Three Ways to Capsize a Boat - Chris Stewart [59]
We rocketed across the open water toward the yacht club, where, in spite of the coolness of the morning, a small group of yachty-looking coves stood gathered on the terrace. They were certainly dressed for the part, in dapper yachting caps and blazers and white ducks, sipping gin and tonics and scanning the water with a hand shielding the brow. I hardened up a little more and then, to my dismay, realized that we were heading fast for the rocks beneath the terrace. “READY ABOUT?” I yelled.
“What on earth do you mean by that?” asked Ana. She stared at me in amazement, as if I’d shouted something mildly distasteful.
“It’s what you say when you’re going to go about,” I explained quickly, with one eye on the rocks racing toward us. “I say, ‘Ready about?’ and then ‘Lee ho,’ and …”
“Why can’t you just say, ‘We’re going to turn now,’ like you did in Greece?”
“Because it’s not so concise and it’s open to misinterpretation and also it’s not what you’re supposed to say … right? And we’d better make this snappy now; the shit’s about to hit the fan. READY ABOUT?”
“All right,” Ana said begrudgingly. (Although “Ready about?” is in fact a rhetorical question and as such does not require an answer.)
“LEE HO,” I howled and whipped the tiller over.
“What the …!” yelled Ana as the boom slammed across and smacked her hard on the ear. The boat tipped over, quick as a bucket, leaving Ana and me flailing about, half in and half out of the water. Thus discomposed, I lost control of the tiller and the boat kept on coming round.
“LET GO THE SHEETS!” I shouted.
“WHAT SHEETS?” Ana shouted straight back.
Then the wind burst into the sail on the other side and, with all our weight on the wrong side, we rolled into the water and the boat on top of us.
“Bugger!” I burbled as the icy water closed over my head. I scrabbled my way out from beneath the sail and scanned the water for my girlfriend.
Before long she bobbed to the surface and we clung together to the upturned hull. I looked sheepishly over at her. She shook the water out of her hair and spat out a mouthful of sea. “I knew this was going to happen,” she said and nodded toward her wrist. “Look, I even left my watch behind with Rosemary.”
And as she said this she smiled—a big, broad, watery smile over the upturned bottom of the boat—and then laughed out loud. It was a moment of epiphany for me. This is a most singular woman, I thought to myself. There she is down on her beam ends, bobbing about in the water, and she’s laughing. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the cut of her jib. I realized then, fully and emphatically, that I’d found the woman that I wanted to live the rest of my life with. You might even say—though perhaps best not in front of Ana—that I’d finally come ashore.
The Jumblies
BY EDWARD LEAR
I
They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, “You’ll all be drowned!”
They called aloud, “Our Sieve ain’t big,
But we don’t care a button! We don’t care a fig!
In a Sieve we’ll go to sea!”
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
II
They sailed away in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they sailed so fast,
With only a beautiful pea-green veil
Tied with a riband by way of a sail,
To a small tobacco-pipe mast;
And every one said, who saw them go,
“O won’t they be soon upset, you know!
For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long,
And happen what may, it’s extremely wrong
In a Sieve to sail so fast!”
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
III
The water it soon came in, it did,
The water it soon came in;
So to keep them dry, they