The T. to I. Miami/Naussau/Miami
"You boys lookin' ta' crew?" He was an odd looking sort with a Captain Kangaroo flair. The moustache was pure silver pomposity. Matching eyebrows danced independently and the mouth seemed to be trying to flee his face. It squirted left and right back and forth to its edges, unable to decide what to do next. But the eyeballs were piercing little tight blue rivets same color as the Carib aimed straight at the boys. They were young and dumb and dumbfounded. "Sorry, I say, are you boys looking to crew?" This question went searching for the first one through the heat waves above the gas rainbowed water. "Well no, we're just looking at boats." With this, the captain shrugged and walked away. The boys fought their way through their incomprehension enough to say, "What did he say?" They quickly decided it was worth finding out what the man was up to. A really big marina for small boats is nothing more than a unintended maze. It constitutes one hell of a place to try to find someone. Each catwalklike dock 45 degrees off behind bulkheads and zigzags away forever. But every one of these wooden forevers dead ends. It's like a contiguous looking plateau that suddenly yawns it's hidden canyon walls, dropping thousands of feet at a never imagined uncrossable void. The only recourse being a long circuitous backtrack around. Uncountable masts of varying height and color served to distract their search like a windy Bamboo forest. Ultimately he was easy enough to spot once they were on the right dock. Chief among his other oddities, he was inexplicably wearing long pants in the middle of the day in Miami in May. He saw them coming and smiled broadly under his silver broomy fan. "Either you boys ever sailed before?" He shot this question at them like a weapon. "No, never." said the smaller boy. "I did a month on a shrimper in the gulf." said Dan. Neither of the boys thought of asking the captain if he knew how to sail. It didn't cross their minds, yet. "Sailin' for Nassau tonight, I need a crew of two. Meet me here at ten." They did.
Thus decided, the boys made their way onto a city bus for the heart of the bureaucratic badlands of downtown. After an interminable government office waiting room wait, they fled triumphant to South Beach, Danny's brand new overnight passport in hand. Getting that passport being the only reason they were in Florida at all. They were on their way to Ireland . . . from Colorado. Luckily, the sun finally set behind the Art Deco hotels and bars. Between the tropical heat, the endless beers, the clandestine puffs and the topless girls on the beach, they could quite easily have forgotten that they were sailing to the Bahamas tonight. With little more than time and money, they boarded Captain Tom's boat at ten p.m. In between shifts at the helm, Danny and Steve-O didn't even have to suffer the indignity of sharing the bow. It was a catamaran. No, they sat across from each other at the apex of their own private bow waving. "I'm Jimmy Buffett." "No, I'm Jimmy Buffett." And they both were. Florida receded and tomorrow approached. It was an overnight voyage to Bimini. Flying fish flashed in the phosphorescence and they steered by the stars. Steve was amazed that people could actually do that.
"You boys sit tight. I'll land 'er." They sidled up to a tiny rocking dock. Suddenly Captain Tom figured out how to smash his boat right into it. The noise was deafening. Unperturbed, Captain Tom tied off to the still quivering structure. He suggested the boys go explore the island. They happily abliged. He jauntily opened a can of boat Bondo and prepared to fix the damage as if this was normal. Black faces as black as the sand was white stared out from what looked like, and they hoped was, a bar. It was. It was dark and cool and plain inside. It felt safe, and served beer. This place was the most interesting authentic thing Steve had ever seen. It was so real it should have been fake. A few days earlier they had tripped around Disney World. Who's to say what's really real? Danny had had the misfortune of actually working there one desperate summer before he escaped Orlando. They did the behind the scenes, no public access, employees only tour. They ate no cotton candy. They didn't shake Mickey's hand. Considering the little pieces of paper they had eaten, it was a good thing they stayed off the rides. The bar could well have been a feature in some 'Caribbean World' exhibit, sand floor, ratty three bladed rattan fan, walls lashed together from local pulp, complete with actors, ragged and dread locked, playing their parts like a ethnic Williamsburg. They refreshed with Red Stripe and ate Conch. They joined the others at the window and watched the captain Bondo his cracks. Watching since the crash shattered their torpor, they had seen Dan and Steve hastily disembark. They welcomed them openly to the bar. The incident served as an ice breaker. By the way they had hurried away, the locals correctly deduced that they were mere hitch-hikers and blamed them not for the damage done to their only dock.
