LandfallVoyages

A couple of days after the bulk of his crew jumped ship, Captain Dog managed to hire on some new deckhands. I’m wondering how he finds these people, because most of this new crew look just as green as the last. Some kind of temp service that specializes in matching workers to jobs that they have few qualifications for? You could make a hit reality show off of something like that. Or maybe he’s called for reinforcements from among his family and friends and if that’s the case, you have to take what you can get. Either way, it’s high comedy watching one of the new recruits try to figure out how to let loose a dockline. +5 points for effort and +3 for no tears.

The following day, there’s a storm of activity next door. The crew bustles around, doing engine checks and getting the boat ready to go. We’re treated to a lively parade of excited new passengers, followed by crewmen pushing dock carts piled dangerously high with duffle bags and expensive dive gear, and beer. The Captain has laid in ice chest upon huge ice chest of beer. So much beer that one of the female passengers keeps walking over to the ice chests, peering inside and saying things like, “Wow! That’s a lot of beer.” or “I can’t believe you have that much beer!” and my all-time favorite, “Are we gonna drink all this?”

In a bit, the activity dies down and everybody just sort of stands around waiting, while the boat idles at the dock. After a couple of hours, someone breaks open the beer rations and things become much more cheerful on board the shark boat. As the hours creep by, we learn that all they’re waiting for is the Captain to come back from the Port Office with their papers and then they can take off on another grand adventure. They drink some more beer to make the waiting go by faster.

When the captain finally does return, his mouth says there’s been a little hiccup with the paperwork but the rest of his face says that things went really bad down at the Captain of the Port’s office. It sounds like they don’t have their papers and they’re not cleared to leave. Turns out the Port wanted a couple thousand dollars from him before they were willing to let the boat take off. I wonder if Captain Dog has partied away that money or used it to replace the bait, because he tells the crew to shut down the engines and the passengers start making plans to get dinner and do a little sightseeing in town. Fingers crossed that they aren’t planning to take the scenic route along the strip bar street. Yes, there is a street for that in Ensenada.

We hear them talking about how this delay will mess up their dive schedule and then, this little snippet of conversation wafts on over to our boat…”Well if we get there and it’s late, can’t we do a night dive? Can we do a night dive?” This, I think, from the woman who was so impressed with the beer supply. Captain Dog busts out a huge, hearty laugh that sounds like it’s bearhugging the passenger from behind and booms, “What a great attitude. Awesome! That’s like saying, oh well, we ran out of tequila, but we can still do coke!” Do. Coke. Not drink Coke. WTF??? I really hope he’s talking about Coke the beverage and not Coke the recreational uh-oh.

Two minutes later, he fires up the engines and the crew starts yelling for everybody to, “Get back on board the boat, get on the boat! Hurry up! C’mon, let’s go, let’s go!!!”  and then they take off from the dock like all the hounds of hell are chasing them down. In all the high-spirited confusion, they left the milk crate they use as a step, sitting on the dock. +95 points for style and execution to the crewman who snagged that sucker with a boat hook only nanoseconds from the point where it would have been unsnaggable. I heard they may have missed a couple of people and I’m positive that they’re not supposed to be screaming full throttle out of the bay and into the night like that. One of the guys on another shark boat said he saw them later on, out by the islands. Running dark, with no navigation lights or anything.

Maybe they were just excited they finally got cleared to go. If they didn’t get clearance, I have a hard time understanding Captain Dog’s decision making process. I mean, it’s not like the Mexican government doesn’t know he’s out here. And you can’t miss the guards walking the docks every hour or so, clipboard in hand, making sure all the boats that are supposed to be here are here and that no unaccounted boats are hanging around. He’d have to know he’d get caught. I wonder what’s going to happen when the Navy finds out Captain Dog did a runner…

Which brings us to now. They’re baaack! Cue Jaws music. I can tell it’s Blue Cammo by the way the captian is completely failing to take advantage of his twin engine setup. If he’d just split the screws, and put one engine in forward while the other’s in reverse, he’d be able to walk the boat neatly sideways to the dock. Instead he’s going for maximum power, gunning both engines to the limit–first forward, then reverse, with hardly any time spent in neutral to let the poor engines breathe. During this awesome display of seamanship, he’s doing a pretty good impression of an overly dramatic teenage girl, texting a FB status update that lets all her frenemies know that she’s srsly guys imma fail this driving test cause i cnt prelllell park n this testr guys so mean.

About a hundred years later, he manages to get the tail end close enough so that an anxious looking crewman can hop off the stern rail with a mooring line in hand and try to tie the boat off. Apparently, nobody ever bothered to show him how you make up a proper cleat hitch and this is srsly guys just painful to watch. He gets one and a half turns into the thing and then totally loses his nerve. I watch his head swing from the boat, to the cleat, to the rope in his hands, and then back down to the cleat. He finally decides to leave the cleat hitch halfway done, and then takes the tail end of the line down to the next cleat and ties another partial cleat hitch and calls that good. Srsly.

