Chapter 5

There are bottles. Bottles exist. All intelligent people, even ones who concur on little else, agree with this axiomatic statement. Bottles contain many substances. Some harbor liquids and some are as dry as the Devil’s tongue on Judgment Day. Some contain solutions and others contain suspensions. Some are as empty as a politician’s promise. Some presumably bear messages from castaway seafarers who sailed without their cell phones.

You may not have thought of this but a person’s life may figuratively be divided into four sections or periods of time which can be depicted by bottles! The first couple of years of a person’s life can be illustrated by a “baby bottle,” one of those little bottles with a rubber nipple on top. The second stage of life could be represented by an icon of western culture, the Coca Cola bottle. This stage is almost as brief as the baby bottle stage. The third (and usually longest) stage can be represented by a beer bottle… or maybe by one of those bottles associated with that distillery in Lynchburg Tennessee. The last stage of our fictitious person’s life can be represented by one of those sterile bottles containing intravenous fluids that hang upside down from a bedside stand… well, you get the picture.

Bottles appear throughout the world in a myriad array of sizes and shapes. For our purposes we are going to limit our range of bottles to ones containing intoxicating beverages. There are those little “one shot” bottles you see on the counter at the liquor store. Sometimes they are in a basket right beside the cash register. Then there are those pint flask like bottles behind the counter on the shelves. In order of increasing size, next are the ones known as “fifths.” Then of course there is the subgroup of all the different sizes and iterations of beer bottles and cans of every description. Then we move on to the professional level 1.75 litre bottles. After that, of course, there is the magnum… usually reserved for Champagne and other “sparkling” giggly fluids. Last but certainly not least in any regard there is the jeroboam… it reminds one of a magnum times two… or maybe of a tank truck or some kind of a water tower. This story is about a jeroboam or, more specifically, the contents thereof. The contents of the jeroboam in question this time was sake… a Japanese wine made from rice. Some like it hot. We do. Therein lies the tale.

While we were working in the Fabulous Florida Keys we had the Borey anchored in Marathon. She was in Boot Key Harbour in an area referred to as “the ‘burbs”. The burbs is as far out in the harbour as you can get. Due to the distance from any point at which one can easily (or legally) find a place to moor a dinghy it is populated either by people who have large dinghies or those who have fast dinghies. Some of the more affluent have dinghies which are both large and fast. We did not fit into that latter group.

We were large dinghy people. I don’t mean we were large people who possessed a dinghy. I mean we were people who owned a large dinghy. Our dinghy was a nineteen foot long Swampscott style dory with a spritsail rig and ten and a half foot oars. I built the dory by hand in the open carport of a delightful girl in beautiful Boca Raton Florida. The girl was beautiful too. Come to think of it so was the dory… my God what a beautiful story!

I am proud to say that said building was accomplished in complete and direct violation and flagrant disregard of ever imaginable ordinance the Boca city fathers had managed in their great wisdom to promulgate! Of course it would not be possible to commit a crime this heinous in the present century. No Siree! Not in BOCA! If Noah had tried to build the ark in Boca there would be no animals on Earth today. Noah would have had to do a lot of explaining to the Department of Homeland Security. Never mind FEMA. FEMA would not have helped Noah. The Coast Guard probably wouldn’t have either. Noah would have had to call Sea Tow. By the way, do you know what FEMA stands for? It stands for “Fix Everything My Ass! But I digress, back to the story.

We had sails and oars on our dory mainly to defend ourselves from the outboard motor… a British Seagull… which almost never ran. The British Seagull was made in England to teach the rest of the world a lesson. The lesson is Do Not Mess With The British Empire. I have, in all fairness, met people who swear by the British Seagull. However for every person I’ve met who swears by the British Seagull I have met scores who swear AT the bloody things. These diabolical little motors are made of pot metal. Pot metal has the strength and basic composition of a hardtack biscuit. At least the biscuit is edible which is a hell of a lot more than you can say in favour of the motor. We have an old friend who lives in Northeast Ohio. He is both an old friend and a friend who is old. He has a British Seagull hanging in his garage. The disgusting little thing is hanging directly over a Harley Davidson chopper. I see deep significance in this altar like arrangement. One of the most satisfying days of our lives was when we hurled our British Seagull into a dumpster. To this day the memory of the sound rings pleasantly in my memory. It was a perfect pitch… a slam dunk as they say in the ‘hood. The satisfaction level is right up there with the first concert we played… almost, I daresay, as good as sex.

