COOL HEADS PREVAIL WHEN THERE IS
A NUT LOOSE BEHIND THE WHEEL
Fred Dyson – Dyson's Starboard View – Messing About in Boats
Cramped quarters, trying circumstances, nasty weather, lack of privacy, periods of terror, and seasickness can make for strained relationships on a boating trip.
The ideal boating companion takes all of these things in stride and keeps smiling. The ideal boating companion also is able to function on some level in a crisis. When you are trying to dock a planing powerboat with a crosswind, you don't need a crewmember that pouts just when you need him/her to tie off a line on a cleat.
Picture yourself having perfectly laid your yacht up against the dock with contrary wind and tide and a cheer goes up from the crowd. You cut the power and pose a little for your legion of admirers. Suddenly you hear yells and look up to notice you are drifting away from the dock.
The tide and wind are taking your boat right into the magnificent yacht "Raptor." The "Raptor" is owned by the famous personal-injury attorney, Avaricious X Pillage, of the firm of Gouge, Pillage, and Shaft. You yell at your crew, "You idiot! I told you to tie us up!"
Your boating companion-of-choice sticks out his/her lower lip and says, "I didn't like the way you said that."
You are sputtering and trying to formulate an appropriate response when you hear a crash and see teak railings and rub rails splintering off the "Raptor."
Even worse is a story I heard last Sunday. Some loud-mouth male was trying to dock his yacht and had succeeded in ramming the dock three times at more than six knots and had banged every boat within reach. During this operation, he kept yelling obscure and contradictory commands at his long-suffering female companion. According to him, his lack of docking skill was entirely due to her failure to get a line around some distant passing piling.
The woman, who probably sweats more brains every day than her husband ever had, calmly walked over to him and said, "Relax, dear; you can do it. Tell me how you want to tie up and I will try to get a line on the dock."
The man, true to the loud-mouthed tradition, yelled, "If you know so much, you do it." He then went below, leaving the boat drifting toward the fuel dock.
The woman looked over the situation, checked the wind, put a tie-up line on the starboard side mid-ship cleat. She took the wheel, angled the boat toward the dock, swung hard to port, cut the power, and neatly passed the line around the piling as the boat slid up and tenderly kissed the dock. She tied off the line and then went aft and tied off the stem line.
The watching crowd cheered and a woman from a boat in the next slip came over to help with the bow and spring lines. Our reader-informant said the husband was not seen around the dock for the rest of the season and had a toupee the next year.
A reader from Government Hill writes asking about nautical insults. He said that builders say, "He is half a bubble off" or, "His elevator doesn't go to the top floor." Truck drivers say, "He's a few bricks short of a full load." Cowboys say, "He doesn't know whether he is afoot or horseback." Our reader wants a certifiable maritime equivalent.
Well, shipmates, the appropriate boating insult is: "He doesn't have both oars in the water," or "His brain is cavitating." Readers are invited to share other charming nautical insults with me.
My favorite insult came from a guy from Arkansas with a Stetson hat and. alligator boots. He pointed at a companion and said, "All of his dogs don't hunt."
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