The only thing I like about sailing is that someone usually has enough sense to bring along a few tubes of Pringles. Any other brand of chip would end up like everything else on board; soaked in a mixture of rum and vomit, and bruised from being tossed about like midgets at a bowling alley. Er, little people. Walking in Point Pleasant Park yesterday it was almost funny to see billions of dollars worth of fibreglass turds, floating so close to Mayor Kelly's raw sewage boil. Marble Head. If ever a yachting race was more aptly named. You get one large asshole who managed to inherit enough money to buy a big boat, then stock it with a bunch of losers trying to escape reality by working as "crew" for beer. I can only imagine the headaches this morning after an evening of hearing themselves talk and record-breaking rum guzzling.
Even the grocery store is jam packed with miniature replicas of tall ships for next week's oncoming Tall Ships tourist-trapping flotilla. Like everyone else wishing Darrell Dexter would bring back food stamps, a plastic schooner is on the top of my grocery list.
Give me a power boat any day. A motor yacht. It goes where I says it goes (I's the skipper) and doesn't "come about" so fast your guests are ducking lest they get beheaded by a fucking swinging aluminum pole. And that's supposed to be relaxing? And just try and take a crap on a sailboat. You get so constipated after a few days you don't care if you get knocked overboard by a rogue wave. Death. Anything to loosen the bowels.
But I digress. The geniuses who work, so the lucky can play have brought us some life-enhancing accoutrements. Like the non-slip sole, designed so the really pissed sailor won't slip on the yacht club floor and subsequently sue the club's ass off. And the breathable, yet waterproof, hooded rain gear, so the sailor passed out in the parking lot won't suffocate but he will stay dry even though he is lying in a pool of his own Mount Gay vomit.
I bought the world's ugliest knee-length raincoat, er foul-weather gear, at The Binnacle on Purcell's Cove Road. Owner Chris Shaw said they couldn't give it away because of the colour but I didn't care – it had dog-walking coat written all over it. Oversized, even on me, with large pockets and a hood, I look like a overstuffed faded tomato, and I love it. In fact, so many people have stopped to ask me where I got that coat that at first I thought they were mocking me, but now, I know they are mocking me. And if I pass out in a puddle of my own vomit, I will stay dry.
The Binnacle, for those of us who don't own a boat, is a locally-owned Marine Chandlery that indeed has all the useless crap you'd need if you do own a boat, i.e. life saving saving equipment lest one of the crew accidentally fall overboard (drunk). BUT, they also have great bags and giftware and clothes and shoes and belts and stuff that you can wear until you die because they will never ever go out of style because they are "classic".
I think they do this because in all actuality sailors are so fucking cheap it isn't even funny.
After all, the beer fart, bullshit-laced wind is free, isn't it?
halifaxbroad@gmail.com
The Binnacle is online at 15 Purcells Cove Road in Halifax or online at www.binnacle.com.
