Girls! Girls! Girls!

Sea Scouts

WHAT ELSE EXCITES young men, especially teenagers, more than girls? Young boys, unprepared for the first assaults of pheromones, succumb like ducks sitting under the business end of a punt gun. 

Okay, let's pause here a moment. Punt gun: a large caliber shotgun mounted to a small boat -- a punt -- that is rowed near a flock of waterfowl and discharged. Used on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay to supply Baltimore restaurants with large quantities of ducks and geese. 

Yep, that's a pretty good metaphor for the effect that just one girl could have on the whole Sea Scout crew.

Unfortunately, there weren't many young ladies in evidence at the Baltimore Yacht Club. Pre-teen girls usually weren't of much interest to the boys, and once they became teenagers, the girls rarely wanted to hang around a boat all day with their parents. Of course, when one put in an appearance, their parents weren't enthusiastic supporters of our pursuits of them. To most of the parents of young girls, we were a bunch of hooligans. Probably a fair assessment.

As the child of an abusive parent, I was fatalistic about the girls. It's hard to muster up much faith that anyone will find you loveable when the people who should love you, your family, don't. However, that didn't keep me from becoming involved in everybody else's flings.

[Note: This will be the first time that I won't mention names to protect the innocent.]

On one cruise when I was skippering the boat, the preteen daughter of a yacht club member became enamored of a fifteen year old boy on the crew. She was seriously enamored. On one occasion, I received a radio call from her mother asking me to call the boy inside from bow watch. Her father needed to use the binoculars and he couldn't get them away from her while he was visible on deck. Unfortunately, the boy in question did not reciprocate her feelings. Inasmuch as her family was very supportive of the Sea Scouts at the yacht club, I felt it was in our best interests to keep the relationship under control. Things came to a head on the last night of the cruise. There was a dance and she wanted to go. The boy complained that he couldn't afford the price of admission, so I loaned him the money. Word reached the girl that I had paid him to take her. That didn't end as well as I had hoped.

This wasn't the only occasion in which I found myself in the middle. A woman and her very attractive daughter cruised with the yacht club fleet to Norfolk, Virginia, during one of the years when I was ship's boatswain. In an age when male chauvinism was rampant, I may be excused for being impressed that they would attempt the journey without the benefit of a male companion. However, the mother was an excellent sailor and they did just fine until we reached our destination. As soon as we arrived, their engine gave up the ghost and we had to tow them back to Baltimore. They were guests on our boat for two days and the daughter began to take an interest in one of the crew. I was a little ham-fisted on this occasion and “ordered” the boy to escort her to the final night's dance. Lacking any way out of the “assignment” he walked off the dock as he led her to the dancehall. Again, I was confronted by a woman scorned. He had spilled the beans. Seriously, thinking back, I still don't get it. She was crowned Princess of the Baltimore Yacht Club the following year. Did I mention that she was very attractive. What was his problem?