The midseason party idea was actually inaugurated last year - Capt. Sarah and Rick the owner/builder put it together. I suspect Sarah was the originator of the idea - Rick's around a fair amount, but Sarah's the one who runs the office at Chelsea Piers & hears the most from the other skippers & the crew. This is the time of year when it starts getting really hot, and the boat is always full, and the full time staff is just working their posteriors off, and the end of the season seems like an awful lot of long, hot days away. A chance for the crew to go out & blow off some steam is a good morale booster. Last night was fun - we started out with drinks on the Manhattan (the new motor yacht - air conditioned, ooh lar lar!), then headed to the Ear Inn for dinner.
The Ear is a neat old pub in a landmarked building, the James Brown house, that dates back to 1817. Back when it was established, there was a good bit less of Manhattan, and the bar was right on the waterfront, so it was a hangout for longshoremen, so it's a perfect place for a bunch of hard-working boaters to go soak up the atmosphere (and a couple of pints, and some yummy Prince Edward Island mussels, smoked trout & halibut). They have paper tablecloths & crayons & we had far too much fun with that - in addition to the Name-The-Nonexistent-Band contest, we also played hangman (only it was a variety where the guy got fingers and hair, plus except for the first word, all the words were sorta limited to the nautical type, so nobody ever lost), and the owner's girlfriend, who's really creative, did the best caricature of the BACK of people's heads I've ever seen - well, actually this was the first caricature of the back of people's heads I've ever seen, but a couple of the guys on the crew have very distinctive hair & she captured their do's perfectly. I drew the schooner with a mermaid and a seasick passenger, and Capt. Rob added an inbound pink cannonball, and I think the woman who handles the catering for the motor yacht added a pirate flag...
Well, it was fun. The final event of the evening was supposed to be a movie...what movie? Need you ask? Arrrr...Pirates of the Caribbean II, of course - but first there was some cake, and more champagne, and official "Crew" cleaning shirts - see, the schooner gets a good cleaning & restocking at the start of each day, and you just sweat like a horse during that, so rather than mess up our crew shirts, we tend to wear grubby old t-shirts for that, then change. So the crew all got gray "Crew" shirts, and the captains all got "I Love My Crew" shirts - and then all the sudden, I'm not quite sure how, there was a mutiny and somehow the 2.5 (but FUN) hour movie was out the window and we ended up at the West Side Tavern.
This was the point at which yours truly had to admit that the days when I was capable of carousing until the wee small hours, yet still putting in a coherent appearance at the 9-to-5 the following day, are fading into the mists of the past (not that I was ever REALLY good at that, but there were some late nights). Easy to forget when hanging out with a rowdy & highly entertaining bunch of twentysomethings, but I listened to the voice of reason & opted for home. Glad I did, too, had a ton of work I had to accomplish today, and there will be another ton tomorrow.
I wonder how late the rest of 'em kept going - and I wonder how whoever had to work in today's heat felt! Ah well, they're all young and tough, I'm sure they hacked it.
Fun evening, though, and I was definitely still feeling a trifle on the kick-up-my-heels-ish side even by the time I got home. Hence last night's rather silly post!
No comments:
Post a Comment