Tales of Ringo Key - Southwinds, February 2002

- Local News for Southern Sailors - February 2002 Next Story

Tales of the Ringo Key Marina — the Experts
By Allan Horn

On the whole, I have found most people who live aboard their boats to be fun, pleasant, helpful, and friendly people. Naturally, some are a bit eccentric, but even those are usually people you are pleased to know.
Drawing of the experts

There are always exceptions to any rule.

Nearly all liveaboards dream of cruising their boats to other countries someday. Perhaps to the islands of the Caribbean or the South Pacific, or the canals of Europe.

I have always suspected, but can't prove, that part of the motivation for many of the people who set out on these adventures is that they expect to come back wise and experienced, with many fascinating tales to tell us other would-be world cruisers.

Occasionally, one of the longtime residents of Ringo Key Marina unties his lines and heads off to distant ports with the intention of cruising for a short time, or perhaps even a long time.

Sometimes they limp back into the marina after a few weeks with their tails between their legs, muttering something unintelligible about big waves, storms, or broken gear. Other times they arrive by car months later and announce that they are now living in Key West or Guatemala and are back in town to take care of business or visit family.

Once in a while, we get a new resident who has been cruising elsewhere and is now back stateside "to earn some money."

Such was the case of Colin and Ima Payne, their 46-foot yacht Vociferous, and their menagerie of annoying small animals.

Colin and Ima arrived one sunny Monday after a 12-day trip from Cartegena, Colombia, and they were not happy campers.

The wind and the tide were both running against them as they made their fourth pass to get into the easiest slip in the marina.

After a great deal of swearing and insulting banter between them, they finally managed to get a line around the most outboard piling, and with the help of several of us on the dock, pulled their vessel into the slip by hand.

After having no one to talk to except each other and their pets for 12 days, they were very exuberant and talkative. Within minutes, they let all of us present know that they had circumnavigated the globe several times, battled 14 hurricanes and typhoons, and done everything worth doing, and a few things not worth doing, by boat.

In essence, they knew it all.

Naturally, this caught the interest of those of us who planned to cruise in the future, and we gathered around like excited pupils, not realizing what we were opening ourselves up for.

Now, in spite of the fact that Colin and Ima claimed to have returned to North America "to earn some money," they appeared to be fairly "fiscally fit."

The Paynes told us that they were Canadians, but they both had what sounded like rather pronounced English accents.

Colin told me that he had sold a fairly well-known franchised hamburger chain in the late 1970s, which should have earned him untold millions.

Colin also said that Ima had profited from having wealthy parents and a financially rewarding first marriage.

But like many very affluent people, they chose to make loud "poor" noises in order to blend in with the riffraff.

Colin and Ima soon started our "world cruiser" lessons by letting us all know that we didn't know how to party properly (an assumption that could only be made by newcomers).

First, they commandeered one of the marina's picnic tables and installed it on their end of the dock.

Next, they informed us all that Saturday was party day, starting with "Bloody Marys at eleven," and commencing onward to whatever our preferred beverage was after brunch.

Wives and girlfriends were organized to cater the affair, and the men installed a large patio umbrella in the middle of the table, all under the expert supervision of Colin and Ima.

When the event took place, it actually was a pretty good time, although most of us had enough partying done by 3 p.m. that we wandered back to our boats feeling quite miserable and over-stuffed.

The first and most apparent downside of their presence on the dock was that neither Colin or Ima could tell a story about their travels without the other one continually correcting the storyteller in rude and rather crude terms.

The second downside was that NO ONE ELSE could tell a story without Colin or Ima injecting insults, snide remarks, or in general, "poo-pooing" anything that was not as dramatic as battling Malaysian pirates or crossing the Indian Ocean in Force 10 winds.

The third downside was that Colin and Ima owned a poodle named Boris, a small dustmop of a dog named Farfle, and a cat, which according to them, never left the boat. The cat's name was Fufu.

During what came to be known as the "Bloody Brunch," Fufu spent most of the day jumping into the middle of the picnic table with his kitty-littered feet, attempting to get at the shrimp and seafood fare, while the two dogs yapped and yapped, and peed on everything that didn't move within 40 yards...including Fred's foot.

Colin and Ima were oblivious to these breaches of etiquette and resented anyone who attempted to defend themselves or their property from the animals.

Colin and Ima justified the dogs' behavior by saying that the dogs were a great alarm system and let them know whenever someone approached their boat, and that it may look as though the dogs were leaving their scent around, but after the first or second spray, "nothing comes out." The cat, well, the cat just "never leaves the boat."