Next a.m., Captain Tom fractured the quiet again. The motor flared loud because he started it instead of unfurling sails. They had motored the entire first leg. If fact, Dan and Steve were destined never to see the sails unfurled. They began to pull away. The skeletal dock revealed its damage but Captain Tom never saw it. He was too busy not seeing the slow fish-tailing motion he was putting his boat into. Apparently he never saw the other boat either. "We're gonna hit that boat." Dan and Steve nodded in unbelieving agreement. Shaking their heads no, but thinking, yes we are, they hit it. The ladder on the stern ripped partially away. It hung useless above the water in the once again interrupted quiet. The man in his undies, rightly screaming obscenities, stood shaking his fists. He became smaller and quieter as Tom serenely motored away. Dan and Steve looked at the man and each other. They looked at Tom but Tom never looked. They hadn't even had enough time to yell apologies and that they were just hitch-hikers before it was over and they were out of there. There was one dock and one boat. Captain Tom had managed to hit everything. There was nothing to be done but roll two big ones and return to their private bows and wonder if they really were Jimmy Buffett. They weren't. But, Captain Tom was no longer Captain Tom either. He wasn't even Captain Kangaroo. His new moniker struck them both so hard, they could have gone overboard. For the rest of the trip, to his face, because there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it because it was so indisputably true, he was from from the last crash forward forever referred to by his finally reveiled secret super hero identity . . . Captain Crunch.
Away they motored off the shelf into deeper blue. The sails remained securely lashed to the mast. The seas remained calm. Captain Crunch had built this boat himself. The table in the cabin below deck was centered squarely between the hulls. Apparently he had opted for a flat bottom design between the hulls under the table. For though there were virtually no waves (or wind), nothing, and I mean nothing, would stay on the table. The table shuddered violently with every little love tapped wave. The racket was a dull but constant durge to bad design. It was like a skipping c.d. at half volume on a boom box from hell. Steve slept on deck, suffering spray and salt and sunburn.
It had become obvious that Captain Crunch didn't much care for Dan. Steve steered his three hour shift. Dan sailed his three and turned it over to the captain. Captain Crunch went off crazy, looking so much like his namesake on the cereal box that Dan and Steve almost went overboard again, for laughing this time. He hopped around like some twisted morph of the captains, Tom, Crunch and Kangaroo. Words spurted out through spittle like the flying fish in the spray. Something about Danny steering us off course slowly coalesced out of the fragmented sentences. He swung the wheel as if to suggest that if he hadn't done it at that very moment with all the gusto his skinny arms with the shrivelled 'Anchors Away' tattoo could muster, they would have all died instantly. He rolled open charts. Dan and Steve went back to their bows. Steve had given Dan his heading. They had been sailing off course for six hours not three. They were definitely not Jimmy Buffett and they wondered where the Bermuda Triangle might be. There was no telling Captain Crunch so they enjoyed their situation and casually scanned the horizon. Maybe it was the all too often ignorant luck that men like these sometimes have or his time in the Royal Canadian Air Force, but to their everlasting amazement and gratitude, Captain Crunch had done it. Though it took many extra hours, there it was, land ho! A faint little scrape of land punctured the horizon. It deflated their lost-at-sea epic. It became a mere bumbling adventure again. Captain Crunches high fives seemed a bit hysterical and overly exuberant. They left Dan and Steve with the distinctly disconcerting impression that Captain Crunch might not have known if they were ever going to see land again either. No matter, it was Nassau. Even a mile or so out, they could tell that much. Dan and Steve returned to their bows and were Jimmy Buffett again. Captain Crunch remained Captain Crunch. The world slowed down. It got quiet. At first, it seemed a manifestation of their shared sense of relief, but this was no emotional hallucination. The world had slowed down. It was quiet. The motor had quit. They were dead in the water. You need wind to sail. You need gas to motor sail. There was no wind. While steering off course for who knows how long in what kind of crazy detour they had, of course, been using gas. They had been on this thirty footer for fourteen hours. They should have landed long ago. They were dead in the water. God damn it, they were not Jimmy Buffett.
