Used to sail with him quite a bit when we both had Pearson 26s. He loved to do a phoney Downeast accent, and most of the time it was mildly entertaining and harmless. Except once, when it could have led to some major awkwardness.

We were on our first cruise ever, dealing with pea-soup fog, with no GPS, no radar, and only one working Loran. We were hugging the eastern shore of Pemaquid Neck, barely keeping a visual on the shore. We were planning to go up to Round Pond, but New Harbor beckoned on the way, as it was the closest port in the fog and we were getting pretty rattled.

Our buddy has his own GOBI misadventure motoring into the tiny harbor when he managed to go between a fishing boat and her mooring, catching his rudder on the mooring painter. I think he touched bottom at the same time. Somehow he managed to get out of the predicament without any boat-to-boat contact, motored over to the mooring we had picked up, and rafted onto us.

New Harbor is a commercial harbor with no cruiser amenities. It's one of those places where if you want a mooring, you need to go ashore, talk to the crusty locals, and find out which fishing boat will be out overnight so you can use their mooring. So the guys got ready to go ashore to do that while the women folk stayed with the boats just in case the mooring owner came back. Knowing our buddy's phoney Downeast accent would not go over well in that particular part of Maine, I begged of him, "Please, please keep your mouth shut and let Randy (the real Maine native) do all the talking, okay?"

So they went ashore, Randy had a cordial talk with a crusty local about an available mooring, they came back out, and we moved the boats. We decided dinner would be at Shaw's, the local fried food joint ashore. All is well and good, right? Mmmmm... not yet.

As we were waiting for a table, our buddy decided it was time to share - with anyone who would listen - his story of running over the local fishing boat's mooring painter and nearly hitting the boat, getting stuck in the mud, etc., all in his phoney Downeast accent and loud enough for a good portion of the clientele to hear. We're jabbing him in the side, saying "Shut up, man, you don't know if that fishing boat's owner is standing right next to you, and he might not find your story amusing!" It was one of those moments where you kind of want to disappear into the woodwork.

Either the boat owner wasn't there, or didn't care about this guy from away who talked so funny nearly hitting his commercial craft, and we managed to get in and out without too much of a scene.