Saturday dawned bright and clear. It was to be a beautiful day. That was then. This is now. It is Monday, May 27th at 3 pm. Or 15:00 hours. Not sure which. I am trying out the literary tool known as "The Unexpected Shifting of Perspective". My "How to Write for the 1990's" book says this can be Very Powerful. Anyway, we are charging across the Bay. The, uh, what bay is this one?? Oh yes we are in the Nantucket Sound. Our goal is to make it to the entrance of Saquatucket Harbor before either darkness or the looming fog bank (welcome to Cape weather) prevents us from achieving the goal of a restful night. 
We have been kindly and graciously offered the use of the private dock of Mr B.G. Sykes, the second owner of Justice who I would describe as being dynamically enthusiastically effusively and energetically kind, warm, successful at multiple industries and technologies and who is of excellent character. I should mention that we have not met him yet.
Roughly three hours remaining in the day's travels as we dodged shoals, ferries, tugboats, and high speed Bay currents. (How does one "dodge a current" in a sailboat? Slowly Frances, Very Slowly....) You may recall that during our overnight sojourn up the coast a commercial fishing boat (or pirate) played dodge boats with us for a while. We survived. We spotted a brightly painted red and white fishing boat at our two o'clock position moving from right to left across our path, Both the radar and my visual assessment indicated that they would pass safely across our track and would not be a hazard. They did so, but as we approached them they began to veer left and right. They then turned left to a course that would take them past us in the opposite direction and perhaps 200 feet to our left. Have you every pulled up to an intersection and can tell that the person in another car is NOT seeing you because they are looking the other way? Yup, we could see that the guy driving this 28 foot fishing boat was looking AFT at the guy with the fish on his line and NOT where he was going. Then, suddenly they turned abruptly left and proceeded to head directly at us. He was clearly bent on broadsiding us like a British Warship! I started an evasive turn but just like the LAST guy he kept turning as though bent on our mutual destruction! When they were maybe 50 feet from hitting us I shouted at them to turn away. The skipper looked in our direction for the very first time, our powerful hull and massive display of sails towered overhead, filling the sky immediately in front of him! He donned a facial expression that encompassed about a thousand descriptive words, many of them epithetic, and frantically turned away from us at the very last moment.
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| No Frances, this is not the boat that almost hit us. You think there is time to snap a carefully and artistically framed shot when DOOM is on the line? This shot is actually after we passed through Hell Gate on the East River going through New York City. Wait, I should write something about that! With a name like HELL GATE SOMETHING dramatic must have happened there! |
My heart rate was up a fair bit, even though HAD we collided they would likely have come out the worse for the encounter as we outweighed them by about 30,000 pounds. Not once did I consider reversing course and running them down. More like two or three times. And then it struck me. They were painted red and white! The universal colors for warning, or DANGER! It made me smile and we continued on our way to the safety of a snug harbor and a warm comfortable bed.
Moral of the story? Pick two;
1. Always keep a wary eye out for danger
2. Power-boaters are inherently evildoers and bent on all manner of malfeasance
3. Fish can cause a form of insanity and, like the mermaids of old, can cause you to come to an ignominious end on the rocks of life.
4. Don't get so hung up on the allure of a restful place to arrive that it keeps you from turning and running down the aforementioned EPBs (Evil Powerboaters).
5. Dave should have had his warning air horn up in the cockpit where he could have used it to get the EPB's attention instead of safely tucked away below-decks at the Navigation Station.
Smile.
Dave
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