A swashbuckler makes a crew change.

The story you are going to read is true. The names have been changed to protect both the innocent as well as the guilty. 

Anyway, we were running the northeast coast in the mid 90s when crew change came up. If I recall the tug wasn't changing, just the accompanying barge of which I was the mate of a crew of two. It was calculated we would change underway in the Cape Cod Canal. 

We were loaded carrying a cargo headed for Portland, Maine and because we were loaded the Commonwealth of Massachusetts said we were supposed to have an escort tug.

The company made arangements with the tug to do the crew change. They would bring the oncoming crew aboard, escort us through the canal and bring the offgoing crew ashore to their pier after they dropped us off in tht Boston side of the canal.

Now Captain Lefty lived about ten minutes from a certain spot on the canal and had worked something like nine weeks back to back. He was pretty much going crazy to get off for his well earned three weeks off. Lefty knew the canal like the back of his hand. He knew where all the cameras along it were and what is more important, he knew where the blind spots were.

I'm sure there are damned few if any blind spots left anymore. This was about 25 years ago and the technology, while not quite in its infancy, wasn't fully grown yet.

Anyway, Lefty had done his homework and packed what little he was taking home with him. It had already been packaged in several layers of trash bag and duct tape. Besides providing a waterproofing for his goods and garbage, the package would provide bouyancy if he needed it which was not likely. Lefty was a powerful swimmer.

Anyway, when we got to Lefty's blind spot he threw his package over the side and went in after it. In a surprisingly short time I saw Lefty through binoculars climbing up the rip rap stones along the side of the canal and the last I saw of him was what appeared to be him above the rip rap putting his pants on.

The tug crew was unaware, the escort tug policy was one of total blindness. They saw nothing and the three of us on the barge kept it under our hats. Lefty got clean away with it.

Had he been caught he most likely would have been arrested and fired.

Three weeks later I sailed another tour with him and we laughed about it. 

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