A REAL fish story!!!!

Okay, Okay, everyone keeps asking me (Bruce), when are you going to write an update? My response is always the same "When I have something important to say". Besides Lisa does a wonderful job painting beautiful images of far away places, and quite frankly I'm more the.... "Stupid Comment Guy". I've always felt you should stick to what you are good at and leave the writing to writers. Well, since I still haven't figured out what it is I am good at (aside from breaking things, fixing them only to inevitably break them again), Today is the day or Night rather I get in on the Act. I Finally have a story worth telling. Okay, so here goes.

My story is maybe more a Theory than anything else since some of the facts where not witnessed by me and the only one who could contradict or corroborate these facts is 8 inches long, has wings, gills and is now swimming somewhere near 07 degrees north and 124 degrees west. Well, enough already, let me tell you my Fish Story. It was about 11:30 last night while I was on my watch. I was down below doing very official and highly technical sailing navigational .... stuff. I would try to explain it but I'm sure it would go right over most of your heads as you all do not have the proper training or superior analytical thinking skills I posses. For simplicity sake, let's just say I was sitting down below watching old episodes of Seinfeld and eating Oreos. The boat was flying along, dead downwind, running Wing and Wing, with giant 12 foot walls of waves propelling us to speeds of over 10 knots. (Okay a knot is just over 1 MPH) Now to your non-sailing mind this may not seem very fast but in your world this would equate to lets say, driving in your grandfathers Winnebago, in the fast lane, at night, on a winding, icy road with your nephew (who just got his learners permit) driving. Oh yah, and he's going really, really fast. Suddenly the boat careens sideways, heels over 45 degrees and points dead into the wind. My bag of Oreos goes rocketing..... I mean my Sextant (Jim, this is not something dirty, its a sailing, navigational Thingy) goes shooting across the salon. I quickly throw on my harness and clip into the safety lines as I lunge out of the companionway and into the cockpit. Like the savvy well trained sailor I am, I quickly assess the situation and realize I don't know what the hell is going on. And then it hits me...the boat is doing a doughnut as if no one is steering the boat.....THAT'S IT!!!!! NO ONE IS STEERING THE BOAT!!! Auto the trusty ship's auto pilot is in "Standby" mode. Now, I'm fairly certain it was turned to on when I left it since it has been steering the boat for approximately 36 hours straight now and we seem to still be on course. I do a couple of fancy calculations involving stars, celestial bodies, the position of Orion's belt and the fact that I am a Leo and ascertain that we are indeed still on course. I reset Auto with the proper compass heading and logarithmic calculations taking into account currents, fetch, cross track errors and some other fancy words I can't remember right now and head back to my command center. Now here is where it starts to get interesting. As I reach the bottom of the stairs to the companionway and step into the galley to get some milk to go with my ........to drink while I carefully plot our course, I feel something wet and slimy under my toes. Ahhhh You guessed it,,, this is where the Fish comes in. Yep, there he is INSIDE the boat in the Galley. A big old flying or in this case flopping fish. Oh my gosh!!! This is awesome!!! This fish must have been having the flight of his LIFE. I mean these guys don't usually get more than about 2 feet off the surface of the water. To make it all the way into the boat.... This guy must of been just plain old Showing off!!! Well of course no one was going to believe me if I just Told them a flying fish flew into my boat in the middle of the night, I needed corroboration. So I did what any of you would have done...Yes, Yes, I could have taken a picture but I couldn't just enjoy this all by myself, so I woke Lisa up. Sure she had only slept maybe 8 hours in the last 3 days but I knew she wouldn't want to miss THIS. Well, let's just say she wasn't quite as excited to see the flying/flopping, oh yea and did I mention smelly fish was in her Galley. Well at this point I thought it would be best if I just put the little guy back in the water but as I bent down to pick him up I noticed something remarkable about him. Even more than his cute little fishy open mouth smile there was something I had never seen before. It was incredible.... Wake Lisa back up again, you gotta see this, you're not going to believe it .....His PO PO glows!! Yes his butt, His unmentionable .. IT GLOWS. Again, my amazement was greeted with less enthusiasm than I had hoped, so at this point I decided I better cut my losses and just put the little guy back. I tried to muster a little bit more interest from Lisa before her head hit the pillow again, on whether or not she thought the Fish would fly or plop as I tossed him back over the side but she was already asleep. For those of you who are interested, I know at least the guys are, he plopped.

Okay, so at this point I'm sure you are all thinking this seems to be your ordinary, run of the mill, everyday fish flies into a boat down a companionway hatch and into the kitchen where he gets stepped on story. Where does the theory come in? Where is the amazing part? Well, it didn't come to me right away either. It wasn't until I was lying in bed later that night rocking and rolling on the rough seas that it came to me. How this fish could have made this remarkable flight just didn't add up.....No way could this fish with its tiny wings, no ailerons and barely a fin for a rudder have made the hair-pin, barn stormer, Blue Angel maneuver to make it into our kitchen... It just wasn't possible. And then it hit me. My dad always told me while watching murder mystery movies together trying to figure out who the Killer was "There are no coincidences"................. THE AUTOPILOT!! Was it a coincidence that the Autopilot mysteriously turned off at the Same moment this flying fish made his miracle flight. I DON'T THINK SO!!!

I propose that said fish flew out of the water glanced off the Stand-By button (turning the auto pilot off of course) skipped over the companionway hatch and flopped onto the galley floor. This explains everything. It is the only logical explanation. This morning I checked for residual fishy smell on the Stand-by button but to further complicate the issue Lisa had hung some Laundry over the control face. So every time the boat rocked, the towel hanging there wiped the face of the Autopilot clean and thus taking any proof with it. So that's it. That's my story. You can believe what you want to believe but I know the truth. I know it, and Fishy knows it.