steen and i headed to the berkeley marina today to look around. i have a sunburned neck, after only about an hour in the sun. sometimes the sea can be unforgiving, but today, with the calm water and wind, she was issuing idiot-clemency passes, at least in berkeley….there was a boat, about 25′ or so, crewed by a group of people that looked awkward without their t.v. remotes and bags of doritos, that we saw with all her sails up, in the slip. after a large amount of tentative fumbling with the stern line, they pushed her out of the slip, and then started the outboard. at this point, the crew was largely occupied with “pushing us away from that other boat”, as her captain, whose corpulence was causing the boat to list to port, issued the repeated command for “full steam” from the crew member manning the weed whacker sized outboard (whose propeller was half out of the water). i was hoping for a nice breeze to pick up and suddenly fill her sails, for the comedy of watching the captain deal with her craft violently lurching in a direction heretofore not determined by anyone but neptune (or poseidon, for those “old skoolers” out there), but alas was not satisfied in my desire. i told steen that i thought it was almost worth it to stay there until the boat’s return, when, after several cases of beer on the bay were funnelated into the crews’ gullets, there would surely be one of the more panic-stricken, boat-collision filled parking jobs ever witnessed. (and i might add that i was on the maiden voyage of the sea bride, helmed by captain “bumper boats” swenson, as we forcefully removed the bowsprit of one boat, and various pieces off the stern of another, within moments of pushing out of the slip, so i know something of the nature of this beast). steen replied, very seriously, “they’re not coming back, eric”.
this reminded me of the fathom cruises of a year or two ago:
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