Then the captain resumes his full throttle forward-backward torture of the engines, while the rest of the crew scurries up and down the boat, holding fenders over the side. Not tying them off or anything. Just holding them. Like they were playing charades and the answer is those little plastic spacers that keep everything lined up when you’re grouting up new tile on the kitchen floor. Finally, they manage to get both the bow and the stern tied off, without anybody losing any body parts. Which is a certifiable miracle. One of those guys definitely has rope burns on the tips of his fingers. They’ve hooked up their shore power cord without too much trouble, but entirely left out any spring lines, so the boat is kind of surging back and forth along the limits of the bow and stern lines. Looks hella comfy.

At first, it seems like they’ve come back carrying fewer people than they started out with. Like the passengers are missing? Capt. Dog hops off the boat and heads for the Cruiseport Village marina office, his shoulders all hunched forward and a look on his face like he just got sent to the principal’s office. One of the crewmembers starts to follow, but gets shut down, “Remember…we’re not supposed to set foot off the boat.” They settle themselves down on deck, making awkward small talk and look generally glum all the way around. They wait.  A passenger comes out on deck to exchange contact info with a crew member. I take this as a good sign that a wonderful time was had by all and nobody got eaten by sharks or lost at sea or left behind. After a minute, the passenger goes back down below and the crewmen resume milling about the decks in mostly anxious silence. They wait some more.

I’m washing a sink full of dishes when a desert cammo helmet catches the corner of my eye. One of Mexico’s finest Marines marches grimly past our forward port hole and on down the dock toward the shark boat. Trailing behind him like a string of baby ducks, are a couple of the local Port security guards, a Cruiseport Village marina representative, maybe three or four people from the Port Office, the shark boat’s captain, 5 more Marines, armed to the teeth, and bringing up the rear–a German Shepard drug sniffing dog. Once they’re on board, they swarm over the boat like Army ants. Two of the Marines stay out on deck, fingers casually resting on the triggers of their guns, keeping watch over the seated crewmembers. Passports and paperwork are collected and scrutinized. The rest of the group make a deliberate ciruit of the decks before disappearing into the belowdecks region or climbing up into the wheelhouse. They’re out of sight for what seems like an eon. The crewmembers wait silently on deck and watch the Marines watching them back.

In ones and twos, various government officials begin leaving the boat and with each departure, the crew’s morale improves visably. Little bursts of chit-chat start popping up but they fade away quick.The Cruiseport Village rep materializes again and before she leaves, distributes all the passports back to their respective owners. This is a fine development as far as the crew is concerned and they now audibly relax into a torrent of conversation, wondering aloud in vauge terms about things they can’t actually talk about while the Marines are still standing there watching them. I’m thinking those Marines know more English than they let on.

More officials leave the boat until finally, it’s only the Marines who are left. Two soldiers disembark with the drug sniffing dog and walk to the end of the dock. Heads close together, they have a hurried, whispery conversation and then the guy on the right whips out a cell phone and starts talking to one of his superiors. The dog wags its tail contentedly, sniffs the air a couple of times and then drops its nose down for a more thorough examination of the dock piling. The call ends and all three return to the sharkboat for another walkabout.

And then, it’s over. Five minutes after the Marines take off, everybody still on the boat jumps into action. The crew are practically racing the overloaded dock carts up to two pickup trucks waiting in the parking lot and probably manage to set a land speed record in the time it takes them to clear an entire mountain of air tanks, gear, duffle bags, and ice chests off the boat. Meanwhile, one of the crew goes around getting contact info from some of the passengers because, “You never know how these things go. We might need to get in touch.” Capt. Dog coordinates the controlled chaos and does an impressive job of getting passengers, gear, and what looks like some of the crew, off the boat and safely on their way. Again, in record time. Dude may have missed his calling.

“Hurry up!” the captain’s voice goes rolling down the dock. “We’re supposed to be gone by now!” With that, the last crewmember still on land hops back aboard and they’re off. The dock is empty and silent in their wake. I wonder if they got in trouble. I wonder if they’re in danger of losing the boat or getting kicked out of the country. I hope not. Crazy as their whole scene is, I haven’t yet met a one of them who’s an asshole. They creep back all quiet like after dark, and now I’m thinking they were just trying to take on fuel before the fuel dock shuts down.

They slip away again, in the wee hours of the morning, and so far, they haven’t come back. Somebody heard they might have gone back up to San Diego. Whether that means they got booted out of the country is up for debate. Shark season’s winding down around here. I think they do fishing charters, as well. Maybe they just moved on. At any rate, we wish them well. It might be quieter here, with them gone from the marina, but it’s also a lot less colorful.