OK....note to self: Boat steers like a constipated cow once the maximum capacity of 5 people and 250 lbs of gear are placed thereon. So, you can just imagine how congested and sluggish the poor beast handled with 6 people and 350 lbs of gear.....(120 lbs of which was beer). But alas, I'm getting ahead of myself. To keep this in the atypical form of sequence of events as they actually occured as opposed to how they sound more interesting, let me start at the beginning.

T'was a dark and stormy night... Not a night fit out for man nor beast. So I kept my happy ass at home and let my beast do whatever the hell it is that beasts do when their not being watched. Our regatta crews met at the Toto to discuss the particulars of our travel plans. Waypoints, routes, foods, etc. Although it's raining like pouring piss out of a bucket at the time, all known weather sources are swearing on all that meteorologists consider holy that it indeed is to clear up by daybreak. At the time of meeting adjourn, it's decided we'll meet at the BX @ 0900 sharp.

I don't need a weathervane to know which way the wind blows... Well dip me in honey , and throw me to the lesbians!! The weatherman must've had a good night with his chicken bones and OUIJA board, because we indeed woke to a picture perfect morning. At this point we were properly provisioning the vessel, which was pulled upto the Marina dock for ease of gear transfer. This was only after our group hit the BX like a rampant IRS man hits Willy Nelson. To say we were buying with our health and nutritional value in mind would not be completely honest. It actually looked more like we owned stock in Cheeze Whiz and Beef Jerky.....and beer. Although we did take 5 gallons of water (4 1/2 of which came right back with us), we also took 4 cases of beer(of which a 12 pack came back with us). Upon our group purchase it took every fibre of being I possessed to be fair and beneficial to my Karma NOT to say when we(all 6 of us) were standing in line, 'All right, how many condoms are we gonna need?'. With dual purpose in mind. One, to see how it affected my crew, two, to watch the lower mandibles of every face in the place drop like Enron stock. After sharing my near vocal exclamation with mine floatilla bretheren, they all agreed it would've been hilarious. But the REAL fun would've been coming home after that rumor had 2 days to stew. Everything on the boat, and we are back on the moore readying the sails. Which I've found is a perfect opportunity to stick your ass in someones face. Of which I did to Laura 1/2 dozen times in as many minutes. I told her that's how monkeys flirt, when I start flinging feces at her she needs to start worrying. Both boats are now stocked and readied for our journey. With us we have on our boats.

Jageritaville                         S. S. Day Dream
Geo-Captain                             Sean- Captain
Shelli-1st mate                         Susan-1st mate, anchor person, engineer, deck hand
Ody- Anchor Boy, Keebler elf                stowaway, jump down, turn around, pick a 
Keri- Engineer                                     bail of cotton.
Laura- Deck Hand
Crystal- Stow-away

I knew the game was amiss, but she couldn't be told she was wrong... There we sat post 3 1/2 hour sail later on anchorage off Cargill Creek. Upon leaving the harbor, Jageritaville riding very low and slow in the water is quickly passed by the S. S. Day Dream, who has two people and 4 bottles of liquor as crew. They are quickly a memory. Whenever two boats are going somewhere, no one ever has to say 'mark, set, go', but trust me, it's always a race. Not only is this a race, it's one in which we're failing miserably. Upon us reaching Green Cay, and Day Dream positioned off Sugar Rock. I better our odds, by power sailing. Without motor I topped out at 4.3 kts, powersailing I reached 6.3 kts on a 15 degree heel. Woof. So we cheated, but we made it on anchorage first. At which point we wait for the 1700 tide.

Who among them is pure enough to cast the first stone.... Were my thoughts as I'm motoring Jageritaville through waters that I'm less than familiar with. I've only been through here twice in a boat that drafts this much. And I'm starting to feel the stress of a man whose boat not only is sitting lower in the water than ever, I've carried complete innocents in here with me as well. If I run aground, the other boat will still be able to make it, but it doesn't keep me from feeling a sence of responsibility......ok maybe it's not that as much as dumb pride, but I answer both with the vehem and force of all I feel is right and just. Although my panic stance is less than forceful, my crisis role is to keep the boat heading in the right direction, and sweat bullets like the best man after a bachelore party who ended up sleeping with the less than clean party favors. Once I 'think' I find the channel, 48 minutes before sunset I breathe a great sigh of relief. Knowing that once the sun is too low, a chance of seeing the channel is as good as lost. My relief was, however short lived, when I indeed find myself again in just over a meter of water. Which is how it was to stay until 1932, with sundown being at 1934. Looking like I knew what I was doing all along...whew.

All right kids, I can pierce things with my nipples... Reminds me of the Beck song 'Sun went down I got frozen to the bone, Till a hooker let me share her fake fur coat.' Once on anchorage, safely in 10 feet of water 200 meters from the Bang Bang Club, I take Crystal and Keri to shore with plans of a return trip for the remainder of our floating village. Once they are safely ashore, my return trip was slightly less than comfortable. Wet, cold, dark and just everything you think is wrong with camping in the rain. So when I'm back on Jageritaville, the discussion is had, and the decision is made to hunker down and go to shore in the morning for Bonefish Charlie stories abound. Sean and Susan were let in on this, where upon they invited us over to their boat for drinks and just to hang out. But once my bones were cold, I was done with my nighttime watersport activities.

