Captains Uncourageous
There comes a time in a man’s life when he hears the call of the sea. “Hey, YOU!” are the sea’s exact words.
If the man has a brain in his head, he will hang up the phone immediately. That’s what I should have done recently when I was called to sea by my friends Hannah and Paddy, who had rented a sailboat in the Florida Keys. They love to sail. Their dream is to quit their jobs and sail around the world, living a life of carefree adventure until their boat is sunk by an irate whale and they wind up drifting in a tiny raft and fighting over who gets to eat the sun block. At least that’s the way I see it turning out. The only safe way to venture onto the ocean is aboard a cruise ship the size of a rural school district. Even then you’re not safe, because you might become trapped in your cabin due to bodily expansion. Cruise ships carry thousands of tons of high-calorie food, and under maritime law they cannot return to port until all of it has been converted into passenger fat. So there are at least eight feedings a day. Crew members often creep into cabins at night and use high-pressure hoses to shoot cheesecake directly down the throats of sleeping passengers.
But on cruise ships you rarely find yourself dangling from poles, which is more than I can say for the sailboat rented by Hannah and Paddy. The captain was a man named Dan, who used to be a race-car driver until he had heart trouble and switched from fast cars to sailboats, which are the slowest form of transportation on Earth with the possible exception of airline flights that go through O’Hare. Sometimes I suspect that sailboats never move at all, and the only reason they appear to go from place to place is continental drift.
Nevertheless, we were having a pleasant day on Captain Dan’s boat, the Jersey Girl, doing busy nautical things like hoisting the main stizzen and mizzening the aft beam, and meanwhile getting passed by other boats, seaweed, lobsters, glaciers, etc. The trouble arose when we attempted to enter a little harbor so we could go to a bar featuring a band headed by a large man named Richard. This band is called—really—Big Dick and the Extenders. We were close enough to hear them playing when the Jersey Girl plowed into what nautical experts call the “bottom.”
The problem was an unusually low tide. Helpful people in smaller boats kept telling us this.
“It’s an unusually low tide!” they’d shout helpfully as they went past. They were lucky the Jersey Girl doesn’t have a cannon.
We’d been sitting there for quite a while when Captain Dan suggested, with a straight face, that if some of us held on to a large pole called the boom and swung out over the water, our weight might make the boat lean over enough to get free. I now realize that this was a prank. Fun-loving sailboat captains are probably always trying to get people out on the boom, but most people aren’t that stupid.
We, however, had been substantially refreshed by beverages under a hot sun, so we actually did it. Four of us climbed up, hung our stomachs over the boom, kicked off from the side of the boat, and NOOOOOO ...
Picture a giant shish-kebab skewer sticking out sideways from a boat 10
feet over the water, except instead of pieces of meat on it, there are four out-of-shape guys, faces pale and sweating, flabby legs flailing, ligaments snapping like rifle shots. We instantly became a tourist attraction. A crowd gathered on shore, laughing and pointing. Some of them were probably sailboat captains.
“Look!” they were probably saying. “Captain Dan got FOUR of them out on the boom! A new record!”
Meanwhile, next to me, Paddy, a middle-aged attorney who is not, let’s be honest, built like an Olympic gymnast, who is in fact built a lot like a gym, was saying, in an unusually high voice, “We better bring the boom back now. OK? Now? OK?? WE BETTER BRING THE BOOM BACK NOW! BRING-THE-BOOM-BACK-NOW!! I SAID ...”
“HANG ON!” Captain Dan was shouting. “She’s about to move!”
People on shore were now taking pictures.
“IT’S AN UNUSUALLY LOW TIDE!” a helpful boater was shouting.
“Please,” Paddy was saying, very quietly now.
“I think she’s moving!” Captain Dan sang out.
In fact, the Jersey Girl was exhibiting no more flotation than central Nebraska. As I clung to the boom, listening to Paddy whimper, two thoughts penetrated my pain: (1) He was paying for this experience; and (2) If you have to die, you want it to be for a noble cause. You don’t want it to be for Big Dick and the Extenders.
It turned out we didn’t die. We finally got swung back onto the boat and began thinking about leading our lives without moving any muscles ever again. And eventually Captain Dan got the boat unstuck. He needed the help of a motorboat. I am certain this was also true of Columbus.
The Living Bra
I had hoped that we could get the new year under way without any reports of ecologically dangerous shellfish attacking women’s undergarments, but I see now that I was a fool.
I have here an alarming news article written by Christopher Taylor of the Watertown (New York) Dally Times and sent in by several alert readers. The headline, which I am not making up, says: LARGE COLONY OF ZEBRA MUSSELS FOUND CLINGING TO BIG BRASSIERE.
In case you haven’t heard, the zebra mussel is a hot new environmental threat. Forget the killer bees. Oh, sure, they got a lot of scary headlines—KILLER BEES SIGHTED IN MEXICO; KILLER BEES SIGHTED IN TEXAS; KILLER BEES BECOME AMWAY DISTRIBUTORs—but they never lived up to their potential. Whereas at this very moment, the zebra mussel is raging out of control in the Great Lakes region. Well, OK, maybe “raging” is a strong term. As a rule, mussels don’t rage. You rarely hear swimmers being advised: “If you see a mussel, try to remain calm, and whatever you do, don’t provoke it.”
Nevertheless, we have reason to fear the zebra mussel, which gets its name from the fact that it roams the plains of Africa in giant herds.
No, seriously, it gets its name from the fact that it has a striped shell, which grows to about an inch long. About five years ago a group of zebra mussels, possibly carrying forged passports, came from Europe to the Great Lakes in the bilge water of a European ship, and they’ve been reproducing like crazy ever since. They are the Sex Maniacs of the Sea. Here’s a quote from an August 1991 Washin ton Post article:
“Each female can produce 30,000 eggs a year, leading to huge colonies of billions of the animals clinging to every available surface. Recently, marine biologists have discovered concentrations reaching 700,000 mussels a cubic yard. ...”
So apparently spaying them on an individual basis is out of the question. But something has to be done, because zebra mussels are clogging up water-supply pipes, and they’re spreading fast. Controlling them could cost billions of dollars—money that will have to come out of the pockets of the scumballs who wrecked the savings-and-loan industry.
No! That was another joke! The money will of course come from low-life taxpayers such as yourself, which is why you need to stay informed about this story, especially the giant-brassiere angle. Here are the key quotes from the Watertown Daily Times story:
A large brassiere pulled from waters near the Genesee River at Rochester was carrying the largest colony of zebra mussels found so far in Lake Ontario. ...
The brassiere—and the mussels—are now under observation at the Department of Environmental Conservation Fisheries Research Station at Cape Vincent.
DEC Supervisory Aquatic Biologist Gerard C. LeTendre said the bra was scooped up while DEC staff were trawling for dead lake trout near the Genesee River ... Because of the size of the garment, Mr. LeTendre said, more than 100 mussels had managed to attach themselves to it.