An hour and a half later, Steve was excitedly leaning over the heaving bow retrieving a Jerri can from the coast guard. With not an inkling of boarding them and searching, the coast guard rapidly departed with the empty can. They were obviously not smugglers. Moving again, they motored toward the hectic harbor. This was no Bimini. Seaplanes and windsurfers, ships and sloops, pleasure craft pulling skiers, jet skis and Sunfish, ocean liners and freighters and cruise ships and, Jesus Christ, even snorkelers all frolicked between them and safe passage. It would take weeks to crash into everything there.
A man with a bull horn barked them their slip number. Slip number? After Bimini, that was a very scary concept indeed. Captain Crunch didn't say anything about "You boys just sit tight . . . " He didn't have to, they were. They saw their designated sliver of water ahead in this very busy, mostly full, floating parking lot. On the port side stood a high solid concrete dock. Go ahead, hit it, you'll just sink your boat. To starboard was an equally solid looking gleaming white yacht. Go ahead, hit it, you'll just sink your boat. It was so high out of the water that it wasn't until later they noticed all the formally dressed people mingling up there, cocktails in hand. This time, it was an emotional hallucination as the world slowed down and got quiet. It stood perfectly still. You could have heard ice cubes tinkling in martini glasses up on that far distant deck. The little Cat inched for its slip. Nothing was falling off the table down below. Time left and, it was done. The Captain of Crunch hit nothing, except his palm to his forehead with barely concealed relief. He couldn't get off the boat fast enough. "The key's right there, stay as long as you like." That said, he strode off the dock carrying a folding lawn chair some unmarked box Danny and Steve O hadn't seen before. The captain joined the throngs and was gone. They never saw him again. They stayed on his boat a few nights. They ate at the free buffets at the casinos and tried to empty the bag. They couldn't do it. They abandoned it and its accoutrements under a plunger in the restroom at the airport. They sea-planed it to Miami. They Amtraked to Orlando. They tried to hitch to New York from Daytona. Two days later having only made Jacksonville, they Amtraked it to the Big Apple and flew to London. They never did decide if they were Jimmy Buffet. They wondered about that unmarked box. Had they been smugglers? In one of his songs, Buffett said he had been.
Thus decided, the boys made their way onto a city bus for the heart of the bureaucratic badlands of downtown. After an interminable government office waiting room wait, they fled triumphant to South Beach, Danny's brand new overnight passport in hand. Getting that passport being the only reason they were in Florida at all. They were on their way to Ireland . . . from Colorado. Luckily, the sun finally set behind the Art Deco hotels and bars. Between the tropical heat, the endless beers, the clandestine puffs and the topless girls on the beach, they could quite easily have forgotten that they were sailing to the Bahamas tonight. With little more than time and money, they boarded Captain Tom's boat at ten p.m. In between shifts at the helm, Danny and Steve-O didn't even have to suffer the indignity of sharing the bow. It was a catamaran. No, they sat across from each other at the apex of their own private bow waving. "I'm Jimmy Buffett." "No, I'm Jimmy Buffett." And they both were. Florida receded and tomorrow approached. It was an overnight voyage to Bimini. Flying fish flashed in the phosphorescence and they steered by the stars. Steve was amazed that people could actually do that.