We had some friends who lived on another Alden… a yawl… further in from the burbs. I guess this was because they had a smaller dinghy. Remember this… it is significant. There will be a short quiz next period. They were more affluent too. Perhaps I shouldn’t mention it but their Alden had a “protuberance” added to it’s keel. The tale of that protuberance is a great… maybe even a marvelous and deeply mystical story… but we’ll save it for later.

One fine day the four of us decided we’d go for dinner to the Chinese Restaurant at the east end of Marathon. It’s located right there beside Vaca Cut. We wanted to go there for three reasons. First and most importantly they served hot sake. Second they had good food. Third and last we knew both owner and the entertainer who worked there (and probably still does). Anyway we went in and ordered some sushi and a carafe each of hot sake. To a true boater and resident of the Conch Republic a carafe of sake does not last very long. We had the poor server scurrying back and forth in a most piteous manner. Our friend suggested to the waitress that she might as well bring us the whole bottle of sake, heated up of course, because that would save her a lot of running back and forth. The bottle she brought was one of the “fifth” variety described above. Our friend, upon seeing this piteously small container, questioned the lass about whether she had a somewhat larger container. She said she’d have to clear it with the manager. This feat was accomplished easily because not only did the manager know our friend who operated a large and well known yacht maintenance company but of course he knew us too because we were well known entertainers. Although it took a while the new bottle arrived.

It was a JEROBOAM. I’ll bet the thing held at least two gallons. That is why it took so long to arrive, it takes a bit of time to heat a volume of liquid like that even in an industrial size restaurant galley. I suppose you’re beginning to get the picture… we simply could not afford the social embarrassment and accompanying stigma of being defeated by this mere bottle.

Here we must digress briefly and explain the moral and legal views extant regarding the consumption of alcoholic beverages in the keys back during those prehistoric times. When we first went to the Keys it was long before any law forbidding drinking and driving. Oh, sure there were probably laws against public intoxication but they were only enforced in places like Boston, Massachusetts… and certainly not in the Irish section even there. People regularly drove around Overseas Highway with a beer can sitting on the dashboard. No one thought anything of it. I remember you could take your drink in a “to go cup” from any restaurant or bar in the State of Florida and it was totally fine. But on with the story.

We did manage to drink most of that tank of sake. We’re pretty sure we couldn’t do it today but maybe… Eventually we had to pay the bill and leave. We thought it might be wisest if we took the last of the bottle to consume on the way out to their boat. We had gone over to their boat and left our dory tied up there. Then we had taken their small dinghy up to Dockside so we could go to the restaurant.

We found ourselves back at Dockside and clumsily got in the small dinghy for the trip back out to their yawl. It was a beautiful evening. In the Keys the water is warm and very clear. Clear enough that one can easily see those illegal lobsters on the bottom. It’s interesting that lobsters are only visible when it is not lobster season. During lobster season any lobster visible is known as a “short”. You don’t want to get caught with a “short.” If you do your period of freedom will be short. You’re gonna go to the Graybar Hotel. We had a friend who sailed into the Boca Inlet with a boatload of “shorts” that mysteriously crawled into the hold of his vessel somewhere in the Bahamas. We haven’t seen him in a really long time.

As I said their dinghy was a lot smaller than ours. It was so small that with the four of us in it we had only a couple of inches of freeboard. Since it was such a pleasant night we decided we would sail back to their boat. It was too nice a night to spoil with the sound of the dinghy kicker. I might add they did not have a British Seagull. They had a Tohatsu. It was dependable.

Sailing back to the yawl required several tacks in and out among the anchored boats. Of course appropriate greetings had to be exchanged with other boaters still awake and sitting on their afterdecks or in their cockpits. Things gang aglay as Robert Burns would have said during one of the tacks. That little bit of freeboard took it’s toll and we were instantly upside down in the harbour. Fortunately the remaining sake was saved. We passed the bottle around once or twice while treading water and trying to decide what to do to rectify our somewhat damp situation. We came to the conclusion that it would be better to swim the rest of the way back to the yawl than to try to right the dinghy and clamber back in. Actually as it turned out only one of us actually did the active swimming. Our friend’s wife seized the painter and began stroking back to the yawl. We three dove under the capsized dinghy with the remains of the jeroboam and allowed ourselves to be towed along in grand style.

Unfortunately there is that story about the wages of sin. After a short while the air started getting short of oxygen and we later determined that sea water had contaminated the sake but the evidence of that part came later. We got back to their boat and got on board. A boarding ladder is a truly wonderful thing when one is, shall we say, incapacitated. I’ll tell you about the consequences of the jeroboam in the next chapter… now it’s time for a commercial break!