“Such an odd, colorful set of people we’ve met here,” I said.

“I never thought finding new crew in Bermuda would be this interesting,” first mate Lee agreed.

This happy task of searching for crew threw us among people in general, and in particular among sailors drifting about lovely, subtropical Georgetown harbor.

Late one evening we found ourselves, Lee and I, invited and aboard an anchored eighty-year-old wooden Baltic trader, retired long ago from commercially sailing the Baltic and North Sea. She was not less than 70 feet on deck and carried two masts a little over 70 feet tall. We had heard through the grapevine her skipper, a reputed old salt, said we would never make New Zealand before cyclones swept the far west South Pacific. Our dinghy tied near the bow, as we swung ourselves over the bulwark rail, I noticed in the light of a half moon long, long strands of sea weed hanging from the anchor chain. This vessel hadn’t been underway in many a tide. The half moon, however, sailed on, and our sea stories with her, long into the night. More than one of my listeners, sprawled about the wide, planked deck was about to doze off when I launched a story from days gone by, sailing the South China Sea in my old, leaky, wooden ketch.

“In certain ways, I felt I lost my manhood, or should I say, my sailor-hood, that fine, sunny day.”

One or two figures, dim in the pale moonlight, shifted into a more comfortable position.

“We were almost 500 miles out of Hong Kong, past the Chinese Paracel Islands, and well off the coast of North Viet Nam, not wanting to bump into that bunch. Even now I’m struck by the glory of it, the silvery sparkle of the wind blown spray against the magical aqua blue of the deep, deep South China Sea.”

A bottle of something passing from one hand to the next, I waved it off. I was now standing on another ship, from another time.

“From 500 long miles astern the northwest monsoon winds blew these seas, all the way from the coast of China now far behind, and each day they grew higher. Five days of 30 knot winds and you had the 20-foot rollers now pushing us along, straight under the stern. Our 10-ton ketch literally surfed down the face of them, maybe five, six boat lengths, before wallowing in the trough, all sails slack, the next swell lifting her again into the wind.”

Someone coughed in the night.

“Then it happened. Off the coast of North Viet Nam, glorious following seas, surfing along, tropical waters, blue sky, and bang, crashing to the deck comes the lower shroud, a nut having gone adrift. Oh, sweet Mary, each time the boat rolled to port, the wood mast bent like a noodle without that shroud staying it, threatening to snap any moment. There was nothing for it but to climb up there and fix it. I volunteered, oh, so much to my regret.”

“So this is where you lost your manhood, your sailor-hood?” a melodious female voice.

“Well, maybe I exaggerate a little, but I did lose something, my pride for a week or so. With the shroud, the fallen nut, and a wrench or two, my mates hauled me up in the bosun’s chair. The higher I went, the wider the arc I swung as we rolled first to port, then starboard, out over those blue rollers. With each roll I twirled around the mast, gashing myself on the mainsail track and felt the mast bending more. The courage just drained out of me. I didn’t get more than 15 feet up, at best, when I chickened out.

“Let me down,” I yelled.

Switching positions with the helmsman, I watched my Texan mate Gatlin, an oil rig roughneck fresh from the Java Sea, ascend. Holding the remaining shroud to keep from twirling, he completed the job. Watching the mast bend all the more with his weight high aloft, I felt my face literally twitching, just like in the movies.”

Eventually, I got over it.

Courage. If you now regret your vote in the last national election, do not fail yourself or your country. Admit your mistake first to yourself, then to friends and family. It takes guts to tell your story. I told you mine. Eventually, you will get over it.

Your country needs you. Now.

Ross Pobanz can be contacted at ross.pobanz73@gmail.com.