Hamburgers and Eagles

A few years ago, my wife and I learned how to sail together. We also have wall-papered a kitchen and painted a living room together and we’re still married. Amazing, isn’t it?

After we received our sailing certification, we promptly chartered a sailboat for a week in the summer and invited a couple of friends to come with us. Now, stocking up a sailboat that has an ice box instead of a fridge can be tricky. Since this was our first time bare boating, we made a few errors.

No, it wasn’t forgetting the ice for the ice box, it was remembering the hamburger for the spaghetti sauce. We had no problem remembering the wine and liquor needed to keep the ice cold and thank goodness for that!

So the night we were to have another boatload over for dinner, we realized the omission of beef. It was decided that my buddy Mike and I would have to row from our anchor point in the harbour to the dockside convenience store.  The reason that Mike and I would be rowing over was twofold. First, this was before sailboats had to have holding tanks for the head (that means toilet in sailor speak). Therefore, most boats would discharge their, well, poop, right into the bay where they anchored. Secondly, our dinghy on the sailboat was more of a ‘dinky’. By the time Mike and I got into the dinky, we were sitting knee to knee, nose to nose and had only an inch of freeboard showing. That means that if either of us had had a larger lunch earlier, we would have sunk the dinghy. And sinking was NOT an option. Neither was splashing the oars…

We rowed VERY carefully across the harbour, providing all and sundry with their afternoon entertainment. Some other boaters asked for a repeat performance - we told them we’d be returning in a half hour, so stay above decks and please stand by for rescue.

After successfully reaching the docks, Mike and I headed up to the store and took a look around for a meat cooler. The proprietor pointed us to a small freezer at the back of the store. Digging through the bait, bags of ice and daiquiri mixes, we finally found a frozen lump at the bottom of the freezer. Scraping off the half inch of frost, we found the label that confirmed our find. Hamburger! Back to the dinky! Time for spaghetti!

As we got on deck, we turned and found the ladies looking at us with ‘The Look’. Feeling a little confused (no comments, please) we asked what was wrong. My darling wife held out the package of ground beef, which had lost it’s protective frost cover on the trip back to the boat. I looked at the label again, found it still said hamburger and looked up questioningly.

“Look at the colour!” she said. Okay, it was a little grey with a hint of green, but it also looked and felt like it had been frozen for a long time. Remember that for guys, a bit of grey-looking ground beef did not hold unspeakable horrors. It just meant we needed more spice and an extra beer with dinner.

Let me tell you, the entertainment value of our discussion for the boats around us was worth more than we were paid.

No way were the girls going to eat that stuff and we might as well pitch it over the side. No way were Mike and I going to give up this one – that dinky ride over gave us the right to stand our ground for our ground beef! Yes, we lost the argument! Yes, we pitched it over the side!

Then the most amazing thing happened. A bald eagle swooped down to the water and tried to pick up the floating, frozen lump of hamburger! After dropping it the first time, (do eagles get frostbite?) the eagle got more altitude and dove again. It was magnificent! With a good grip on the hamburger, the bird flew away to the nest.

“I bet he’s going to get in soooo much trouble when he gets back home” Mike said. “Yep”. I said, “ten to one, he’s going to have to pitch it over the side, too!”