The Contest

When you sit at anchor you tend to get a bit bored and a little bit stir crazy. Honestly, we would all much rather be working than sitting around counting down the minutes until crew change. First of all, it makes the time go by faster.  And secondly, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop“. 

When you put seven guys together for two weeks the pack mentality has a tendency to take over. Practical jokes can be the norm. We have an innate ability to try and push each others buttons. For some reason, our “go to move” is to attack each other with homosexual references and gay double entendres.  Last hitch things got a bit out of hand. You could scarcely say a word without someone muttering some sort of snide remark about that person’s sexual orientation. 

This led to the Captain enacting “The Contest”. 

Simple in theory. 

Starting at noon, no one could say, reference, or infer anything remotely homosexual towards anyone else on the boat for the next 12 hours. 

Simple right? 

Are you Master of Your Domain?

For the next 12 hours I have never seen a boat quieter or have seen people avoiding contact with each more in my life. The place was an abandoned ghost town. It was a lot funnier and a lot more difficult than originally thought. Amazingly, everyone behaved. No one lost and we all got a good chuckle out of the lengths that people went to in order to follow the rules.

Well contests are only fun when someone wins or (in this case) loses. So this hitch, we enacted the same contest. Starting at midnight, “The Contest” would begin anew. This time there would be no 12 hour limit. We would play until we picked up the anchor and continued with our work. It could be 3 hours or 3 days. There could also be multiple winners/losers this time. The punishment was determined to be 5 Jalapeño peppers to be consumed in rapid succession (when we go grub shopping again I want to up the ante to Habaneros).   

Our fearless leader, one of the originators of “The Contest”, was the first to feel the wrath of the Jalapeños. He didn’t even make it 12 hours. Realistically, he didn’t even make it a full 6 hours, considering that he was off watch and asleep for 6 of those hours. “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it” would seem to be an appropriate saying. We all got a good chuckle out of the Captain turning different shades of red as he ate his lunchtime pepper punishment.

It’s only a matter of time before the next crew member falls.

I’ll let you know if it’s me. Although it may take a while for me to be able to regain the ability to type on my computer. 

I’m of Scottish and Irish descent. 

I might just melt.