Some stories are too strange to be true. I wasn’t planning to post anything tonight, but this just happened….
It’s been an uneventful day, which is just the way I like it. The only thing that broke was my Xantrex Link 20 battery monitor. That’s more a nuisance than a real problem. But I have to say, I am tired of all this electrical stuff breaking. My next boat will have only kerosene.
And then I saw a ship, a big roro car carrier, this afternoon. I spoke to the ship on the VHF. First of all, I was surprised he answered. Usually they don’t. I think they don’t want to find out that some dumb sailor needs help, which they are required to give, so they just pretend to not hear. And then this guy spoke good English, which is also unusual. Turned out they are on their way to Balboa, Panama just like me, coming from Asia via a waypoint north of Hawaii. They’re on a great circle route from the waypoint (i.e. the shortest route between two points on a globe) to Panama, which means there are likely to be other ships on the same track during the night. Another Screaming Meanie night.
Anyway, it was about 9:00 this evening and I decide to sit in the cockpit and cool off. The seas are soft and regular. The wind is just enough to drive the boat at about 5.5 knots. I am wearing only my underwear. The moon is half, straight above, and there is enough light for me to imagine that I can see well. I’m relaxing with my head back, listening to the purring of the water against the hull. My mind is slip sliding toward thoughts of my wife and whether she’s in bed yet and…. And then — plop, flip, flop — a flying fish lands right in my lap! I swear this is true. Of course, it took me a few seconds to figure out what it was, and during those few seconds I had a lot of strange thoughts. So the fish, which is perhaps six inches long, flutters and flops all over the cockpit before I could catch it and throw it back. Which makes that flying fish both the unluckiest (after all, he landed in the only boat for many miles) and the luckiest (he landed in my lap and I threw him back) flying fish in all history. And it also means that the next time I fantasize about my wife, I won’t be in the damned cockpit.
Some stories just have to be told.
David