“A three-hour tour.”  The words rang in my head as I hopped aboard the surprisingly small sailboat in New York harbor. I was about to embark on a typical New York night on the town that sounded fun when described to me but turned out to be a deathtrap. I try not to be a catastrophist as often as possible, but some situations so obviously require a survival strategy that catastrophic thinking is a life skill, not a diagnosis.

The vessel in question was a beautiful, picturesque, and clearly dangerous 120-year old sailboat. I know nothing about anything remotely nautical so I can’t tell you it was a blah, blah, blah footer with a blah, blah, blah sail.  What I can tell you is that the interior of the boat was the size of two average New York kitchens put together. If you’re a New Yorker, you know that this is not a lot of space. If you aren’t a New Yorker, we’re talking roughly the size of your bathroom. There were no guard rails and the minute I stepped onto the vintage dinghy I was handed a drink.  A quick scan of the other passengers confirmed that I was right to be worried.  Everyone else was drinking, some of them possibly on drink number three.  Oh my God.  Someone is going overboard tonight and it can’t be me.  I’m a strong swimmer, but falling off a boat onto the inevitable dead body floating in the Hudson River is not on my bucket list. I looked around at my fellow passengers, trying to determine who was most likely to slip, fall, and get hepatitis that night.  There were a few outstanding candidates already.

Before I describe Thurston, Lovey, Gilligan, Ginger, and all the rest (poor Mary-Anne), I must explain why I was risking life and limb on the bathroom boat.

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