Curious Bedfellows
When you don't always choose who you bunk with
We took on a drifter for a few days as emergency crew. He had run away from the circus, which was when we picked him up, wandering the streets of Copenhagen. We offered him a week’s wage and board for some crew work and he signed up.
I had to provision the boat before we set sail and while at the grocery store, told him to grab something he may want to have for a quick lunch. I grabbed a wrap, and as we are ringing up at the till along comes his choice - smoked wild caught salmon, camembert, goats cheese and rice paper…
Turns out our man had once apprenticed as a chef before eventually giving that up too. But he could cook well so I put him in the galley and we enjoyed his creative creations for the week he as with us.
Peter tells me about a crew he had while delivering a boat up the wild coast.
He took on a deck hand to help out with a delivery as they were short handed and needed help on night watches.
Now, that part of the coastline is notoriously rough and littered with shipwrecks. ( who could forget the Warratah) As they sailed out of East London the coastline receded from view and the rolling ocean swell started to rock the boat none too gently. The new deckhand started to freak out and decided to head down below. After a few hours they were wondering what he was getting up to and went to investigate.
He was nowhere to be found. Eventually they started opening up the cupboards and found him naked curled up inside a wardrobe where he stayed curled up for the 2 days it took them to reach PE. Once they had safely tied up in PE, he stepped off the boat without a word and was thankfully never seen or heard of again.
A colleague of mine was part of a delivery crew on a yacht from France to the States. As they motored out of the marina, the skipper handed over the wheel and disappeared below. After a couple of hours my man wanted a relief and went below only to find that the skipper had locked himself in his cabin and was getting rip roaring drunk on booze he smuggled onboard.
After 2 days and nights of solid boozing, he finally ran out of drink and staggered into the galley, grumpy and terribly hungover. My man made him a greasy breakfast and left him to it. After another 2 days of shaking off a terrible hangover he shook himself and said right! “Give me the snag list.” Whereupon he disappeared into the engine room and worked like a man demented until they had crossed the Atlantic, finally delivering the boat to the happy client in a better condition than when they took delivery.
I was in a small marina in Poland close to the Russian border. I was making my way back to the boat one evening after dining ashore and saw a chap sheltering from the rain inside the marina building with his worldly possessions strapped to his bicycle. We got chatting and he told me he had given up the rat race.
He found he had too little time for himself, to learn and absorb things outside of the restricted work hours. His current area of interest was solar powered aquaponics - but he could explain in detail any topic of your choosing.
I dubbed him the Gentle wandering Philosopher of Poland and he had an uncanny resemblance to Dostoevsky. He seemed to have unlocked the secret of life and when I left I felt like I had just met someone extraordinary in an unexpected encounter. I sometimes find myself wondering how he is and where he may be now.