One of the things I like about my blog is that I can write about anything I damned well please.

I have the luxury of not having someone looking over my shoulder and telling me that I should change this or that. I simply find a corner somewhere and write about what is on my mind.

Nobody is paying me so I can't have anything taken away from me if I disagree with my boss because here I don't have one.

I have no advertisers and as a result there is nobody to pull their advertising if they don't like what I have to say.

All in all it's a pretty good feeling.

I do know that there are a few people that have read what I have to say that don't like it and that's just too damned bad.

As i write this I recall when my sailboat pulled into Sitka, having come from the south. I had been in Sitka a couple of days when I wandered into the harbormaster's office for some reason or another. When I entered there was a sailing snob from the Seattle area demanding that the harbor cop shut down a salmon processor anchored about a half mile away.

The processor was running a generator, of course and it was pretty late but it appeared everyone on board was working processing salmon. This jerk wanted the whole operation shut down because he was annoyed over the low noise in the background coming from the generators.

The harbor cop had to be tactful. I didn't.

"Hey, A$$hole," I interupted. "You want to put 75 people out of work over a muffled generator a half-mile away? Why don't you go pi$$ up a rope."

"They don't allow that as Shilshole," he replied, indignantly.

"So go back to Shilshole," I shot back. "Get on board your boat and head south to your beloved Shilshole Marina and let the rest of us get some work done."

"Well..." he mumbled.

'Well, what?" I fired back. "I got a few boat projects too take care of. This is a working dock and I found a couple of sheets of plywood. If you don't go back to your boat and leave this poor harbor cop alone I'm going to fire up my Skilsaw and you can listen to that all night. I got work to do!"

The man turned to the harbor cop and snapped, "You're not going to permit that!"

"Sir, this is a working dock and if this man has a pressing need to get something done there are no rules against it," said the cop. "I'd listen to the man and be nice to him if you want to get any sleep."

The troublemaker turned purple and stormed out. 

The cop turned to me, "I have to log this," he said.

"I understand," I replied.

He spoke as he wrote and what he put in the log was very vanilla. He wrote that the captains of two boats had a verbal disagreement and left it at that.

The next morning my shipmate and I set sail for Yakutat and arrived there in time for their annual Fairweather Day festival but that's another story.

The details are growing a little dimmer over time. Some day I am going to break out my logbooks and do some writing about my sailing days.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html

 NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY