Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip/that started from this tropic port about this tiny ship . . .
That was not the song running through my brain when I accepted the date, even though it is a catchy tune. The truth is, I’d heard Lyle Lovett’s “If I Had a Boat” on the radio earlier in the day, and I couldn’t get it out of my head, even though I think it’s a stupid song. Who takes a pony on a boat, Mr. Lovett?
But when a nice guy asked me to spend a Saturday afternoon with him on his boat, I wondered if maybe it was a sign. I mean, how often is a song about a boat running through your head when you get asked out on a date? Or in my case, how often do I get asked out on a date? It was definitely a sign, I decided.
He wanted to take the boat up the Intracoastal Waterway and dock at a restaurant called Cap’s for an early dinner. He picked me up at a boat ramp near the lighthouse in St. Augustine, and we headed north toward Cap’s. I’m not sure what made him say it, but a few minutes into the trip, he said, “We should be gone about three hours.”
Hmm. A three-hour tour. Now the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song was running through my head.
“Can you steer for a minute while I open the wine?” he asked. Without waiting for my answer, he moved out of his seat and began fumbling around in a cooler at the front of the boat.
Until that day, the sum total of my boating experience was stepping aboard (with assistance from a nice, strong man) and graciously accepting a fruity beverage. I’ve done that probably eighty-six times. So when this guy asked me to take the wheel, I fought the panic. All these telephone poles with green and red triangular signs were sticking out of the water, and I knew they meant something, but they might as well have been written in Swahili. Because I don’t speak boating.
Fortunately, I did it right long enough for him to open a bottle of wine and pour me a glass. I sat back, relieved, when he took the wheel and began working on that glass of wine.
When Cap’s came into sight, he said, “Good, there’s room for us to dock. Can you go put the bumpers out?”
I prided myself on figuring out what he meant. When I’d finished, he pointed to a rope on the front of the boat and said, “Now take that line, and when I get close to the dock, jump out and tie us off.”
So I stood barefoot on the front (the stem?) of his boat and waited for him to get me close enough to the dock to jump off.
The only problem was that it never happened. As I stood waiting to jump, picturing in my head what would happen if I missed the dock, he jumped off the back of the boat and quickly tied off the back end (the stern?). Then he realized I was still standing on the boat. “Shit!” he screeched, running to the end where I was and yelling, “Toss me the line!”
Well, I don’t even need to tell you what happened when I tossed the line. “Shit!” he yelled again. The current was quickly pulling the boat away from the dock, and the boat and I were now roughly perpendicular to the dock. I remember being glad we were still tied to the dock because I wouldn’t know how to turn that damn boat around and dock it myself, but then I realized that we were drifting toward a big pontoon docked behind us.
“Shit!” he yelled again, untying the line and jumping in.
I ran to the back of the boat and stuck my leg out in an attempt to push us away from the pontoon. The current was so strong Mr. Olympia couldn’t have performed that leg press.
“Shit!” he yelled again, joining me in the attempt to push off the pontoon. Then he shouted, “Gun the engine!”
“Huh?”
“Gun the engine!”
“Um, I don’t know how to do that.”
He gestured toward the handle to the right of the steering wheel (the throttle?) and made the motion of pushing it up.
“I don’t think you want me to do that,” I said.
“Dammit, gun the engine!”
I have a little BMW convertible that I like to drive really fast. So when I hear the words “gun the engine,” it can only mean one thing: all the way. I shrugged my shoulders and pushed that handle thing all the way up.
Yes, he would have been better off with a pony on his boat. What happened next is a little blurry, but I remember him jumping away from the side of the boat and grabbing that control thingy (the throttle?) while simultaneously yelling, “God dammit Almighty!”
And all I could think was that I’m a way better cusser than he is.
Of course, we hit the pontoon. And we did it in front of approximately one hundred people who were eating at Cap’s and standing on the dock sipping Coronas while waiting for a table. Once again, I’d managed to provide dinner and a show to those privileged to observe one of my ill-fated dates.
I guess I wasn’t surprised when he turned the boat away from Cap’s and gunned the engine, saying out loud that he was too embarrassed to eat there.
I could make a few easy jokes about how my date was shipwrecked. Or how I thought he was going to make me walk the plank. But honestly, I keep wondering how the hell the man thought I was going to tie a knot that would keep the front end of that boat secured to the dock. I was wearing flipflops when I got on that damn boat, so he had absolutely no evidence of my ability to tie a knot.
From this moment on, pretending to be interested in a football game is the maximum amount of work I’m willing to do on a date.
Now that I think about it, I like Lyle Lovett’s song, especially this verse:
The mystery masked man was smart
He got himself a Tonto
‘Cause Tonto did the dirty work for free
But Tonto he was smarter
And one day said Kemo Sabe
Kiss my ass I bought a boat
I’m going out to sea
Working on a date don’t float my boat, Kemo Sabe. And I’m not interested in being your first mate.
