Turning Turtle on Turtleday

Turning Turtle on Turtleday

So it goes sort of like this.

C-T-X-C  was the course

This year Curley is driving and Mo is tweaking.  I still go by the name Goddammit.   Goddammit do this – Goddammit do that.  It’s a different configuration because Mo has driven for the last 74 years. 

It was windy last night.  We decided to put the cars all the way out on the jib.  It was a good decision. 

Curley banged the start and we were playing the violin in the front row.  We had good point and we tacked in the right spots.  The wind was strong - Mo and Curley played the fiddle on the main.

We were coming to the mark in a strong position.

Curley – ‘Goddammit put up the pole’.   ‘Mo, falling off,  going around the mark’.

Then it happens.

Curley tries to move to the other side of the boat during the turn and loses the tiller.  We round up and head back to the mark.  Stooges has no lifelines and he has nothing to hold on to.  

 Curley is ½ off the boat and looks like an upside down turtle that is trying to right himself on the gunwale.    All of his limbs are moving but not in unison.  I’m thinking – no, no, don’t fall off – I might not be able to get you back on the boat until tomorrow.  The boat is all over the place because no one is driving.

I am yelling ‘Watch the mark – don’t hit the mark’.  Mo is yelling ‘don’t hit the mark!!’

Later, Curley said that he couldn’t see the mark.  In his turtle move, all he could see was blue sky above. A turtle on his back can only see sky – don’t you know?

He was looking.

The turtle rights himself and 10 boats are trying to round the mark and  he is trying to get the hell out of the way.  I saw 60 eyeballs that all looked like ‘deer in the headlights’.  They were right in front of us.

Somehow everyone moved around us and we avoided collision and no red flags.  We still finished DTL.

(DTL = dead turtle last)

I thought Curley was going a little loco when he said:

“You know – in retrospect …. if Goddammit had not been putting up the pole and Mo had not been jibing the main – this would not have happened”

Curley started apologizing so much I had to tell him to shut up.  It took about 30 minutes before we finally got his infamous fbomb off.  We all felt better after that. 

I sail on the best boat on the river!  I would not miss it for the world.