"You boys sit tight. I'll land 'er." They sidled up to a tiny rocking dock. Suddenly Captain Tom figured out how to smash his boat right into it. The noise was deafening. Unperturbed, Captain Tom tied off to the still quivering structure. He suggested the boys go explore the island. They happily abliged. He jauntily opened a can of boat Bondo and prepared to fix the damage as if this was normal. Black faces as black as the sand was white stared out from what looked like, and they hoped was, a bar. It was. It was dark and cool and plain inside. It felt safe, and served beer. This place was the most interesting authentic thing Steve had ever seen. It was so real it should have been fake. A few days earlier they had tripped around Disney World. Who's to say what's really real? Danny had had the misfortune of actually working there one desperate summer before he escaped Orlando. They did the behind the scenes, no public access, employees only tour. They ate no cotton candy. They didn't shake Mickey's hand. Considering the little pieces of paper they had eaten, it was a good thing they stayed off the rides. The bar could well have been a feature in some 'Caribbean World' exhibit, sand floor, ratty three bladed rattan fan, walls lashed together from local pulp, complete with actors, ragged and dread locked, playing their parts like a ethnic Williamsburg. They refreshed with Red Stripe and ate Conch. They joined the others at the window and watched the captain Bondo his cracks. Watching since the crash shattered their torpor, they had seen Dan and Steve hastily disembark. They welcomed them openly to the bar. The incident served as an ice breaker. By the way they had hurried away, the locals correctly deduced that they were mere hitch-hikers and blamed them not for the damage done to their only dock.
Next a.m., Captain Tom fractured the quiet again. The motor flared loud because he started it instead of unfurling sails. They had motored the entire first leg. If fact, Dan and Steve were destined never to see the sails unfurled. They began to pull away. The skeletal dock revealed its damage but Captain Tom never saw it. He was too busy not seeing the slow fish-tailing motion he was putting his boat into. Apparently he never saw the other boat either. "We're gonna hit that boat." Dan and Steve nodded in unbelieving agreement. Shaking their heads no, but thinking, yes we are, they hit it. The ladder on the stern ripped partially away. It hung useless above the water in the once again interrupted quiet. The man in his undies, rightly screaming obscenities, stood shaking his fists. He became smaller and quieter as Tom serenely motored away. Dan and Steve looked at the man and each other. They looked at Tom but Tom never looked. They hadn't even had enough time to yell apologies and that they were just hitch-hikers before it was over and they were out of there. There was one dock and one boat. Captain Tom had managed to hit everything. There was nothing to be done but roll two big ones and return to their private bows and wonder if they really were Jimmy Buffett. They weren't. But, Captain Tom was no longer Captain Tom either. He wasn't even Captain Kangaroo. His new moniker struck them both so hard, they could have gone overboard. For the rest of the trip, to his face, because there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it because it was so indisputably true, he was from from the last crash forward forever referred to by his finally reveiled secret super hero identity . . . Captain Crunch.
Away they motored off the shelf into deeper blue. The sails remained securely lashed to the mast. The seas remained calm. Captain Crunch had built this boat himself. The table in the cabin below deck was centered squarely between the hulls. Apparently he had opted for a flat bottom design between the hulls under the table. For though there were virtually no waves (or wind), nothing, and I mean nothing, would stay on the table. The table shuddered violently with every little love tapped wave. The racket was a dull but constant durge to bad design. It was like a skipping c.d. at half volume on a boom box from hell. Steve slept on deck, suffering spray and salt and sunburn.