Something ripped in the dinghy.... I return to shore and get the girls, and tell them how cold it was, yadda, yadda, yadda. So here we go. Charlie holding our bowline till I get the engine going like a gentleman, gets his patients tested when on the first pull of the engine cord, I let tear with a nice little church fart, which I follow with 'NICE', which gets the entire dinghy giggling like schoolgirls who first realized Ken and Barbie are 'different'. Now, forget about it, we're uselessly laughing....I can't get the engine started I'm laughing so hard. The whole dinghy is shaking like a dog shitting peach pits beacuse of our convulsive laughter, all the while, Bonefish Charlie is still holding onto the bowline thinking 'Mon, I gotta git 'deez crazy krackuhs off'n my dock'. When we got to the boat, it didn't end there.....if anything it got worse, because we had a new audience.

I dream of you, behind the wall of sleep.... Around 2200ish we all settle down for the evening, Kari and Crystal topside in the cockpit with sleeping bags, Myself and Sheldon occupying the 'V' birth, Ody balasting starboard, Laura headbutting the XM on Port. I don't sleep very well with concerns of the electical system which is causing the 12VDC cooler to keep going 'whirrrr digity digity whirrrrrrrr.....<pause>....<choke cough> whirrrrrr'r, and the bilge pump which hasn't been activated in 3 hours and counting(and since we are taking on considerable water being that our through hull is all but breached due to our excessive weight causing our waterline to be significantly lower than norm). All these events are wearing in my head while I'm listening to the weird little snores of everyone. Ody's is a low rhythmic 'Baluga-duga-duga-duga', Laura's is like 'Wheet <pause> Wheet <pause>, Shelli's is '<whistle> Sachkt (repeat), and I don't know which one of the topsiders was which but one was a choking snort, while the other was a little 'hoot <pause> hoot <pause>. Although upon waking the first thing Laura said was 'Next time we bring breathe right strips for Geo....My god how do you sleep through that?!?!'. After a MacGyver job on the electrical panel to fix the 12 VDC cooler, we're back upto snuff.

A cup of tea, a cookie, and you... To hold the flashlight over the cockpit, I 'tied' it around the barrel latch mechs that hold the sail cover on. Keri decides to unhook the latch and become surprised when the flashlight comes tumbling down. I react in my atypical smartass style, 'I don't mean to be an ass,' I say, which basically means I am indeed about to be one. 'But isn't your degree in Engineering'? After everyone has a good chuckle at her expense, Shelli 'christens' the bucket, and we go to shore. make 2 trips, one of which I hip the Day Dreams Dink with mine. Once everyone is ashore we look around and settle in the 'dining' area with Charlie drinking coffee and beer (It is afterall 0800, and legal to be driniking alcohol). It should not be, however legal to drop the sack of kittens Keri released in the Bang Bang Clubs public head. She came out exclaiming 'Ah, my dirty work for the day is done', at which point Laura commenced to lamenting about, gesticulating wildly, and at one point actually started to twitch..

Listening to wise elders has to be one of the greatest pleasures I know. The ramblings of the normal daft elderly do not count, I could give a shit what just any old coot has to say, but I can sit with an intelligent elderly person and listen for hours. The way they see what they have seen, and how they describe it, gives me the warm fuzzies all over. American indians....they did it right. Americans take our elderly and throw less than adequate health care at them, put them in homes and consider them a nuisance until they are nothing more than means to an inhearitance. Granted I'm the first to admit, these wise elders are few and far between sometimes, and the ones that carlessly careen into trash trucks on I-95, and plow through Flea Markets because they insist they can still see and drive as well as they used to are more of the American norm. So, who is to say who is right. Anyway, I digress...

That needle's not for me, get the bubble out of it!... Ody has turned retarded, I think he's having an adverse reaction to the prison bologna. Either that or an alergy to cheese whiz. Regardless, he's taken to bounding around the boat like a Keebler Elf on Crank. Course it all could be in my head. After a swim call around site 2, I took to drinking Jack and Cokes like they were melted popsicles in July. Two 'healthy' drinks down, and I had to switch to Bacardi Razz and Soda, being that we were out of Coke. My reaction, 'Alright I can no longer be held responsible for my actions, Rum makes me stupid. But if that's what you want, a daft captain, that's gonna take this boat load of haitian refugees to their individual salvations, sign me up for that head trip. Pay the toll, take the ride!! Several near misses from renegade coral heads, most of which I've nearly hit before, so they are clearly marked on my GPS.

Enough I tell you, he's seeing monsters, he's losing his mind and he feels it going... Boat is secure on her moring tonight, happy to be rid of these pesky smelly people that eat nothing but sandwhiches, pop tarts, pringles, and cheese whiz. What flavor of whack job is that anyway!? All her little crevecis are empty, all her stows are empty. She's safe. Me, another story, went to the Lighthouse Marina for dinner. One Kalik Gold is all it took. I was past the envelope and waving, there was no return trip for this whack job. I remember surgeon precision with what I was doing, no movement without purpose. One beer later, I'm a baffoon. Trying to remember lessons learned, most for naught, but I'll do my best. Boats hate people. Monkeys flirt with their asses. Ripped dinghies take on more than water. And lastly, If there's a hole, somethings going in, or coming out of it.