SARGASSO SAILS

by STEVIE MACK

PROLOGUE



     "Larry," the hand seemed to say as it snaked its way down the bar.
    "And this is Evelyn," as the hand withdrew and patted the backside of the blonde anchored to the barstool next to me. By the look of her hair, it was obvious that her father owned a platinum mine.
    "We're from Canada too," he finished as he displayed his t-shirt: 'Americans have the right to bear arms. Canadians have the right to bare breasts'.
    Oh boy, I thought, a redneck canuck...better a t-shirt than a tattoo.
    But Larry wasn't finished, and for the next while I was forced to endure his synopsis of their adventures down the west coast of Florida.
    The setting was the Tiki-Key Bar in Key West. It was late January and the sun was in its last stages for the day. Its shifts were getting longer which made things better for sailing. An extra hour of sunlight made for better passagemaking for an old, slow tub like Sargasso.
    We were supposed to be underway within the hour, as conditions were predicted to be perfect for our crossing to the Bahamas. Our boat was tied up at the fueling dock while my partner, Jewel, ran off to provision us with more filters, impellers, and God knows what other tasteless morsels Sargasso was in need of. My only task was to fill the jerry cans and that was done. Everything else that I needed could be procurred at the Tiki-Key.
    "So your boat has gone AWOL and you're left with a leaky canoe?" I asked.
    Evelyn gushed:
    "Scarface."
    Indignantly Larry added:
    "The Heavenly Hiawatha, the Great Gitchegoomi, the Wandering Windigo, Scarface indeed! Another round please."
    I had spotted their canoe at the dinghy dock. It wasn't hard to discern that it had seen better times. I was surprised that it even floated with the enormous gobs of body filler that had been applied to its fake birch bark like aluminum hull. The gunwales were split open at the stern.
    The story unfolded that they had brought the canoe from Canada and had stowed it across the stern of their sloop. Unfortunately, the canoe was a good three feet longer than their beam and got whacked by a crab boat's anchor up at the docks in Tarpon Springs. After liberal amounts of Bondo had been applied, they tried towing the canoe behind their boat. This resulted in the loss of their cushions and paddles as it stubbornly refused to sink. In addition, it took on enough water to become a formidable sea anchor.To their amazement, the canoe was always full of fish every morning, fish being something they had thus far not able to procure with their tackle. Finally, they had left it under the gangway of a floating dock and when the tide came in, it squashed the canoe like an empty beer can. However,the damn thing still floated.
    Larry poured another round of drinks while Evelyn continued:
    "So there we were out in Scarface, fishing near a bridge at Treasure Island and I said to Larry you know we're awfully close to the bridge and Larry says but this is where the best fishing is and he makes this huge cast and the line is running out like mad and I figure he has some big swordfish like in The Old Man and the Sea and he can't stop his line and the reel flies out of his hand and up onto the bridge and I say Holy Christ Larry, you caught a SUV and he starts paddling like crazy to get out of there. Holy Christ Larry, you caught a SUV!"
    Evelyn's hypnotizing rhetoric really made me want to get out of there and cast off. One does not normally start a journey at night, but ours had actually started some twelve hours earlier, with lots of last minute catastrophes that meant for several trips to the marine and hardware stores. We were hoping to catch a brisk westerly that would take us up the Hawk's Channel or maybe ride the Gulf stream for a few extra knots. Weather windows...shackles and mussels, alive alive oh.
    "It's like he really wants to hear our problems," Larry interrupted.
    "What it really sounds like is that you need a fishing guide." The husky voice belonged to Kaya Mann, the former poacher, or poachess, who had gone straight after a mishap with an Everglades gator. She still walked with a limp, but was usually leaning against her partner, Reefer, who did bottom jobs (that means cleaning the bottoms of boats) and gave tours out to the reef. Kaya continued:
    "If you're into flats fishing, I know every gunkhole around Florida Bay, and if you're into deep sea fishing, Reefer here knows every hole south of here."
    "So to speak," added Reefer. Reefer was never long on rhetoric. The former Rhodes Scholar had settled in the Keys twenty years ago and had developed a sort of biomass engine that ran on compost. He had experimented with sails made from palm fronds and seemed perfectly happy to have left behind an industrial past.
    Larry jumped in:
