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For the first year I moved to Florida in 2017, I didn’t work and went to the beach a lot. I surfed a lot and went to all kinds of cool locations on paddle boards, surfboards, and boats. One time I had to drive all the way to Key Largo to rescue a stranded buddy. I brought my portable cooking stove and made the most excellent seafood paella right on the bow of a 39-foot sailboat. We were anchored in harbour, but the boat was still moving up and down from other boats waking us out — with freshly caught lobster and scallops right from the sea.
My friends were so stoked. They had been out at sea for weeks with little or no food. The dumbasses spent most of their money on the Devil’s Lettuce. Despite fidgeting with a small camping stove on the bow of a rising and falling boat, the paella turned out to be bomb as hell. Those crazy pirate bastards (as I so eloquently refer to them) scarfed down enough food for like 10 people, and I only got a small plate.
The captain offered to let me sleep in the room in the front of the bow of the boat, but I just slept on the roof of the bow. I was determined not to miss the sunrise. Oh, if you only get to go witness the sunsets and sunrise of the Florida Keys once in your life — it’s like dying and going to heaven.
I was supposed to go on the trip but backed out at the last minute. I knew I couldn’t trust the captain. He smokes a shitload of weed. They sailed the boat from the Sebastian Inlet, Central Florida, all the way down to Key Largo — over 200 miles. It should have taken a week, but they ran aground somewhere near Biscayne Bay (Miami). I suspect they were high, but they wouldn’t admit to it. They swore it was a mechanical failure, but I doubt it. They lost a prop. It’s a sailboat, but you still need the motor to navigate in case of storms and exiting or entering harbors.
I knew the crew was a bunch of ganja-fueled knuckleheads, so I decided to decline the invitation to sail with them. They were transporting the boat. Captain Juani lives on the boat because he has outstanding arrest warrants, so for him, it’s better to be stuck out at sea than to be shuttered in a jail cell.
Smoking a big fat joint and sailing for weeks through the azure blue waters of South Florida sounds like a good time — as long as the captain isn’t too high to handle the ship. It’s a good thing I didn’t go too, because I had to drive from Vero Beach all the way to Key Largo to go rescue my buddy Adam, the Scupper.
He’s an OK Joe, but we call him the Scupper because he’s a mooch. He always burns all his money on rum, weed, and whatnot. A scupper is an opening on the top of a ship’s deck that is used to discard fish guts and unwanted things that you want to jettison out to sea. We would like to send the Scupper out to sea permanently, but despite his flaws, he’s still a good man. He’s been a mental basket case since he caught his wife of four children in the arms of another man — in his own damn bed, just to amplify the pain.
Oh, my beloved Florida — “The Sunshine State,” or as I like to refer to it, “The Sunny Place with Shady People!” 😎