Chapter 2
The Second Crew Meeting
I was up to my armpits in barbecue sauce, with a somewhat frightened looking young man sitting across from me. While Georgia pulled a few more feet of spinnaker out of the bag, he asked me, "Do you know Georgia?"
"Yeah, I've known her for a couple years now. Interesting person. Where did you meet her?"
"Uh... here. Tonight. I just read her notice about this trip in a notesfile, sent her my money, and here I am."
That concept suddenly held almost as much interest for me as the next rib on my plate. Trying to look like the biggest slob possible, I asked the next question while dabbing my wrist with my tongue. "You mean you sent a thousand bucks to a total stranger?"
He paused for a bit to watch Georgia, who was looking a lot like a kid on Christmas morning as she pulled another few feet out of the bag. "Why? Is there some reason I shouldn't have done that?"
"No reason. It's just interesting that you did, that's all."
For some reason, he seemed even more uptight than before.
The second crew meeting was a whole lot more interesting than the first. As a matter of fact, it bordered on outright fun -- mainly, I believe, because we didn't get on any boats. But, it wasn't totally devoid of terror and misery, 'cause everyone had to drive through the worst blizzard of 1992 to get to it.
What was amazing was the number of people who showed up. My theory was that they all wanted to see who this crazy woman was that they were sending their hard earned money to. They weren't disappointed either, because Georgia was the first to arrive, complete with that shit eating grin frozen to her face.
Maybe she's the one who should be calling my shrink.
We all met at Nickel's in Merrimack. It's a yuppie-scum neighborhood hangout, thankfully light on the ferns, with a restaurant section that more or less surrounds a semi-sports bar. Georgia had reserved a table (next to the sports bar) for an unspecified, but huge number of people, and the participants dribbled in the front door, a couple at a time, over the course of the entire evening.
Generally, the second meeting went pretty much like the first, except that there were more handouts, more rules, and more sponsorships. We all tried our best to spill our food all over everything, including the revised set of Rules for Sail 93, which had been updated slightly:
- Shut Up
- Sit Down
- Do everything that Georgia says
We didn't do any sailing after this meeting, although we all agreed that driving through the blizzard to get to the meeting did provide an acceptable substitute form of terror. There were two high points of the event, with the first being that Georgia paid for everyone's dinner out of the trip fund (which used to be our money, anyway).
The second was a little more bizarre, but a lot more entertaining. It started when sometime during dinner, someone (I think it was Christian) dragged a huge white bag into the restaurant, which, according to Georgia, had that spinnaker from America3 inside. We all asked her how she managed to scam that sail, but all she did by way of reply was flash us a Grade 3 Megalomaniac "Ain't I sump'm" grin.
It turns out that this sail is a huge white thing with the familiar blue-block DIGITAL logo on it. Or, it's familiar looking if you've ever worked for Digital, which most of the people at the table had. But, just to verify its big-hugeness, Georgia decided to unfurl it (or un-whatever you do with a sail) right there in the middle of the restaurant.
This created multiple levels of entertainment for the Sail 93 participants, the staff of the restaurant, and the other patrons. It was entertaining for us because it seemed like a thoroughly stupid thing to do, which in fact was quite in line with the overall theme of the trip.
It was entertaining to the restaurant staff because right before their eyes, they saw a larger than life sail emerge from the bag, and expand to a size that was greater than that of the known universe (or at least the interior of the restaurant). They looked just thoroughly delighted at the prospect of tripping over both the sail and the people pulling even more of it out of that bag, and at the prospect of crawling around underneath it to get to the other people in the restaurant. Our waitron dropped by the table and humbly suggested that it might have caused a little less trouble if we'd just stuck to inflating rubber rafts instead.
Most of all, it was entertaining to the other patrons. The sail itself wasn't the real source of entertainment, but Georgia was. She'd gone out on this cold winter night, all ready to brave the elements in a black dress that was so tight that it looked spray painted on, and so short that it nearly covered the cheeks of her butt, but only if she was standing up straight, and even then, only if we tied scuba diving weights to the hem.
But, she wasn't standing up straight, and we didn't tie weights to the hem, so her dress rode up almost to her ear lobes, revealing Georgia, in all her splendor, to God, Country and Nickel's patrons.
Now, she doesn't believe me on this, but while she was bent over, digging that infinite sail (for our upcoming infinite voyage) out of the bag, the guys at the bar, so inspired by her presence, were doing the wave for her every time she bent over. This proved to be the first real event of the trip itself, and has since come to be known as "The Night Georgia Mooned Merrimack."
In the meantime, all the people at our table were watching with a mixture of disbelief and horror that we'd sent all our hard earned money to this woman without meeting her first. Well, I'd met her first, but everyone else looked pretty damned concerned.
Shoot, I went into this knowing that it was a bad idea.
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