It had become obvious that Captain Crunch didn't much care for Dan. Steve steered his three hour shift. Dan sailed his three and turned it over to the captain. Captain Crunch went off crazy, looking so much like his namesake on the cereal box that Dan and Steve almost went overboard again, for laughing this time. He hopped around like some twisted morph of the captains, Tom, Crunch and Kangaroo. Words spurted out through spittle like the flying fish in the spray. Something about Danny steering us off course slowly coalesced out of the fragmented sentences. He swung the wheel as if to suggest that if he hadn't done it at that very moment with all the gusto his skinny arms with the shrivelled 'Anchors Away' tattoo could muster, they would have all died instantly. He rolled open charts. Dan and Steve went back to their bows. Steve had given Dan his heading. They had been sailing off course for six hours not three. They were definitely not Jimmy Buffett and they wondered where the Bermuda Triangle might be. There was no telling Captain Crunch so they enjoyed their situation and casually scanned the horizon. Maybe it was the all too often ignorant luck that men like these sometimes have or his time in the Royal Canadian Air Force, but to their everlasting amazement and gratitude, Captain Crunch had done it. Though it took many extra hours, there it was, land ho! A faint little scrape of land punctured the horizon. It deflated their lost-at-sea epic. It became a mere bumbling adventure again. Captain Crunches high fives seemed a bit hysterical and overly exuberant. They left Dan and Steve with the distinctly disconcerting impression that Captain Crunch might not have known if they were ever going to see land again either. No matter, it was Nassau. Even a mile or so out, they could tell that much. Dan and Steve returned to their bows and were Jimmy Buffett again. Captain Crunch remained Captain Crunch. The world slowed down. It got quiet. At first, it seemed a manifestation of their shared sense of relief, but this was no emotional hallucination. The world had slowed down. It was quiet. The motor had quit. They were dead in the water. You need wind to sail. You need gas to motor sail. There was no wind. While steering off course for who knows how long in what kind of crazy detour they had, of course, been using gas. They had been on this thirty footer for fourteen hours. They should have landed long ago. They were dead in the water. God damn it, they were not Jimmy Buffett.
An hour and a half later, Steve was excitedly leaning over the heaving bow retrieving a Jerri can from the coast guard. With not an inkling of boarding them and searching, the coast guard rapidly departed with the empty can. They were obviously not smugglers. Moving again, they motored toward the hectic harbor. This was no Bimini. Seaplanes and windsurfers, ships and sloops, pleasure craft pulling skiers, jet skis and Sunfish, ocean liners and freighters and cruise ships and, Jesus Christ, even snorkelers all frolicked between them and safe passage. It would take weeks to crash into everything there.
A man with a bull horn barked them their slip number. Slip number? After Bimini, that was a very scary concept indeed. Captain Crunch didn't say anything about "You boys just sit tight . . . " He didn't have to, they were. They saw their designated sliver of water ahead in this very busy, mostly full, floating parking lot. On the port side stood a high solid concrete dock. Go ahead, hit it, you'll just sink your boat. To starboard was an equally solid looking gleaming white yacht. Go ahead, hit it, you'll just sink your boat. It was so high out of the water that it wasn't until later they noticed all the formally dressed people mingling up there, cocktails in hand. This time, it was an emotional hallucination as the world slowed down and got quiet. It stood perfectly still. You could have heard ice cubes tinkling in martini glasses up on that far distant deck. The little Cat inched for its slip. Nothing was falling off the table down below. Time left and, it was done. The Captain of Crunch hit nothing, except his palm to his forehead with barely concealed relief. He couldn't get off the boat fast enough. "The key's right there, stay as long as you like." That said, he strode off the dock carrying a folding lawn chair some unmarked box Danny and Steve O hadn't seen before. The captain joined the throngs and was gone. They never saw him again. They stayed on his boat a few nights. They ate at the free buffets at the casinos and tried to empty the bag. They couldn't do it. They abandoned it and its accoutrements under a plunger in the restroom at the airport. They sea-planed it to Miami. They Amtraked to Orlando. They tried to hitch to New York from Daytona. Two days later having only made Jacksonville, they Amtraked it to the Big Apple and flew to London. They never did decide if they were Jimmy Buffet. They wondered about that unmarked box. Had they been smugglers? In one of his songs, Buffett said he had been.
posted by Steve-O at 10:27 AM
1 Comments:
Very nice. I like how you wove Buffett into the story and how you worked in the smuggling and the Coast Guard.
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