Sailing with Tom

Jul 22, 20150

Editor’s Note: The following column was originally published in 2010.

My friend Tom and his wife Emily often disagree about the wisdom of his decision to buy a powerboat just to leave it in his garage. She says it was silly to spend all that money on a boat that hasn’t been wet for two years, to which Tom counters, with devastating accuracy, that it gets wet every time he washes it.

I like to go over to Tom’s and sit in his boat with him because, like any good captain, he gives me free beer. Often I’ll help him with nautical chores, such as the time we installed his fish finder, which is how we determined that there are no fish in his garage.

So I’m shocked when Tom advises me that he has sold the boat, a decision he made entirely on his own after considering all the facts - primarily, the fact that Emily told him if he didn’t sell it he might as well get used to sleeping in it.

I think the implication was that when Tom slept in the thing he would be doing it without Emily. This matters a great deal to Tom.

“It matters more than a boat?” I demand, outraged. Some men are just weak cowards who are unable or unwilling to make a moral stand so that their friends can have free beer.

Tom admits that a real man would elect to adopt a life of celibacy in order to be able to keep a motorboat in his garage so he’d have a place to sleep. He sounds a little sarcastic when he says this.

I agree to go with Tom down to the marina to which he sold it so we can see the thing in the water at least once. The owner of the Ted Pope Marina is a jolly, red-faced guy who says to call him “Captain Pope,” as if one title isn’t enough. He sees how bedazzled Tom is by all the shiny toys on the showroom floor and says that it would be a much better deal if Tom would use his boat as a trade-in, rather than take the check Captain Pope has prepared.

“Hey, we’re not the kind of people who just buy watercraft on impulse,” I say, which is a complete lie.

Tom ruefully explains that his wife has developed an irrational obsession with parking her car in the garage. “Then get a sailboat, and leave it here at the marina!” Captain Pope enthuses. He hands us his business card, which says Captain Pope, President.

Perfect.

A half an hour later, we’re taking a test sail on a 26’ sailboat, which will cost Tom only $32,000. “Emily would love this,” he says delusionally.

“With it parked at the marina, she won’t be able to hear you snore,” I agree.

Because there is no wind, we are moving at a rate for which the term “imperceptible” was created. “This trip is costing a thousand bucks a foot,” I tell Tom. “For that amount of money, you could hire Bill Gates to carry us on his back.”

Tom isn’t paying attention. “This is like when they ... what do you call it, like when that 16-year-old girl sailed around the world?”

“Bad parenting?”

“Circumnavigation! I could circumnavigate the world on this thing,” Tom declares buoyantly.

“At this speed, we’re not even going to make it back to the marina,” I tell him. This isn’t exactly true — we’ve drifted such a short distance from the dock that with a running start I could probably jump to it. “You think you’d be lonely sleeping in the garage, just wait until you try circumnavigating the globe at an inch an hour.”

“Oh, Emily would go with me.”

“Sure she would.”

Finally, a little breeze arrives, and with it, an important lesson: The long beam at the bottom of the sail is called a “boom” because that’s the sound it makes when it comes sweeping across the boat and knocks you into the water. At least, that’s the noise it makes when it knocks me into the water.

I swim back to the dock, and Tom is towed in by President Captain Pope.

Oddly, Tom doesn’t buy the sailboat.

(Bruce Cameron has a Website at http://www.wbrucecameron.com. To find out more about Bruce Cameron and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at http://www.creators.com.)