You can always count on your Friends

My friend Rob and I were living aboard a 26 ft. Westerly sailboat in Puerto Banús, a marina situated near Marbella, on the south coast of Spain. It’s rather an up-market place and our vessel must have been about the smallest there.

The Westerly Centaur

One evening, we were sitting in the saloon having a quiet couple of beers when the vessel gave a sudden lurch, the bow dipping down and the stern thrusting skyward.

“Someone’s come aboard,” I announced, somewhat superfluously.

“I think they’ve broken the bow off,” says Rob.

“Oh my God. Must be the Scottish girl,” I said.

The ‘Scottish Girl’ was someone I’d chatted to a couple of times at one of the local bars. She was a lovely girl with a good sense of humour. Unfortunately, she must have also had a raging appetite for food because her figure was one that might charitably be termed generous.

Being male and what some females might term ‘shallow’, my taste in women tended toward the slim-ish. But I had the impression that the ‘Scottish Girl’ had developed a not so platonic interest in me—hence my decision to stay clear of the bar that night.

I quickly slipped into the quarter berth thinking, ‘If she gets her claws on me I’m finished.’



My supposed friend Rob with dinner

(For those not-so-nautical readers, a quarter berth on a small boat is usually a single bunk situated beneath the cockpit, enclosed on the sides by the hull of the vessel and the engine bulkhead. It’s a small space about the size of a coffin. When sleeping there, one’s head is the only part sticking out into the saloon).


I’d no sooner crammed myself into the end of the quarter berth and pulled in a couple of bagged sails to stopper the entrance when I heard a Scottish voice asking Rob where I was.

“He’s just stepped out to get milk,” the bastard replied. “He’ll be back any minute. Come on down and have a cup of tea.”

I was squished into the tiniest space and extremely uncomfortable, but I couldn’t move a muscle.

The tea took fifteen minutes to prepare and drink, and when the girl expressed a desire to leave, my friend Rob talked her out of it with the offer of a beer.

I ended up being kept prisoner for half an hour. When I finally emerged, Rob had a grin from ear to ear.