As sweat rolled off my
bald head and down my face the
skipper said - ´I thought you
were a keen sailing man?’. I
affirmed that I was.
‘ Well do you not know that you
are sea sick?’. He was right.-
Tied up in that sheltered inner
basin I had been attacked by the
subtle remains of an old swell.
One of the older
puffers was tied up astern of us
and their skipper came aboard to
tell that ‘Big Maggie’ was up
the road in the Harbour Bar and
that if the two skippers went up
there they were sure to have
good night. Both men were well
over sixty. My skipper puffed
his pipe and told the other that
he was well past that kind of
thing and anyway he thought too
much of his wife.
The other, much
rougher skipper, did his best to
entice the other up to see Big
Maggie. Eventually our skipper
got so angry that he snatched
the pipe from his mouth, turned
to the other and said ‘You
stupid old fool –are you daft
–you with one foot in the grave
and the other on a bar of
soap!!’
That did it – the old
rascal stumped off in bad humor.
And I had forgotten about my mal
de mer.
Bill Mills