Ninety minutes to the north of us is the town of Anacortes. In my youth, I spent several summers there, my aunt and uncle running a hotel in town. They would take me boating in the San Juans and as a kid of 12 and 13, driving a boat was a pretty big adventure.
We’d also take the ferry over to Guemes and weekend in a house they rented there. It’s the first time I had ever stayed on an island, and it’s where I learned how to walk through the tall sea grass at low tide to find Dungeness crabs for dinner.
This trip to Anacortes wasn’t for crabbing. It was for pirating. We weren’t invited. I know some pirates think they need an invite to a place, but historically, we’ve always found it’s the most fun to simply engage in a little “fusion jazz pirating,” as I call it.
This was one of those times. The event was the Workboat Races. Workboats race each other on a triangular course. No one really cares about the racing. It’s really about just getting together as a community.
There were other pirates there. It was technically a Workboat Race and Pirate Faire, so the organizers invited the BOOM pirates to have an encampment, fire cannon and do some stage entertainment.
That was fine with us. While they did all the heavy lifting, we roamed the crowd as the uninvited performing troupe. There weren’t too many people when we got there, so eventually we made our way to the bar for some beer and rum punch. As usual, that’s when things got interesting, and it wasn’t the libations.
Being in pirate costume, especially when the vast majority aren’t, is our ticket to good times. Again, I know that many pirates like to go to pirate festivals to hang around a bunch of other pirates, but that has never been my joy. In fact, that is my idea of pirate hell.
The public is where it’s at, not other pirates, at least when you know improvisation. We just let the people around us provide us with all the ammunition we need to do what we do best, and in the process, we quickly become the roaming, rollicking show at the festival.
The water balloons didn’t hurt, however. A local organization was selling water balloons – three for $1. Sloe Gin and Rogues Pierre couldn’t resist. Soon we had a plate full of water balloons and more on the way. Sloe Gin took the first salvo, but from where the bar was, you couldn’t hit the boats. So she took that first shot at Pierre. Eventually there were water balloons going everywhere. The boats were firing at the people on the pier, the people on the pier firing at the boats, and us pirates firing at anyone and everyone.
That’s when we met “Backhand.” She was a true pirate and didn’t need a costume. She began to conspire with Sloe Gin and soon water balloons were flying up at the piratical announcers who teased them unmercifully, mostly because they couldn’t come close to hitting him on his perch above.
The nonsense continued. We met Sady, a girl of about 10. Her arms were overloaded with frisbees that had been thrown by the boats to the people up on the dock, some other treasures and one water balloon.
I whispered to her that if she were to hit Rogues Pierre with that balloon, I’d give her a dollar. She launched it at him. It didn’t pop, but instead bounced right off his chest, as if he was wearing some kind of water balloon flack jacket.
I reached for my wallet and pulled out a dollar. She looked at me, thinking she had failed in her mission. I announced quite loudly that I had only told her to hit him, which she did. I should have said the balloon had to break. I didn’t. The pirate had been had by a cute little girl with a huge smile on her face, knowing that she had bested a pirate this day.
Of course, that was just one of many encounters with the public. We posed for countless photos, met up with a wonderful pirate in a wheelchair who had his sword tucked across the chair’s framework behind his wilted legs, just in case we needed him.
The rest of the day was a blur. A little shopping, some great Mexican food, a couple casinos and a respite at the home of Sloe Gin’s dad, which had a breathtaking, sweeping view of the surrounding waters, hills, Mount Baker in the distance and just a slight view of Canada.
Oh, and two deer. We passed them on the way out of town. They couldn’t have been more than three feet from the car. I only mention them because Sloe Gin’s pirate name almost became Curbside, because this was her third hard grounding on a curb that day. Thank God she wasn’t piloting a ship, or we’d still be stuck on a sandbar somewhere in the San Juans
For me, this is what pirating has always been about. The Seafair Pirates in my day were pretty loose on their appearances, simply wandering into places when they were thirsty or if it looked like fun. They didn’t need, to use the words of Lollypop, my fellow mate, “No stinkin’ invitation.”
That is where all the fun has always been had. I seemed to have lost that somewhere along the way, well, down Florida way. I had tried it a few times, but either I didn’t have the right mix of crew (for a time, our group became a reclaim center for wayward, troubled people instead of pirates), or the crowd wasn’t that interested in having fun.
Anacortes had the perfect mix. And true to form, our wheelchaired pirate asked us if we were with the Seafair Pirates. I replied with my usual answer, “No, we have women in our group… they have women.”
He looked at us relieved. “Good,” he said. “I didn’t want to have to run you through.”
I think he would have, too.
In the Emerald City, thankful for my piratical, uninvited life,
– Robb