1993

Boat Drinks

It’s ’93 and I’m becoming amazed at how many stories date from when I started out on this lifestyle, but then of course the learning curve was steep back then. Thalia, myself and a group of fellow “NEWBIES” are sailing S through the Bahamas, a seriously beautiful cruising area, but perhaps not the cheapest place to buy a drink. We’d all independently discovered the virtues of Caribbean rum, affordable, dependable potency and palatable depending on your choice of mix. We were all +/- 35’ “classic plastic,” not a class of vessel noted for their spacious storage, so while in a market I was reviewing my mix options, soft drinks were more than expensive than rum, or maybe that was the USVI, it was a long time ago. In any event the sodas were a long ways from free and the Kool Aid display caught my eye, I wound up buying every color they had . On my way back to Thalia I invited all my friends for a rum tasting on board that night at dusk, then I filled the fridge with water so we’d have lots, those are 2 qt kits.

That evening my friends arrived and were horrified that all I had for mix was Kool Aid, but we’d all brought rum and the Kool Aid was easy to overlook. Now we had to decide which to try the first, “I always used to like the red stuff, but I was, like, 6 then, didn’t know they still made it.” Mix,mix. “Oh God, the red sh#t is awful, with or without rum.” One down, “Ok, let’s try the purple” “You’ve got to be kidding. They make purple?” “Jesus” The purple was voted an obvious waste of rum and a sad waste of water. Mix, mix. “Orange, please be good.” “Yeew”, mix, mix, and thus it went, surprisingly there are a lot of colors/flavors, but finally we got to the green. “Hey, this green sh#t isn’t half bad” “I wouldn’t want tolive on it, but I can drink it.” “Best of the night” “Wait” I cautioned, “There is still yellow” “I’ve been a guinea pig long enough. The yellow has to be nasty.” “Yeah, the green is OK, lets finish it up?”

Byt the time the yellow got mixed, we were pretty much a collection of various messes, the yellow got the nod as the favorite with comments “Doesn’t taste like “Frankenfood” “Nice citrus bite” “It doesn’t make me wanna puke” “ Where the f##k is my boat” With such high praise it became rum and yellow sh#t as the official boat drink on board Thalia and reigns supreme today. Actually the best is Thailand’s lime juice, mixed with ugar and water, I’m convinced it’s all the vitamin C keeping me alive. Recently I caught up with 2 of the survivors of that night in the Bahamas and we did our aging best to recapture that night, but now in Sooke, BC.

If I’m lyin’ attributed