The Chase

It started like any other night out on the town via water taxi. Somebody says the word sushi, we call the water taxi on the marine radio, we scamper down to the fuel dock to get our taxi coupons, we hop aboard and have a lovely night out. After obscene amounts of raw fish and ice cream, we stroll down to City Dock to wait for the water taxi back to our home marina.

This young man made the wait magical as he regaled us with hypnotic melodies... complete with pirate ship backdrop.

I guess we were so swept away by the music that we never looked behind us to see the town-eating-storm that was rolling in. There have actually been times when the water taxi captain deems the weather to be so rough that he refuses to take passengers around the point (and home for us). Those times have resulted in me doing everything from hitching a ride on a dive boat to sending Doug home via car taxi to fetch our car (and car seat) to pick us up.

But Captain B was feeling bold and told us to hang on and expect to get wet as he powered full tilt boogie across the harbor and around the point with the storm literally chasing us off the aft port side.

The wind picked up and the waves started breaking over the bow of the water taxi to the delight of the cadre of 10 year old boys on board and to the horror of well dressed tourists on board. The big black town-eating-cloud caught up with us as we rounded the point and motored into our creek. But the water taxi pulled up to the marina just in time for us to sprint back to the boat seconds before the rain beat down and the lightening started crashing dramatically all around us.

As Captain Ron so wisely said: "If anything's gonna happen it's gonna happen out there."

I sure am happy we didn't take our dinghy with the ancient 5hp outboard... otherwise we might still be "out there".