This Month's Story
It has been several years since Stella and I have been to the Lake Ponchartrain Wooden Boat Festival. We originally went there to try our luck on selling our books on the festival grounds. We were so successful that first year that we made a habit of going back every year. It was both a beautiful and fun festival especially since our booth each year was about a hundred feet from the water’s edge of the Tchefuncte River (you best pronounce it by dropping the T and going on from there).
Stella and I loved it. The people running it were pleasant and we looked forward to going back each year. With that, let me say that what I’m about to describe involved one of the main feature events of the Festival, but on one particular day of that year turned out so bizarre that people still talk about it.
It was, after all, a fun Festival and the banks of the river was accordingly lined with wooden and not so wooden boats whose owners and guests partied and made noise throughout the Festival’s two-days. But to keep the Festival as close as possible to its main theme, i.e., wooden boats, there was a race; a race made up entirely of wooden boats; homemade wooden boats; homemade wooden boats that had to be built on the Festival grounds using a given limited set of standard materials. All of which was a challenge by itself, but there was one final catch: the boat had to be built in two days!!
The homemade thing and that they were limited to being made solely of wood is one thing, but the fact that they were to be constructed in two days presented the whole joyful challenge of the race. Each boat was made by a team and the fact that some of the teams had been together for years, made the final product of their work interesting as well as imaginative. The fact is that, although some of the teams had been making plans for what they were going to build for months, they only had two days to do the actual building!
Well, on the year I’m talking about, everyone was buzzing about some sort of surprise that would occur during the race, but no one knew what that would be. After lunch, there was a parade through the Festival grounds with the various teams carrying aloft the boats they had made. Some of the boats were beautiful considering the time and limitations and some were really just so so. The so so’s were to be expected given the nature of the event, but the crowds diplomatically cheered each team with equal enthusiasm.
One of the so so teams carried a crude yellow boat that by its appearance couldn’t have taken more than an afternoon to build. In addition, the two-man team had obviously been drinking more than a reasonable amount of beer, they kept dropping their boat and picking it up as if it was very heavy and made a rather weaving way along the parade route to the starting point of the race. Once there, they wearily dropped the boat into the water and sat down, each with a beer can in his hand, waiting for the race to start. They didn’t look like they had a chance to even finish the race course.
The race started at a low traffic bridge that spanned the southernmost end of the Tchefuncte. That day the bridge was closed to traffic and loaded with cheering people. There was no band, but all the moored boats on both sides of the river had their varied music players turned up to maximum.
The course for the race was simple: the first part was to a gate (actually a moored boat with judges) about a quarter mile up river, once there; the racers would turn about the gate and race back to the starting point. The way the river is configured and the way nature works on the river was that the first part of the race required rowing against a weak downriver current and the second and final part was made under whatever homemade sail the team could rig up and hoist to catch the afternoon offshore winds.
So now you have a fairly good picture of that long ago day when we stood by our booth and watched ten boats line up in front of the bridge waiting for the starter’s gun. Around us, the boats along the shore were tooting their horns and everyone was cheering their particular team. It was so loud we barely heard the starter’s gun go off, but it did go off and the race was on. The well-practiced teams quickly took the lead, stroking their oars in unison like Olympic oarsmen. The others followed propelled by sheer energy and soon the more experience leaders neared the northern gate.
The last boat in all of the ten entrants was the yellow boat. They had barely started; the two men puffing away on the canoe paddles that they had brought with them to use as oars. They were a sorry pair. A woman that had stopped to say something earlier to Stella had now moved down to the water’s edge and in a surprisingly loud voice urged the two men to get moving. Stella turned and told me that the woman was the wife of the one of the duo; the beer bellied one sitting in the front of the boat.
Suddenly, as if a switch had been turned off, the crowd became quiet and the boat horns stopped. The cause was obvious; everyone was listening to the illegal sound of an outboard motor. Since our attention was focused on the yellow boat, we could see that the after man in the boat had lowered a boat motor over the side and now under its energy was heading the yellow boat straight at the nearest boat in the race.
As the yellow boat closed with the other boat, the beer belly stood up with what appeared to be a tube with a long rubber hose. With a loud “Arghh,” the man pressed a switch and river water under high pressure shot out of the tube.
It was a water cannon!
With a cry of “Sink them, matey!” from the yellow boats helmsman, beer belly aimed the powerful stream of water at the middle of the other boat. In seconds, almost like a Wiley Coyote cartoon movie, the boat folded, with middle going straight down as the rear and front ends folded straight up. The boat sunk in seconds, dumping its hapless crew into the water.
Now with loud cries of “Arghh,” and “Sink them, matey!” the yellow boat turned its bow toward the next boat in the race. That boat’s crew having seen what had happened to the other boat and seeing they were next, moved universally to the lee side of their boat. That boat, now unbalanced, tipped over and in seconds the crew was seen clinging to the bottom side of their boat. The yellow boat raced by them with beer belly, with loud “Arghhs,” spraying them all with water.
Beer belly’s wife now had changed her tune and with loud harangues ordered them to stop. Her husband spotting her on the shore, with a gleeful “Arghh,” pointed the water cannon at her, soaking her and the people around her.
The next boat in the race, having seen what had happened to the two earlier boats, chose the cowardly way to safety and paddled hard for the shore. The yellow boat made a half hearted swipe at its crew spraying them as they passed. The next boat was equally as cowardly and did the same, receiving equal treatment from the yellow boat.
The yellow boat now sped after the more experienced boats that had by now rounded the northern gate. The yellow boat not to be outdone whirled around the gate, spraying the three judges cowering in the gate boat as they went by yelling their by now famous “Arghh,” and “Sink them, matey!” In rounding the gate the yellow boat crew had raised a mast adorned with a crude skull and crossbones painted on a black flag.
If it had been noisy on the shore before, it was by now sheer pandemonium! The yellow boat’s yell of “Arghh,” and “Sink them matey!” had become an almost football game’s cheer.
In front of the yellow boat were the remaining entrees, each boat with their homemade sail up and moving rapidly, pushed to the starting gate by the afternoon wind. The yellow boat gave them no mercy, going by each in turn, spraying first the crew and then pointing the water cannon’s blast at the sail. Under this pressure, each boat, capsized.
With no more entrants, the yellow boat headed for the finish line. The boat, however, was suffering from its exertions and was starting to sink. Just as the boat reached the finish line and the two man crew hopped on the finishers platform, the boat sunk in the shallow water with just its mast, still sporting it crude pirate’s flag, visible.
There was bedlam on the float with the judges and many people in the crowd pointing at the two man crew and back at the wreckage of boats now slowly floating down the river. The yellow boats crew screamed and danced about, crazily yelling at the crowd and the judges that they had won fair and square, interposing their shouted claims with loud “Arghhs”. Close beside the finish float shaking up and down with its dancing pirates and screaming judges, the pirate’s flag hung wearily from the sunken boat’s mast.
Well the end of all this was that that year there was no declared winner. But there was the annual Wooden Boat Race dinner and I was told it was quite loud.
