even pretend to understand

My Heart thinks my Mind is a stuffed shirt, a kill-joy
That can never let go of the worst case scenario
long enough to imagine the best
That never goes along with gambling everything
for fear of devastation that comes with losing
And that it exists mainly to say, "I told you so..."

For inevitably it comes,
time after time after bloody awful time
My Heart's little Utopian schemes come falling down
Crashing and burning
leaving the ashes and rubble
with which my Mind is left to deal
and my Heart so soon forgets

Poor foolish Heart, for all it extends, if only it knew
Fate is sole master of its destiny
Everything it's ever dared to deem success
has been in fact little more than random chance
It will never see the many times it's been left alone
for the failures that they are
nor reconcile the pain they bring

My Heart will never accept the harsh reality
though my Mind is well aware
For try as it might, as time has passed to tell
my Heart has the power to change nothing
it has moved no one enough to cherish it
least of all, those for whom it will never cease to care


-Mark McGinty

San Diego to Sugarloaf Race

The boat was a DB2, about 10m LOA, German built purely for racing, there was no teak down below, no settee, no cushions or berths, nor even any bulkheads, just a VHF radio, minimal instruments, hooks to hang sail bags and struts that were placed in a way most likely to yield concussions.  It wasn’t even a nominally functional cruising boat, it was made with a single purpose in mind.

The hull was a Kevlar-reinforced composite, sails were Mylar/Kevlar, mast was high-tech carbon fiber, with running backstays and other controls to make it bendy in multiple ways.  It had dual jib halyards and dual luff tracks up the forestay, and the same redundant arrangement for the main.  It had three spinnaker halyards, the third being a spare in case one got lost, stuck or tangled.  Any sail could be changed while underway without taking anything else down first.  And the boom had adjustments we couldn’t even put a name to.  As a whole the rig made it endlessly possible to shape the sails.  The difference between fast and slow was micro-fine.  It was a challenge to sail well, to say the least!

Bob K., the boat’s owner, took the helm and was de facto tactician (although he rather sucked at the latter.)  Bobby R. was the jib trimmer, Joe H. was on foredeck, Steve W. trimmed the main and running backstays, and would’ve been a great tactician if Bob had listened to him more often than not.  I was in the pit, aka the sewer man, the hardest position I ever loved.

The start line was near Ballast Point, instructions were to leave Coronado Del Sur to port and Sugarloaf to port, finish outside of Zuniga -- about 65 nautical miles worth of race course.  It was a popular race, there were a hundred+ boats in the fleet, out for a beautiful day on the water.

We had quite a bit of company rounding South Coronado, about 15 nm into the race when we left it astern, but only a handful of boats were in sight when we rounded Sugarloaf and started the long beat home, against the current.  Around sunset the wind clocked 180 degrees, we hoisted a spinnaker and flew for half an hour or so.  We were really in the groove most of the race, paying no mind to the rest of the fleet.  As the wind backed around towards its predominant direction and died down, we doused the chute and put up the #2 because it held its shape better in light winds and a moderate swell.  Daylight was gone, we were still a long way from home.

This was before the GPS satellite system was deployed, SatNav (precursor to GPS) was probably up but often it took hours for it to plot a fix, so useless for short off-shore races.  We had Loran C on the boat that didn’t even give us geo coordinates, just Loran lines of position.  Seamless electronic maps for civilians were still a long ways off, paper charts were the standard of the day, but we weren’t even using those…  And as usual the fathometer was off, because it “burned too much battery” and because there “weren’t any shoals we needed to worry about.”  (Except for a little one called “North America”.)

Bob the skipper was a senior pilot for American Airlines at his day job, which he somehow figured gave him magical powers of navigation.  He disdainfully rejected doing any ded-reconing. He said he knew which way was home, just sail the damn boat, so we did, for a while.  We were all very familiar with the area, but it’s amazing how perceptions can distort at night, the shoreline becomes indistinct and the lights become a puzzle.  A responsible skipper plots a course and takes bearings from prominent features on land to track and verify his position as he goes.  Old Bob figured all that fussing was a waste of time.

Looking around, 12 hours into the race, we noticed that we were miles ahead of the entire fleet!  The reason we got so lucky was that Bob the skipper was badly disoriented, we were way closer to shore than any sane boaters would be.  This gave us some current advantage and at times better winds, but it put the boat at risk, and placed us on the wrong side of the kelp beds.

Steve had suggested a tack 3-4 miles earlier and the rest of the crew concurred, but Bob the skipper was having none of it, he was certain we were 5+ miles from shore; he was wrong.  Bobby the jib trimmer and I were becoming quite concerned, especially as we started to hear, and then could see breaking surf in the [not enough] distance.

