Cruising Sailors Forum Archive

Well, as long as I'm on a roll... My son and I

were sitting at anchor in a town called Huatulco waiting to cross the Gulf of Tehuantepec heading for Panama. This was back in the late 80's We had a friend by the name of Chris on board and we were all sitting in the cockpit. Chris and I were having an after dinner beer and my son was doing his homework. Something caught my attention and I looked over the side only to see this Mexican go down for the probably the second time. It took me a few seconds for it to register that this guy is drowning. All I could see was his hands kind of slapping the surface of the water. Just then his head popped up and I knew that he was about to be a gone'er. I had a blue throw-able cushion hanging on the wheel and just frisbeed it out to him. He grabbed a hold of it like his life depended on it and of course, it did. He managed to paddle over to the side of the boat and I let down the ladder. Bad idea! There wasn't much else I could do under the circumstances but about two minutes later I was wishing I had let him sink. This guy was stinking drunk and I mean drunk in the first order. After he got on board he decided he needed to be down below and started to climb, head first, soaking wet, down the ladder. Chris and I both grabbed a leg and drug him back out. This is one of those "no shit stories" but I swear it's true. Chris ended up sitting on top of the guy while I tied him up hands and feet like some cow at a rodeo. We had the dinghy rolled up and tied off because we had been waiting for a weather window for the crossing and we were leaving the next morning. We had to get it back in the water but we left out the wooden floor boards. We drug this drunk Mexican fisherman, who by the way had muscles on top of his muscles, along the side deck to the gate. We got the dinghy positioned under the gate and a line on his foot tied to the boat in case we missed and rolled him off the side. He landed face side down right in the middle just where we had aimed. Not with much style or grace but we gave him a 10 anyway and a high five for us. We rowed him ashore and rolled him out on the beach, untied him and jumped back not knowing what was coming next. He just started laughing and started crawling up the beach towards town. The next morning while we were getting underway a panga came cruising by with all the crew off this fishing boat anchored to windward of us. They were all yelling, laughing and pointing at this poor guy sitting in the bow with his head down hungover. It was all pretty funny at the time but I hope he learned a lesson about drinking and swimming. Good times.

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