July 4, 2009.

First off, Happy Fourth of July. We hope everyone had clear skies and an unimpeded view this evening.

Jerry Lewis used to do a huge telethon every year to raise money for finding the cure for Muscular Dystrophy. I’m not really even sure what Muscular Dystrophy is but Jerry seemed pretty sincere and worked very hard to help in its eradication.

The whole pink ribbon thing has really taken off. Everywhere you look there’s a walk or a cycling event or some other well attended function looking to raise money for the fight against breast cancer. It seems that great strides forward have been made in survivability and a cure is surely in the near future.

But, what about stupid? There are no telethons or marches to raise money in an effort to fight the plague of “stupid” that ravages our nation. Do you know why? I do. You can’t cure stupid. Try as you might…dress em’ up , send em’ to school…they can earn diplomas, degrees and honors of all types and still be stupid as a stone. (a quick apology to all the stones that I’ve lumped together with that unfortunate bit of stereotyping)

Through exhaustive research into “stupid” I’ve uncovered a chink in the DNA of stupid people. They seem to completely lack or at least have an undeveloped “common sense” gene. The lack of common sense seems to be at the root of the epidemic of stupidity running unchecked today.

Yesterday we met stupid head on, or should I say bow on. We’ve been anchored in Spa Creek in Annapolis for 2 weeks now. With the advent of the holiday weekend the river has been getting increasingly more crowded with both anchored boats and boat traffic.

There’s a constant parade of powerboats taking a slow river cruise. Most boats have several people on board as the local boat owner takes his “out of town” company for a quick “Gilligan”. (A 3 hour tour, a 3 hour tour) We’ve had no less than a half dozen boats sporting “Annapolis” as their home port try to anchor near us here in the river.

It seems that being from Annapolis and having a boat does not actually make you a mariner. I guess living here with your boat at a dock, going out for a sail and coming back to the dock doesn”t get you a lot of anchoring practice. I know I’m a bit of an anchoring snob but I gotta say, most of these people couldn’t drop and set a hook to save their lives. I mean its truly pathetic although quite entertaining. This has nothing to do with stupid, it was just an observation, the stupid part is coming up……

I had yesterday off because of the holiday. We spent an hour during the afternoon jerry jugging water out to the boat. It takes me about a minute to drive the dink to the water dock. Once there it takes about 5 minutes to fill the 2 jugs and then it’s another minute back to the boat.

I was on my sixth trip when I arrived back at the boat and I could tell Christy was pretty pissed. (It’s an awareness I’ve developed) It seems that the 40 foot powerboat that’s floating 60 feet off our starboard side had just hit us. Christy had just poked her head up from below figuring that it was time for me to be back with the water. Instead of me heading her way she was shocked to see a forty foot piece of shit powerboat 3 feet away and broadside to our bow. There were 4 adults and an older teenager on board and none of them had any idea that they were even near us.

Christy screamed out “hey!” and they all jumped an turned just as our second anchor sitting in its bow roller started to dig a very satisfying gouge into their port side. The “captain” started to yell at Christy to fend him off as his “crew” sat there dumbstruck. Christy was already on her way forward, grabbed the boat pole and was able to clear him from us as he drifted down our starboard side. She was also able to give him a good reaming and to point out his shortcomings as a mariner.

He was screaming that he had one engine out and was unable to maneuver. Oh my God, only one engine, how will they ever survive? He almost hit the boat behind us before he decided to use his remaining engine and move off into the clear. Once clear of the anchored boats, his boat was facing down river so he took off. The f*#ker just hit and ran us.

At about this time I got back to the boat with our jugs of water. Christy filled me in on what had just happened. I pulled the dink around to the front of the boat and checked for damage. Fortunately we were unmarked. Christy assured me that he has a ten foot long reminder of our encounter along his port side. The 45 pound CQR is a decent anchor and makes a hell of a ball point pen.

I know that I promised to leave out the names of some boats in an effort to protect someone from embarrassment but in this case I think that it’s warranted. So if you are ever anchored anywhere in the Chesapeake and return to find that your boat has been damaged by another boat that did not stick around to make amends…….. It was probably the Pussy Cat, a 40 foot older powerboat with a 10 inch tall faded pink cove stripe out of Severna Park, Maryland.

The fun didn’t end yesterday. This morning we woke to find a small powerboat anchored in front of the sailboat ahead of us. After a getting our shit together we were headed to shore in the dink when I realized that the powerboat had moved dramatically closer to the boat in front of us.

We swung by the sailboat and asked if that was their perception as well. The woman on board replied “ Oh Christ, yeah, he already dragged between all of us earlier this morning and it looks like he’s moving again”. This is like a 19 foot cuddy cabin, tiny assed powerboat. There’s literally 5 knots of breeze…...if that and he’s dragging. We moved alongside him and rapped on the hull. He popped up and said “Oh no, not again” and went about fixing the situation.

I wonder if I could start a grass roots movement, maybe even a telethon in an effort to do some stupidity research. There’s gotta be a cure. Hmmm, maybe I can get a government grant.