cookin the pot

Peter E Pete staggers to the hammock. Another trying day with ungrateful tars and scallywags. Two small sloops bound from Jamaica and all the rum ya could swally was all she wrote. Rum punched, one and all they blather on about not enough coin jingling the trouser as the pillage turned glum. He remembers the days in old Main Brook , a welcome sight after weeks at sea and the hearty and hale at Fred's Lounge, a place before it's time. Plunder a plenty back then but the scarce times came fast as kings and queens fell, and no privateer knew who to trust. At anchor in Spirity Cove, he sensed his days were numbered as the leader of his loyal but frustrated crew. Maybe time would soon come to take Con up on his offer to buy that small inn in St John's, become a publican. A few more raids, enough pirated bounty to ease into a landlubber's life. The slow trough shifted his hammock a...

  I could see Robert pacing on the dock as we were beginning to tie up. Long sail across the Atlantic and he was there waiting with the stores(food supplies) that we had put together over the previous months for the upcoming northern trips. I waved and worked my way down the decks to get ready to get down the gangway. We had a lot of work ahead for the full day. I finally got down the salt crusted gangway and we began unloading the pallets from the truck. I asked if this was it and he said no two more on the way. I began going through the pallets deciding what would go into the forward hold for longer storage and what went aft for the galley fridges and freezers. As I began to direct the Russian crew up on deck I began to notice I was running from stern to forward, back and forth as none of them spoke or understood any English and my dock side movements were a sort of choreography, a food stores dance. Getting the right supplies in the right place.  Robert was helping...