Kissing the bride

October 2009

By David Roper

She lay languidly between the arms of Harbor and Hall islands in the midst of ledge-strewn Muscongus Bay and, despite the disheveled condition of her captain and two mates who had not seen the likes of soap, razors or toothbrushes in days she held her head high. Elsa, my beautiful 30-year-old silk purse of a sloop, was demurely holding up three old sows’ ears.

But even in the freshening southwest breeze, the air was getting ripe around us. “Hey, you guys, ah, maybe we should find a harbor with a shower tonight,” I timidly suggested to my crusty crew. Bryan looked at me askance, as if I’d requested newly-laundered embroidered doilies for under our rum cups at tonight’s meal.

“You know, Dave,” said my old pal Peter with a lingering tinge of southern drawl. “It’s not what you look like or even smell like; it’s only how you act that matters.” I cocked my head. He continued: “Ladies have never been bothered by me in this condition, ’cause it’s all about attitude; it’s all about approach. Always remember that.”

“Well, I’m no lady,” I said. “But not even a Big Foot beast would approach you right now and I’m speaking of an ugly desperate female one.”

Just then the cell phone rang. It was my son, Nick, who had the weekend off and wanted to drive up and join us somewhere for a couple of days. We were flattered that a good-looking, well-dressed 20-something would want to spend time with the likes of this crew. But then he hadn’t smelled us yet.

So we settled on meeting him at one of my favorite little harbors on the tip of Southport Island. An inn was there with two moorings for rent, which was all the space there was for guest boats in this tiny harbor. We called and reserved a spot. But the lady on the phone at the inn was tentative. “I hope it’s OK,” she said, “but we won’t be able to serve you in the dining room tonight. You see, we’re hosting a big fancy wedding,”

That’s OK, we said. We don’t do dining rooms. The statement brought me back to the old cruising days in tiny Chang Ho, my Cape Dory 25. She took us offshore many times and east as far as Cutler. It got ripe aboard Chang Ho, too, but for some reason, in those days, we dared to venture ashore and put ourselves in close quarters with the general public, such as it was in quaint harbors Downeast. We even tried entering dining rooms in the chic small inns we’d find here and there, but we never quite gained entry due to our condition.

On two occasions, what they gave us (and I’m not kidding) was a small table in the kitchen, where we were “seated” away from the real guests. But both times, this occurred after we had regaled the patrons with tales of our adventures, while sitting on the inn’s porch or at the small bar just outside the dining room. It was clear these folks were getting pretty bored with all this quiet Maine inn charm, and we, in our weather-beaten state, with our ratty foul weather gear and salt-stained cut off jeans were and excuse the mixed metaphor actually a breath of fresh air.

In fact, at two inns, a few guests even came into the kitchen to talk with us about our adventures in “that tiny little sailboat we saw you get off.” The cooks and the kitchen help jumped into the conversation, too, and we all had a grand time amidst the dirty dishes and pots and pans.

But back to this story. So we headed off in Elsa to rendezvous with Nick in a place that seemed to be a good harbor, though probably showerless. After an uneventful trip, we negotiated the extremely narrow entrance, where local knowledge tells you to squeeze through between a spindle capped by an osprey nest on your starboard and a bold rocky shore just on your port. A huge white tent came into view, set on a large manicured lawn by the harbor. Hors d’oeuvres were being served on silver trays to ladies in hats and long summer dresses and to men in white-coated wedding finery.

At the foot of all this elegance was a small pier, gangway and dock. Our mooring was just off of it. I looked at my crew, the way a veteran drill sergeant looks at his fresh recruits just off the bus from their home towns. Then I looked back at the pristine picture of that separate world that lay a hundred feet away, but might as well have been a hundred miles off. “This is hopeless,” I said, as we drifted up to the mooring.

A smile grew on Peter’s sunburned, newly whiskered face, as he turned to address his fellow bilge scum of a crew. “A hundred bucks to the first one of us to kiss the bride,” he said.

Fortified by a bit of rum, but none the cleaner, we rowed ashore to meet Nick, who was soon to arrive by car. The wedding reception was in full swing. Baskets of flowers hung from the posts of the elegant seawall that graciously met the sloping lawn. Soft flute music emanated from the tent. Small groups of wedding guests chatted here and there on the grass, sipping from champagne flutes. It was a splendid scene.

I lost track of my crew as I slumped a bit, slinking up the hill, trying to look like a man on a mission, maybe a busy, anonymous maintenance worker.

Nick arrived on time, and now my whole crew was together on shore, halfway up the hill by the inn’s pool. The aroma from the catered meal being prepared behind the tent almost eclipsed our own distinct odor, and, like four stray cats in the wrong part of town, we headed back to Elsa for our own form of shipboard cuisine.

What we hadn’t counted on was the pre-planned wedding party photography on the tiny dock where we had tied our dinghy. Fortunately, they were about finished when we came down the hill. My first thought was to melt into the bushes to my right until the wedding party climbed the gangway and made its way back to the tent. I slowed my pace. Peter, however, moved forward faster, descending the hill and on a collision course with the wedding party, which was now at the top of the gangway.

I slowed a bit more. Peter kept moving, into the throng of tuxedos and gowns. It was an incongruous confluence. I watched as the groom, and then the bride, looked up with increasing anxiety as Peter approached. In their faces, I could sense an emerging awareness that something was wrong with this picture, as if this wedding of theirs had been a magical movie that suddenly, in its middle, contained a misplaced splice from the cutting-room floor.

Then Peter’s right hand came out of his ragged pocket as he moved into the midst of the wedding party and stood face-to-face with the groom, who was clearly confused by his approach. Peter, on the other hand, was grinning. Joyous. He put his left hand on the groom’s shoulder and reached out and heartily shook the groom’s hand with his outstretched right. “Congratulations,” he said. And that’s when Peter made his move. Graciously turning to the perplexed new wife in white lace, he did what is proper and should rightly follow in such a case. He stepped forward and kissed the bride.

The rest of the wedding party passed, and we headed down the gangway.

“You owe me a hundred bucks,” Peter said, as we reached the small dock. Then he looked back at the festivities and smiled confidently, casually brushing aside a buzzing fly who clearly found his fragrance more alluring than that of the bride.

“And remember Dave: It’s not what you look like. Or even smell like. It’s all about the approach.”

Dave Roper sails Elsa, a Bruce King-designed Independence 31, out of Marblehead, Mass., where he lives and works. This is Elsa’s 30th year, he says, “and is still, despite her age, quite lovely and never lets me down.”