Thurston

For those of you considering an extended stint out of country, a few words of advice – join the local yacht club. It is not like the Montego Bay Yacht Club is anything as high fallutin’ as the ones in Palm Beach, but joining can give the same type of benefits. Primarily, branded merchandise and close contact with people who own boats.

There comes a time in every man’s life when he must ask himself, “how many times can I go to the beach and laze around all afternoon while snarfing meat patties and frosty malt libations and simultaneously getting sand in my shorts?” Maybe you have yet to achieve this acme. Maybe you are well past it. Maybe you do not yet know the tactile pleasures of sandy shorts. Maybe you are a woman.

Regardless, I have reached this pinnacle and found the answer to be “as many times as you can get away with.”

Sadly, the damned Job keeps getting in the way. What, with having to spend five sevenths of all of the available daylight hours within sight of the sea, yet unable to merrily splash about (a vast improvement over previous failed attempts at more melancholy splashing about). Alas, even on the unencumbered weekends, there are times when the Fates have reasoned that driving to the beach is not in my tapestry. Clouds are probably their biggest reason, and laziness their second.

Anyway, since it is just next door, the beers are cheap, and the dues are small, we joined the yacht club. Of course, just providing them with a handful of Jamaican currency was not all there was to it. We also needed the necessary and required referrals from a current club member and a sitting board member so that the full board, at a regularly scheduled meeting, could better judge our adequacy for membership and subsequent association with the other members.

Once the referrals were in place, the board met, took a good long look at our handful of Jamaican currency and, “ping ph’tang!”, we find ourselves hobnobbing with the hardly hoi polloi.

Hoo bah.

Once the dues are paid, the membership requirements are rather light. Unlike a book club where you may have to read the occasional set of Cliff Notes, there are absolutely no reading requirements, except perhaps for the sign which prohibits bare chests in the bar. I have read that sign, good club member that I am, and wonder about the cause of its display, back in a time when half naked tars from around the globe frolicked and cursed at the yacht club bar, embarrassing the more genteel members and goading them to action, late one cloudy and moonless night in the dank and smoky boardroom, demanding that controls be enacted to eliminate such decadence, demanding that a forcefully composed sign be hung at the bar entrance. “No bare chests or swim suits in the bar or club rooms, matey”, it will read.

Things are much more reserved now, and the “matey” has long since faded from the sign, almost as if it was never there at the first. In place of the cursed cursing tars, there is some card playing on Tuesday nights, the ladies play Mahjongg for most of Thursday, and Friday is Happy Hour from four bells until quarter to five bells. These activities are fine and all, but our participation in them really pays if we get invited to go sailing on a Saturday or Sunday. Recent Saturdays have been good, as the club sponsors what they call a “Captain’s Sail”, whereby any able bodied member can cruise about Montego Bay for three or four hours on a participating ten to fifteen meter sailing yacht, captained by the owner and whoever else wants to give instructions at the time, as there are sometimes a half dozen boat owners (“captains”) on board.

The rum punch served on these jaunts is the best on the island.

The first time we did this voyage, the jib thingy connecting the mast to the deck sheared off at the bow thingy, while we ran with the wind back to the boat parking place. Fortunately, crisis was averted when all five captains started shouting orders at one another.

When all was said and done, the mast stayed put, the sails were dropped, and we motored back to the harbor, amidst the self-congratulations of our many captains, who averted certain catastrophe through their courage and conflicting leadership and dumb luck that we were heading downwind at the time.

A few weeks ago, we were asked to crew for a friend during the Sunday J-22 regatta. This regatta was just one of a series of races held for two thirds of the year between six to ten identical boats which anchor at the yacht club. Every boat is 6.706 meters long at the water line, with a single mast, hoisting mainsail, jib, and spinnaker, each with a crew of three or four. The only difference between the crafts is their general condition, the age of their sails, and the general condition and age of their crew.

My assigned duty was as ballast, commensurate with my age and general condition. Once we were at sea I learned that this assignment would also include hoisting sails, rigging the spinnaker and its boom, and performing a little dance with the mast, so as not to get knocked overboard by the front sail during a turn through the wind [Doin’ the Jib Jibe Jig, if you had to give the motion a name suitable for American Bandstand]. Regardless, it was great fun. As well, a nice view of the city and the other sailing boats, and lies and beers afterwards while we wore our shirts in the yacht club bar.

The feeling there is more like a Ty Webb club than a Judge Smails club, but less slapstick overall…. And best of all, we now know people who own boats, and people we know now know that we know people who own boats, and those people know people who write the society pages for the Gleaner.

Honest, the Gleaner has regular society pages, a fitting accompaniment to the “North Coast Happenings” and “Kingston After Hours” pages, which are like photo journals for the rich and famous. These pages chronicle the local posh events and those who attend them. “Society”, if you please.

We attended a fete for the Montego Bay Marine Park the other night. A few days later, I am instructed to read the aforementioned pages, wherein I find “…blah blah… Marine Park gala… blah blah blah… attended by a long list of who’s who including… blah blah blah… Mr. and Mrs. Alan Palmer….”

So.

Who’s who, huh?

We be who.

Dat’s who.

Gotta go out and buy me one of those silly captain’s hats. Read More......