One more ...

We chartered two 50' sailboats in the BVIs. We intended to charter one, but more and more friends kept wanting to go so my husband decided to take one boat and I took the other. Here's a little bit of what happened ...

1) Everyone else was novice sailors, but eager and willing to help. Fine, except that we'd say something like throw that line to the guy on the dock and they'd do exactly that ... we learned the hard way to be very specific and first say things like, Tie the line to the boat then throw it ashore.

2) One friend decided one night would be fiesta night. She packed Mexican instruments, a pinata and lots of crepe paper decor. We strung the crepe paper around one of the boats and just after we finished eating we had a 3-minute rain shower. The red dye in the crepe paper bled all over the boat. We thought we bought a $500K red-streaked boat because we couldn't get the dye off. We have some great pictures of everyone bending over scrubbbing. Eventually it did come off.

3) We lugged blenders and an inverter to make margaritas but the inverters wouldn't work. We made margaritas in people's shops, people's houses, in restrooms, anywhere we could find an outlet.

4) It was so hot none of us could sleep at night. We'd sleep topside and then a 3-minute rain would come and nothing would dry out so you'd have to go below. At Virgin Gorda's yacht club though the bathrooms had A/C and were probably 55F. The female crew bought pool floats and spent one night in the sleeping in the shower stalls at the YC. The janitor came in about 5 a.m. and first screamed - everyone's heads stuck out and he probably thought there'd been a bunch of murders. When he realized the reality he laughed louder than I've ever heard.

5) At the Bitter End YC we were on a mooring bouy and went ashore for dinner. They had a buffet for $40 that only had spaghetti for us vegetarians. We all decided to go across the bay to what we thought was a restaurant there. The water taxi didn't leave for 40 minutes so we all piled into one inflatable dinghy to go across. We arrived on the other side pretty quick and went up the place we saw but it was just a bar. We were hungry. We decided we'd go back to the boat and make dinner. We piled into the dinghy and this time things didn't go so well. It was getting swamped and we were running out of gas. We all kept bailing and one person held the gas can aloft so to get every drop. We were all soaked. Our flashlight battery died and the taxi was also due to dross our path. All I could think about was how stupid I'd sound in my obit. Just as we were at our worst - right in the middle - a meteor burned up in the atmosphere making the most amazing display. Somehow it made everything OK. We eventually made it back and opened up a jar of spaghetti sauce and ate on the boat.

6) We did crazy stuff off those boats like jump off of the top spreaders - about 60' above the water. One person landed wrong and saw the chiropractor for weeks after the trip. We also used a spare halyard as a swing. One person swung all the way around the bow and then smacked into the other side of the boat.

7) I had cornrows put in my hair. While the woman was doing them her husband came in and they got in a big fight because it appeared he was having an affair. The more they fight the tighter she pulled my hair ... and this went on for a couple of hours. My scalp hurt until I took those darn things out.

There was more, like the dinghy that started up on its own and got away and crashed into a bunch of boats and the friend we thought drowned but was only sleeping on the boom wrapped in the mainsail and the friend who couldn't get from the dinghy to the boat without falling in, even when she was dressed for dinner, and the ....