She just sort of appeared, in a beam of clarity.

April 25, 2023 4:59 PM

Here's what we know. We're alone. We're in a small boat. We're far from shore. The nearest land to us is Logan Airport. And that's when it begins to dawn on me. If we have to jump off this boat and swim to the closest land, we would be army crawling up the banks of a government-controlled airspace. The true story of nine people, eight life jackets, and a wooden boat built for… even fewer. Ike Sriskandarajah lived to tell the tale. Pirates of the Cari-BEAN-TOWN.

I highly recommend listening to the audio to do it justice, but a transcript is available here.

posted by Mchelly (9 comments total)

"Sir, this is a regatta." Wonderful!

I have rowed in the Charles basin but never went into the actual Boston Harbor in a boat. Mind you, commercial flights approaching Logan Airport seem to be about ten feet off the waves, so I don't feel like I am missing much.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:25 PM on April 25, 2023

It's actually really peaceful, wenestvedt. I've sailed the harbor many times, and picnic'd out there among the islands. The flight path is only a small part of the overall area of the harbor.
posted by jordantwodelta at 7:36 PM on April 25, 2023

Great story :-) Most people who buy a boat don't know how quickly things can turn ugly and, fortunately, most of those people never have to find out. You don't have to be far from shore to get into all sorts of trouble and you don't have to be in much water to drown.

But still, the Water Rat was right - there is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.
posted by dg at 11:09 PM on April 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

Team Kath.

And what a great sea shanty!
posted by whuppy at 6:31 AM on April 26, 2023

there is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

During the very worst and ugliest years of my adolescent life, I spent summers at a sailing camp on the coast of North Carolina. I credit this, in part, with keeping me sane enough to survive to my sixteenth birthday.

This is a fantastic episode.
posted by thivaia at 6:47 AM on April 26, 2023

During the very worst and ugliest years of my adolescent life, I spent summers at a sailing camp on the coast of North Carolina.

Seagull/Seafarer? My cousins in Tennessee got to go there. I didn't and remain jealous to this day. Seemed like a really great place.
posted by fogovonslack at 9:20 AM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Seagull/Seafarer? My cousins in Tennessee got to go there. I didn't and remain jealous to this day. Seemed like a really great place.

The late, lamented Camp Morehead, which was sold and turned into an upscale housing development a couple decades ago. Sea Gull/Sea Farer were just up the road. (Morehead was a relic of a time when a coed population of adolescent and teenage campers were given absolute minimal oversight and plenty of access to boats, the sound, and each other. I used to refer to it, lovingly, as "pirate camp." Alas, doubt it would have survived, given changing parenting/cultural standards, even without the real estate deal, but I loved it there.)
posted by thivaia at 10:04 AM on April 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

Summer, 1995. I was doing the summer waiter thing here on the Vineyard. Buddy of mine, I'll call him Andy, joined me, and one of his summer jobs was as a sailing instructor/kid wrangler/sailing camp counselor at the Chappaquiddick community center. He learned some sailing basics. In late August, a mutual close friend, Z, came to visit with his galpal E. Andy was determined to take them out sailing.

So we all four of us get over to Chappy and down to the dock and Andy has a Sunfish, a very basic very small sailboat built for two. And even I know overloading the boat is the number one rule one must not break when it comes to going out in the boat, and I know almost nothing about boats.

Andy says it will be fine and E lets me know she can't swim. We have 2 lifejackets, so she puts one on as a precaution. We shove our overloaded boat into the bay and start to drift, we can't catch the wind and we just bob along for a while. Then BAM we hit some wind and we take off like a rocket, and cuz Andy only just learned to sail a few months ago and the boat is overloaded we swiftly overturn. We are in 12, maybe 15 feet of water, but no real waves, currents, or undertow of any kind.

Andy and I turn the boat over and we shove Z and E back in. Andy gets in. I stay in the water, because 4 people on such a tiny boat is not working. Andy gets the boat moving in to shore but much farther away from where we started. I'm hanging off the back of the boat, trying to use my legs as a rudder to reduce the long walk along the shore we all have to deal with unless something changes.

Something changed, 4 teenagers in a boston whaler saw us and offered us a tow back to the sailing camp. We gratefully accepted. By the time we got back to the house it was nearly dark.

DO NOT OVERLOAD THE BOAT.
posted by vrakatar at 9:22 PM on April 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

Ah, Camp Morehead By The Sea. Had a great summer there, watched the moon landing in the owners house. It was awesome. Also, it was boys only at the time...they brought local girls in twice a summer for "dances".

I won the 4th of July Regatta in the Sunfish Division. Still have the medal.
posted by jeporter99 at 9:06 AM on April 28, 2023