    "C'mon over here little lady and let me pour you a drink." By this point I wasn't sure if they were into tequila sunsets or hickory daquiries, but the pitchers kept on coming.
    At the same time, a portly little man in black shorts and a matching cap made a nosedive through the entrance, narrowly avoiding a collision with the local Rasta. Manana was the Rasta's name, and he was leaning against one of the palms that gated the entranceway. Manana hailed from New Jersey and had never actually been to Jamaica. He was reputedly involved with some 'shaky' deals-that being the substance he was dealing in. But nobody really cares what your business is in Key West, and Manana was left alone to do what he seemed to enjoy most: leaning against a palm.
    The newcomer was Mulligan, a pilot by profession, who would tell you hair-raising stories about the good old days, provided you kept him fuelled with enough Irish whiskey. He swore that he could fly anything, but the fact was that he had crashed more planes than anyone else had ever flown throughout the Keys. He remained remarkably unscathed. Mulligan headed straight for Evelyn as if her platinum activated his imaginary compass-as if that were something he knew how to operate.
    "Colleen awrew, would you like some bamboo?" I wasn't sure if this was a pickup line or some sort of Irish limerick, but it caught Evelyn off guard and turned her attention away from the discussion in which Larry and Kaya were engaged.
    "Ah but the sunflowers of Van Gogh could match the radiance of your topping," Mulligan blarneyed while adding a little more brogue to accentuate his Irish. He continued to leave Evelyn speechless for a change:
    "A countenance as bright as yours, would surely lift the mist over the Emerald Isle, as it does my foggy soul.'
    This was my opportunity to make a hasty exit, but I was enjoying this too much to leave.
    "So after she put the diesel in the gas tank, she filled the alcohol stove with sesame oil. She sure is pretty but don't see so well, eh?" Larry's remark seemed to break Evelyn's spell and she turned to face Larry just as Kaya quipped:
    "She must be half-blind to follow an oaf like you around."
    "Larry, Evelyn jumped in, this is Mulligan. He's uh..."
    "An ace. Pilot first class. At your service sir."
    The hand snaked back down the bar:
    "Pleased to meet you. Lemme pour you a drink."
    "No thank you," Mulligan politely declined. "I'm fructose intolerant." But a wee nip of the Irish would be grand.
    It was drinks all around again.
    "So what happened to the uh, Meandering Moose?" I had to ask. There were worse names for boats...the 'Bottomless Beaver' was one of them. Evelyn quickly replied:
    "Larry didn't put the bunny around the tree. You know, when you tie a bowline. The bunny has to go around the tree and then back down the hole. Larry's bunny just popped out of his hole and the Moose meandered off."
    A groan went out in the far corner of the bar. Cecil and his gang of realtors had arrived. Realtors, developers, their lawyers and local politicians, were regarded as pariahs, not only in Key West, but in most of Florida. The quaint docksides and moorings had all given way to condoland, which was pricing the locals out of their homes. This was becoming a concrete jungle for the rich and not-so famous.
    Cecil, nicknamed "Obese'l", had recently purchased the Tiki-Key Bar. Its waterfront location would be ideal for a three or four story condominium, or whatever he could get away with through zoning bribes. The condo consortium sat quietly at a corner table and took in their surroundings. The mood of the bar was lost but Larry continued:
    "Canadian aluminum is the best in the world. The folks at Harley and Wolf shoulda stuck to building motorcycles. If we had built the Titanic with good, Canadian aluminum, she'd still be floating. I'd even trade her even for an inflatible with a four horse on the back."
    "We really don't need a canoe," Kaya insisted.
    "Well pour yourself a drink and think about it...it would double your business." Larry turned and started on Mulligan:
    "You know with this global warming stuff and all, everyone is gonna need a boat, eh? These Keys will be all underwater in a few years. Maybe you should start thinking about moving north. I've got some fine land up near Hudson's Bay...good rich muskeg. Why in a few years you'll be growing bananas up there."
    This was definitely my cue to leave. I thanked Larry and Evelyn for the drinks and started tacking my way back to Sargasso, hoping the night air would sober me up. The jerry cans were full. The last thing I saw before I climbed aboard, was a bashed up canoe tied to the dinghy docks. It was half full of water in which a pinfish had staked its domain.

ON TO CHAPTER 1 "ELECTRIC WATERWORLD"
GET ME OUTTA HERE...I HATE BARS