Boatman, your Spike is Spike
Africa? A good one, the Mayor of the Pacific. He was a local for me, harbormaster at the
Seattle Yacht Club in his later years. What a guy!
I'll just throw in this bit of an article about his harbormaster days-
In his last years, his career in decline, he’d ended up as the harbormaster at the
Seattle Yacht Club. Now, there was a wealthy gentleman in Tacoma, a top executive at the Weyerhaeuser Corporation—we’ll call him McClellan—who moored his private vessel at the Seattle Yacht Club, and this McClellan, with the arrogance that sometimes marks those of his class, had a habit of ringing up the harbormaster on the
phone, and as soon as the receiver was lifted, would yell, “Africa! Get a pencil!” And then he’d curtly list all the things he wanted done to his boat and slam down the
phone. This went on for some time until one day the phone rang, Spike picked it up, and heard, “Africa! Get a pencil!” Seems that McClellan had decided he wanted his yacht brought down to Tacoma immediately.
So, Spike went out to the boat to alert its crew—which, as fate would have it, had been helping itself to the contents of its boss’s liquor cabinet and the whole lot of them was drunk as skunks. Nevertheless, Spike passed them McClellan’s urgent instructions, and shortly thereafter, the yacht weighed
anchor and its thoroughly intoxicated
captain gunned the
engine full speed ahead. Alas, he’d forgotten to put the gears in reverse and the yacht slammed into several other expensive boats, took out the
dock, and, after plowing through a flowerbed and several yards of manicured turf, came to rest on the clubhouse lawn, causing, in all, considerably more than a hundred thousand dollars in damages. At that point, Spike
Africa went inside, dialed the direct line to the executive’s office in Tacoma, and when it was answered, said, “McClellan! Get a pencil!”
Classic! The schooner Spike Africa which they named after him is presently doing charters in the San Juans. She's a real beauty.
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