We urgently asked the skipper to tack, he argued.  We demanded that he tack, he was convinced we’d be sailing “180 degrees from the mark” if we tacked.  Bobby the jib man says, “dude, at 100 yards from shore I swim for it!” I tell him to cut the jib free and he does. Main trimmer luffs his sail too, and I tell the skipper, “I’m dropping halyards in 10, 9, 8…”  The skipper flips his lid and starts yelling.  “Tack the god damned boat right the fuck now,” we shouted in unison, over top of him.  Finally he did so. 

Of course we ended up in irons the first try, starting the turn with sails flapping.  It’s such an odd feeling to steer straight for destruction just to get enough momentum to avoid it; a little bit terrifying when you don’t know exactly where that destruction lies; a lot terrifying when you know it is very close! 

It wasn’t long after that we could see reality sinking into Bob’s expression.  There’s no getting around the fact you are indeed in breakers when you have to plough into them.  He didn’t have a lot to say as we watched the fleet tack on their lay line (that we had so massively over-sailed) and parade on past us.

For a sickening minute or two after tacking successfully we weren’t even holding our position in the steeping swells.  We felt the keel kiss the bottom a couple of times as we slid into the trough behind a swell.  We tried to get him to work the surf, bear away as the wave lifted us, then head up as we went down the back side, the skipper balked at every suggestion.  We were trying to save his boat; he was still racing, I guess he was just hell-bent to point the boat at where he perceived the line to be.

Of course we hit kelp about 25 times and each time the skipper argued about going head to, to clear it – I was starting to wonder if he had suffered a stroke or a brain injury along the way.  We were forced to re-assert that if not for us his boat would be hard aground in pounding surf.  We would’ve let him live it down, eventually, but we were not about to let him pretend it didn’t happen.  It may have been a little harsh, but the time for allowing him to call the shots from inside his bag of delusions was over.  He was lucky we didn’t tie him up, gag him and stuff him in a lazarette!  His bad judgment had almost left us hard aground, god damned if he was going to pull his “my boat, my call” bullshit on us not even an hour later! 

We finally cleared the kelp, converged with the fleet somewhere near its middle, and still took 2^nd in our class after corrections.  If Bob had tacked when we first suggested, we would’ve been first over the line by a substantial margin, ahead of boats that had to give us a half a minute a mile.  We might even have set a record and got our pictures in the paper.  Instead we were off playing kelp cutter, .

We got back to the marina a little before 2:00 AM, long day on the water.  As we were putting the boat away we realized that Bob the skipper was actually still pissed at us, he made some off-handed comment about insubordinate crew tending to be replaced.  Bobby the jib man lost his cool, “dude we saved your ass, you’d be waving bye-bye to your boat from the beach!”  He drew a breath to go chapter and verse but I cut him off with,  “I think that’s his way of thanking us, ‘you are replaceable’ actually means, ‘so lucky to have you on board.’”  Bobby stopped long enough to laugh, “in English we say ‘you’re welcome’,”  he said to the skipper, slowly and deliberately, as if he didn’t speak it.

Then we went to Steve’s house and ranted and raved until the sun came up!  If we had bought that beachfront real estate he would surely have considered us responsible for the destruction of his boat, since we luffed the sails – the irony would’ve been mind-blowing!  And not even the positive outcome detracted from his epic idiocy.

The events of that night never came up again while the skipper was present, though we sailed a few more races with him.  He seemed to harbor some resentment and the atmosphere on the boat had changed.  I got involved in a one-design fleet of 22’ pocket cruisers, that was very competitive and a lot of fun.  Bobby the jib trimmer, Steve the main trimmer and Joe the foredeck man found crew positions on bigger boats.  They wanted to move up the PHRF food chain, I wanted to get back to basics and control my destiny.

One by one each of us moved away, we lost track of each other after parting ways… but, in the immortal words of Metallica, the memory remains, like a faded prima donna, yeah!

Addendum: There was one other crew member, who had never raced before, Christine S.  Her job was to make sure the clew of the headsail made it clear around the mast when we tacked or gybed, as it tended to snag without some help.  When we rounded Sugarloaf we switched to a following sea, which changes the motion of the boat substantially.  Chris became more than a little seasick for the rest of the race, but that didn't stop her from doing her job.  Each time we tacked she somehow got up, managed the sail, and then promptly hung over the leeward rail and fed the fish as quietly as she could, before going back to tortured semi-sleep.  No whimpering, no whining, not a single complaint...  As opposed to Bob the skipper, who sniveled like a bitch about something every god damned race!