Ask Bob

BY BRIAN PETRE

So, here I am, living life on the road, having a good old time with a traveling circus, as some of you may already know. Not a care in the world except buffing clown noses and licking old cotton candy sticks I find on the ground. Well let me tell you, this current Gypsy lifestyle is a walk in the park compared to my former Pirate days, one filled with true tales upon 2 of the 7 seas, and a Gulf. You may think I'm kidding, pulling your leg, having a go, or just plain bullshitting, but the following story, as are all of mine, is 100 percent true. This is the beginning chapter of the Tales of "The Pelican Tragic", or "How to steal a tug boat in 3 easy steps".

It was the summer of '96, and I had just lost everything I had going for me, which wasn't really much at all, but it made me up and drive my '84 Chevy Celebrity to the cesspools of Florida with everything I owned in the trunk, which made for a very empty trunk (this is of course after I broke the lock as one of the only things I owned were the keys to my car). I drove to St. Petersburg for no reason at all, stumbled on a daily run Casino boat heading out of John's Pass, and sailed the 6 hours gambling all that I had all $200 of my life's savings. That night, for the second cruise, I was a deckhand, working on the very boat that robbed me. Employed by a drunken captain, and one of the most degenerate crews I've ever sailed with, I worked there for a year and a half. That's when I met First Mate Randy.

Randy says to me, "You know, you should go out on offshore tug boats, this casino ship job is for drunks and old sailors with kids and shit'." Seeing as how I only met two of the four criteria, I took my drunken shit to the next level Randy decided to join me and leave one of his criteria behind, better for those poor kids. I'd later discover I was on my way to stealing my first tug boat. I say first, because, yes, I did it again.

I met the old rat bastard son of a bitch who hired my services in an old billiards parlor, I don't remember where because Randy had spent the afternoon getting me nice and liquored up on full glasses of Vodka on the rocks. To this day I won't drink Vodka ever again. I'll never forget this old fucks name, Peter Handler and in my mind it somewhat fits, he did have me by the balls. I agreed to whatever, and was on a flight to L.A. the next day. That's when Randy and I met two psycho rednecks from the Carolinas, and there we were, the crew of the tug boat "Pelican Magic".

The tug, "Pelican Magic", was a piece of rusted shit. I was surprised the damn thing was even afloat. All these guys had done was got the water maker working, which would be our sole source of drinkable water out at sea, until it later broke. We set sail for a trial run to see how she did at sea. Our mission: to simply sail around Catalina Island. On that "1 hour" trip we managed to break a propeller, fill the engine room with water, ignore an abandon ship order by the Captain, assist the Coast Guard in a helicopter rescue attempt without leaving the boat, and made the newspapers. There we are with all of our T-Shirts, door stoppers, and any readily available toilet bowl gaskets plugging this hole in the boat, which was still pushing gallons of water in per second. Up to our necks in water in an engine room, with the captain inching his way towards any direction but the bridge to get his ass off the tug, we made an unspoken pact: we'd rather go down with the ship than be rescued by our over-rated Coast Guard assistance. At least that was my viewpoint; I imagine the rednecks just didn't know any better. Seriously, there were four boats around our tug just watching us sink. The least they could have done was supply us with their toilet bowl gaskets.

We recovered the boat by pulling the propeller shaft back in the engine room, at which point I was sent to the top deck to burn us some burgers, which I burned very well. I reflected on the sorry situation I put myself into, and decided, hell, I wouldn't have it any other way. This was just the beginning of my nightmare, my adventures upon the "Pelican Tragic"

COMING NEXT: Tales of the "Pelican Tragic" II, or "Where do I shit, we're out of toilet bowl gaskets and our limited supply of drinkable water is now flooding the cabins"!