Captain Frank and the van

Sailing...most people picture the open water and some kind of soothing music in the background. Not me.

A year ago some close friends of ours got married. Great. We were invited to the wedding and Shamoopie was invited to the brides shower and I was invited to the bachelor party. I like bachelor parties as much as I like cake. The "party" is going to be a sailing trip in a harbor. Myself, I have never been sailing. Avoided it really. Never saw the point. Why sail when you can ride in a speed boat? Or better yet, fly a plane!

But "Bob the Builder" (BTB) wants to sail. I do some research and find out that it's in a harbor that is only 15 feet deep at it's deepest point. Mostly it is ten to twelve feet and gets really shallow quickly as you approach shore. Sounds safe to me. We are only going to sail for three hours, then eat, and drive back. Sounds good to me.

BTB and I ride together and we get there at 9:30 am. The boat is a pretty good size about 30 feet. I meet the rest of our crew who are BTB's friends and then I meet Captain Frank. He's about three feet tall. No kidding. The first thing he does is shake my hand and then proceed to get himself another beer. An "Old Style", remember it's 9:30 am! This is not his first!

A bad sign already and we haven't even left port yet. Even though that voice in the back of my head is saying "don't go, don't go", I go and we all leave port. There is a nice spread of food in the cabin below and some refreshments other than beer. Things start off pretty good. The sun is shining and we have a nice breeze, so we are making good time. The food is good and I am drinking a Coke. Captain Frank is drinking beer and letting anyone who wants to steer the boat. BTB take his turn and he's doing pretty good. I am standing next to him and we are talking. (BTB is a former weatherman just for your information, this is important) We joking and looking around BTB and I notice that the water behind us is dark. About ten minutes later we notice that the sky is dark about ten miles behind us. BTB pulls out his phone and checks the weather. There is a thunder storm with hail about and hour behind us and heading our way.

BTB gives up the helm and asks Captain Frank if we should pull the sails in before it hits and finish the trip with the engine. Captain Frank yells back "No, we'll out run it. Steady as she goes!" BTB and I just look at each other and the weather and say "Shit" at about the same time. In the meantime the storm has picked up steam and is only a few minutes behind us. The water is dark because it's getting ready to be on top of us. The storm as it turns out is HUGE.

It hits us hard and fast and the boat is sent spinning. The boat is tipped on it's side. I am hanging on the side rail across the bow of the boat and my feat are dangling. Literally, I am dangling off the side of the boat. The boat rights itself. Apparently boats of a certain size do this on their own. When things settle out for a second a head count is taken and we see that we have not lost anyone. The boat then flips onto it's other side.

Again I am hanging onto the side of the boat trying to get my feet to stick to anything. They won't. When the boat rights itself again I head down below with a few other people. When we get down there the food that we had is splattered all over the place and I find Captain Frank. Yep, the Captain is down below. He has one of the bachelor party at the helm during a storm. He heads up on deck and starts giving orders. We are turning around to look for some of his things that fell off the deck when we went over. The ship flips two more times while I am down below. We are trying not to run into one another and also trying to dodge the nautical nick-knacks that the Captain didn't have nailed down. The place was a mess of broken pictures and salsa.

The storm clears and we get to our destination and 6pm. That's right I said 6pm. Just like Gilligan our three hour tour took seven hours. We are late for our reservations but they serve us anyway. Dinner was good. I sat next to our drunken midget captain and listened to stories about how that was nothing. I could hear other people telling perfect strangers about their near death experience. One guy from the group was bragging about how he never got wet. Then a waitress dumped a glass of wine down his back. I am not kidding.

We finished dinner and we were getting ready to leave. The van pulled up to drive us back to our cars. There were only two seats in the fifteen passenger an. So members of the restaurant put wooden chairs in the van to seat us all. The Captain Frank got in the drivers seat. I yelled out"wait one minute, why is the drunken midget driving! Haven't we had enough today?" I was told that it was his van and to get in if I wanted to go home. I did get in. The drive took us twenty minutes to get back to our cars. Twenty minutes. Seven hours of hell and we were only twenty minutes away by car.

That was the one and only time that I have gone sailing.