Flying Under the Radar

We arrived in New Zealand late at night, and after docking and hot chocolate, everyone went to bed. I wasn’t tired, so I went for a midnight stroll across the quarantine dock. On the way, I saw a sign with a series of animals on it, all with crosses through them. There were mice, ants, dogs, cats, roaches, and (get this!) RATS! So I spent the next hour on the boat with a paper and pencil freezing my tail off trying to figure out a plan. As the night wore on, more and more boats started showing up, and that’s when I made my plan, well more of a scheme really.

The next morning I crawled up to the top of the mast with my bat suit on, and waited. There were sixteen other boats at the quarantine dock, which meant that customs would be in such a hurry to get through all the boats that they would not notice a rat fly past. Everything was going swimmingly until I fell asleep, maybe it was the morning sun, maybe the long crossing, but I dozed off. When I woke up, the customs officer was quickly walking towards Silver Lining, so I awkwardly jumped off tumbling through the air trying to catch the wind (like the bats had explained to me). As I fell, I heard a doppler effect ringtone, and just as I caught the air it stopped. I was gliding in an odd position that I had never been in before but which I will now call “The Air Backstroke.” (any comments for a better name?). From my position you could see he was reading a text message that read, “ Want to do lunch?” I flewunder the radar arch and on to the safety of land.

Scurvy

Another Great Escape

We had a good time in Tonga. The coconuts were plentiful and so yummy!
A day after we left I overheard capt'n Fraingck telling Margo with great concern "We are being chased by two cats," My blood almost curdled! So I ran on deck with my new foulies the boys had made for me from a surgical glove - I don't care for the color purple, but that's another story. The weather is foul to say the least, waves wash the deck twenty times a minute, the temperature is down in the sixties, the wind is in the twenties. This I endure in silence trimming sails night and day... The Cats are still behind us! May this wind last until we reach the New Zealand customs officials. According to the customs papers quote: "All dogs, cats, and birds will be destroyed." Nothing in there about rats though.

-Scurvy-

Scurvy Bat

Ah! Pago Pago, the half-floating plastic bags (better known as Pago Pago Jellies), and the smell of steamed tuna (or the southwest “Starkist” wind). I was thinking about these things as I crawled up to the cockpit, when a shadow came over me. I looked up to see a silhouette of Logan suspended from a line in his bosuns hair. I called up to him, and asked if I could try. So he rigged something up for me. It took him awhile to secure me to the line and in the end he said, “ That should do it.” And up I went. Swinging in the rigging was lots of fun, in fact, it was so much fun I stayed up there all day. Towards dusk, long after Logan had gone back down, I was still enjoying myself when disaster struck. I felt a jerk and started to fall, “LOOOOOGGGGAAAAAAHHHHH!” This was the end, why did I have to escape in THAT boat all those months ago? Just before I hit the boat, everything went black.

I should clarify that everything went black, not because I was rendered unconscious, but because I was now on the back of a large fruit bat! The bat took me to a big mango tree that had a bunch of bats hanging from it. The tree would probably have been really cool, if I could fly, but as you may have noticed I cannot. They tried to give me pointers about riding air currents and recovering from a stall, but this was all presuming that I had wings and basic training. So towards dawn my savior (a little miffed that I hadn’t learned how to fly) took me back to the boat.

Scurvy

Scurvy Cousteau

A few days after my last message, I woke up one morning, and the boat was stopped. I was still stuck in the engine room. At one end of the room was a bowl of canned greenbeans, and at the other was the hamsterwheel. I hated greenbeans, and I loathed hamsters, but that's another story. Then I heard the door click open, so I grabbed my weapon of choice(a screwdriver), and brandished it, ready to confront Captn Fraingck. But it was not the Captn. It was the boys. I came up to them thinking they had come to rescue me, but instead they stuck me in a ziplock bag with a straw glued in a hole in it, sealed the bag, and before I could protest threw me out the aft window and just before I hit the water I blacked out.

I woke up a couple of minutes later trying to figure out why Logan and Kennan threw me in a bag and THEN in the water; when I noticed that I was sitting on a piece of paper. I opened it up, at the top it read, "Instructions to the Rat-Specified Submarine." It was full of helpful information and diagrams like "stick tail in breathing tube when diving." "Great," I thought,"now all I have to do is find out how to drive this thing." I scanned the page, but there was nothing. I looked around me but there wasn't anything that looked like a means of propultion. I looked at the back of the manual in despair,and noticed that at the very bottom it said "Good Luck",and that did it for me."WHO THE HELL PUTS 'GOOD LUCK'ON AN INSTRUCTION MANUAL, FOR A SUBMARINE WITHOUT A PROP!" I screamed. That's when I saw the shark, and I blacked out again.

I next found myself on sand. I quickly crawled out of the "submarine" reflecting that all the hamster-wheeling must be making me soft. So I staggered over to a nice-looking coconut tree with a hole in the bottom of it. I crawled into the cool, dark cave for a rest, and was about to drift off to sleep when I heard a large ssscrrrrttkkkk behind me. I turned around and saw a large, no not large, massive, no that doesn't cut it either, a BEHEMOTH sized crab claw, and a proportionally sized crab behind it! I ran yelling at the top of my voice, thinking for the entire 50 yards, "Don't faint, don't faint, don't faint." When I finally stopped I noticed a wide sandy path and remembering the saying, "All paths lead to Rome," I decided to see what the place was like.

To put it lightly, I was disappointed. On one side was a house that looked ready to crumble at the first high-wind warning. The other house was two stories high, the bottom was open so that it was more of a house on stilts. Above the entrance was a sign "Suwarrow Yacht Club", inside were two intimidating looking local guys, one was bigger but had less hair, the other was smaller (relatively speaking) and had more hair. I wisely snuck away to eat coconuts for the rest of the day.

That night there was a party on shore. The boys found me and asked me how I liked my new submarine. I told them my "little" driving dilemma. Kennan groaned, "Aawww" and Logan heartily slapped his forehead. Then they argued about what means of propultion to use, so I went and had myself another coconut. The next day, my submarine had the thumbs of some latex gloves sticking out of it, and on the back of the manual it said, "Stick legs it leg sleeves and kick to move," with a helpful diagram to go with it. Ever since then snorkeling has been great.

-Scurvy-