We soon realized that the Payne's "alarm system" went off whenever anyone approached ANY of the 140 boats in the marina, not just their own.

Fred tried to say that the "nonexistent" spray from the poodle left his tennis shoe making a squishing sound as he walked, but Colin corrected him by saying that Fred must have spilled his beer, because the dog COULD NOT have done that.

Over the next few weeks, the cat that never left the boat discovered that we had a cat on board, and seemingly never left OUR boat unless we or our cat was on deck, at which time, it would go prowl on someone else's boat but would almost never return to its own!

Our cat, which REALLY doesn't ever leave the boat, discovered Fufu in her territory one morning and promptly tossed Fufu into the water. Fortunately, a neighbor was nearby and fished a mortified Fufu out of the water with a dip net.

Meanwhile, although we believed these people had actually done many of the things they claimed, we humans had started to realize that being a world cruiser doesn't necessarily turn a person into an endearing character.

Colin and Ima could often be heard yelling dreadful insults at each other or complaining to the neighbors about the marina, other neighbors, the wakes of passing powerboats, the weather, the cost of living, or life in general.

We soon learned that "the slips were too narrow...the neighbors were too noisy...so-and-so's boat looked like a tenement...the neighbor's power tools messed up their TV reception...everyone around them kept too much junk on the dock...one of the neighbors woke them up at 4 a.m. when he left for work because he made the dock boards squeak...the marina was designed by, owned by, and operated by bloody fools...," and on and on it went. It got old fast.

It got real old real fast when Ima started spreading the rumors...so-and-so kicks his dog and beats his wife...so-and-so is running around like a tramp..., etc.

No one understood WHY she was doing it. The rumors were always totally unfounded and wrong, but they did cause a bit of grief for the subjects of Ima's soap opera fantasies.

Colin, on the other hand, was constantly asking what project I was working on now and informing me of "the CORRECT way" to do whatever it was, whether I wanted to know or not.

More often than not, Colin's CORRECT way required thousands of dollars that I didn't have or was a matter of personal preference. However, Colin was sure his preference was far superior to anyone else's, because it was his!

I'm only glad that he was not my employer, because he struck me as the kind of employer that would come do your job in front of you, because he was sure that no one else was as capable as himself.

Eventually, it got to the point that I wouldn't work outside if Colin was home.

All the while they were in the marina, their dogs (which were supposed to be on leashes but never were) won friends and influenced people by peeing on sail bags, coolers, fishing gear, lawn chairs, and bags of laundry and groceries left unattended on the dock for more than 30 seconds by the neighbors.

Colin and Ima would watch the dogs wet on everything but blatantly deny that the dogs had done anything at all.

The wetting behavior was capped off by constant yapping at all hours of the day and night, since there was always SOMEONE coming or going around the marina, even if it was to or from their own boat.

A true thing of beauty, though, was watching Colin take the dogs for their nightly walk. It went something like this: First Colin would set each dog in turn onto the dock from the boat. Then Colin himself would step onto the dock and promptly stride to the shoreward end of the 200-foot dock.

Meanwhile, the dogs would travel a zigzag route down the dock behind him, hosing down everything that didn't move quickly enough, whether it be animate or inanimate.

Then it would invariably happen. Each dog, in turn, would stop somewhere between half and two-thirds of the way down the dock and deposit a large steaming pile of excrement.

Just moments later, Colin would reach the shore end of the dock, turn around, call the dogs, and tell them to hurry up.

Colin would then lead the dogs out to the far end of the marina parking lot and wait in vain for the dogs to do their business for long periods of time...not realizing that any business to be done had already been done! But this was not the best part!

The best part was when Colin would eventually walk the dogs back home and occasionally skate around on the still moist dog-doo, which he was sure had been left by someone else's dog.

The time finally came when the "miserable conditions at Ringo Key Marina" finally got to Colin and Ima Payne. They decided to go off and have a house built where they could tie Vociferous up to its very own dock.

The day they left, we had a going away party. Everyone gathered at the picnic table with drinks and hors d'oeuvres as they motored away from the dock.

To this day, I can still hear the sound of Ima's elegant, if not somewhat haughty-sounding, English accent as she stood in her cockpit each weekend screeching at the top of her lungs... "NO WAKE A...HOLE!" at the passing powerboats.

I wish I could say I miss it.