Triton asked captains and yacht crew to tell us about their wackiest, craziest, or funniest marina experiences while working the seas. Here’s what they had to say! Med Mooring Bedlam “The port in St. Barts is a cute, quaint marina where everyone Med moors. You don’t pick up ground lines, you have to drop your anchors out at certain places – it’s typically directed by divers and it’s all on a schedule. Then you back up with your anchors out running between other boats and you put lines to bits that are on the back, and there you are. It’s open to the ocean, so when the waves start to pick up the boats start bouncing around. A lot of captains don’t learn it at school. You have to drop your anchors, back up, wiggle between two boats while the winds blowing off to the side, get your distance so you don’t back into the wall, and then tension your boat like a spiderweb. Every year, it goes dreadfully awry for any number of people and makes work for shipyards, painters, and bodywork. Sometimes people can get hurt when the waves start getting big and the crew aren’t familiar with how to deal with lines when everything is bouncing around and surging. I was down there one evening and a poor gal, a deckhand, had a line snap back and it broke her arm horribly. The paramedics couldn’t even get onto the boat to get her off the boat, and this is at the dock. This is how violently rough it was at the dock to get her to the hospital.” – An anonymous captain. A Sticky Situation “One time my husband Brendan & I were hanging out wearing matching sweatshirts from a marina in New Jersey. We didn’t think anything of it until the owner of the marina we were at came over and started putting tape over our sweatshirts to cover the other marina’s name. He took it to another level when he continued taping around our whole sweatshirts and even taped us together! We all had a good laugh, but Brendan and I got the hint in the future not to wear clothing from a different marina to any marina that you are at!” – Capt. Brendan Emmons and Chief Stew Julie Emmons. A Rude Awakening “There are always ones (stories) where a crew member didn’t make it on board in time and is asleep on a log at the back of the boat. It’s like, ‘Really?’ They should have made it back before they drank so much and didn’t secure the boat. So, you get the fire hose out and you wake them up!” – An anonymous captain. The Big Show “Have you ever noticed how the underside of arches on a tri-deck can be really very reflective? Imagine a big Trinity and the underside of that arch. It was so well fared and painted – it was like a mirror. We’re at a marina and we hear some giggling and cackling and this and that and we’re like ‘Where’s this coming from?’ We look around and then look up, and we’re looking at the reflection of the hot tub. As I stand there, a dock hand comes over and asks, ‘What are you looking at?’ and I say, ‘I’m watching the show, I’m looking at that right there.’ The next morning when some of the crew were coming down the docks I said, ‘By the way, I just wanted to show you something. You see up there, how the underside of the arch on your boat, you see how well you can see in the hot tub, like a mirror almost?’ Then we told them, ‘Well you were wearing this, and you were wearing that, and, well, you weren’t wearing anything.’ They asked us how long we were there, and we told them we pulled up a couple of chairs!” – An anonymous captain. Captain Bares (Almost) All “I was at a marina, and we knew it was going to blow, we were expecting that, and we blew a cleat out on the dock. It was brisk, it was up on the bow, and it would have caused a lot of damage. On that particular boat the crew quarters were aft, and I heard the line go and I ran up on deck, got the engine started, and bow thrust back over while the crew had set another line. We were on charter, and everything was all great, and then the crew came up to me and said, ‘You know you have a very strict policy about being out of uniform.” I said yeah, and then they said, ‘Well, where are your pants?’ As I was exiting the swim platform the latch on the door grabbed my shorts and just ripped them in half. I was in my boxers and the charter guests just loved it so much – they chartered about three more times.” – Capt. Douglas Meier. Rechristening at Antigua “I was at Antigua Boat Show many years ago and some crew got blue tape, which I thought was good because they didn’t do any vandalism, and some white paper and changed the name of some of the vessels. They didn’t get caught, but they did like a dozen boats in one night, and some of the names were pretty funny. The next day everyone was looking at all of the different names. One (vessel) was called Bermie and they changed it to Spermie.” – Capt. Les Annan.