An Insufferable Clown and Smudged Lipstick

I felt lazy last week so didn’t do a blog. Only two people complained!

Like it or not, here’s another tale of De Toekomst, the Dutch shrimper that John Morris and I sailed from Holland to the Dominican Republic.

I can’t recall how or where John managed to come up with Nigel—our supposed engineer—but we would have been better off if he hadn't bothered. Nigel was from England and modeled himself on John Lennon—long hair and wire rimmed glasses (which I suspect had plain lenses). He also used the term 'Brahma' to express approval of something.

   

It wasn’t long before both John and I were thoroughly fed up with the clown. The thought of his long hair becoming entangled in the moving parts of the engine didn’t unduly perturb either of us.

   

One of Nigel’s pet themes was the importance of being able to adapt readily to adversity and hardship. But when our cooking gas ran out, he fell short of the mark.

While John and I contented ourselves with cold food and drink, Nigel became desperate--he had to have his hot food and cups of tea. I suspect he would have held matches under a saucepan or kettle had the vessel not been equipped with a diesel heater in the galley.

De Toekomst

John and I were in the wheelhouse quaffing a couple of beers as we steamed down the coast of Portugal on a calm sunny morning. We could see the top of Nigel’s head through the forward hatch as he held a pot of baked beans on top of the heater—a device obviously designed to warm a room rather than cook food. You could rest your hand on top of the thing for a few seconds without being burned, so the process was destined to be a time-consuming.

The temptation was too great for me to resist: I padded forward on bare feet, stuffed a rag into the belching chimney then snuck back to the wheelhouse to observe the results.

It was not long before black smoke began billowing from the hatchway. I’ve got to hand it to Nigel though, he was no quitter. Every few seconds his head would come thrusting out through the smoke, eyes watering as he gulped air like a beached fish. It obviously never occurred to him that something might be amiss with the chimney. Perhaps he’d been emulating his hero a trifle over-zealously in terms of hallucinogenic substances and damaged his brain.

Oh…I almost forgot. Another Nigel story. One that almost ended in disaster. This could be the only recorded incident of lives being saved due to someone having to take a leak.

We were heading down the English Channel, pounding into a head-sea on a black night with the wind approaching gale force. Our hero was at the wheel while John slept below and I was curled up on the small wheelhouse bunk. I awoke around three in the morning and went aft for a pee.

From day one, Nigel had been obsessed with the radar—drawn to it like a moth to flame. On a number of occasions I’d cautioned him not to use the device as a substitute for a proper visual lookout, but he remained unconvinced.

Upon finishing my business, I returned to the wheelhouse where Nigel had his eyes glued to the radar. “There’s something funny going on,” he announced. There was a solid line bisecting the screen.

Shoving him aside, I spun the wheel hard. His ‘something funny’ was the towering side of an oil tanker. We missed it by no more than a hundred feet. I was tempted to throw the idiot over the side that night, but managed to restrain myself.

John gave Nigel the boot when we reached Gibraltar.

We remained at the ‘Rock’ for a month or so, painting the boat and installing an automatic pilot for the Atlantic crossing. Because of a previous run-in with certain Gibraltarian authorities, I was not permitted ashore. As long as I stayed aboard the vessel I was okay—it was considered to be Dutch territory. But if I set foot on the dock I’d be arrested and thrown in the clink for three months. The authorities stationed a twenty-four hour guard by the boat.

But I had a bunch of friends in Gibraltar and some of them would drop around for a drink of an evening. Hidden below decks, the girls would dress me as one of them—with wig, lipstick and mascara—and we’d toddle off to the Black Swan pub.

All went well until one night when a brawl broke out and five coppers came swarming into the ‘Swan’. I must have been spotted darting out the back door without my wig because when I attempted to sneak back aboard the boat, there were two officers waiting on the dock beside it.

I was forced to backtrack around to another pier and swim to the vessel. At that time, the water by the docks was a cesspool—choked with oil and all kinds of horrible stuff. I emerged from the water on the far side of the boat like the creature from the swamp.

   

Worst of all though, my lippy was smudged.

Edited by Davina Chapman

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