The joy of sailing is discovering new territories an meeting new people! These spontaneous encounters are so much fun, because you have time to chat and share experiences. Meeting Emma last week was extra special, because she was about to marry and had a Bachelor Party with her girlfriends in the harbour. We decided to make her special day even more special….!
When we entered the harbour, we choose a random spot at a jetty. It was behind a speedboat and in the speedboat we saw 6 people, laughing a lot. They were about to go into the city and we noticed that they had similar T-shirts with the text “Emma’s Pussycats”. Clearly this was a Bachelor Party for Emma who would soon be married to her fiance!
We heard that Emma’s friends gave Emma an assignment (‘When walking in the city, try to collect in 15 minutes as many condoms as you can by asking men in the street’) and off they went!
I said to Gilles: ‘I think they also want to include the catamaran in their assignments, so let’s surprise them and invite them over on our boat’.
So when Emma returned, we asked her if she was up for a new challenge: being a captain on a boat! We invited her on the catamaran and gave her the white captains jacket and hat and she took place behind the helm. Her friends took pictures and we invited them all over on the boat to have drinks. In no time 2 bottles of Sambuca were empty and filled their stomachs with shots, which the group much enjoyed (‘Oe, that is strong stuff!’). Clearly they have had more drinks during the day, so Emma repeatedly said she loved her captains outfit so much, so wanted to keep it 😊. And she loved us also very much 😊.
Then 1 of the men of the previous assignment (asking for condoms in the street!) passed by, he got invited to the boat as well. The young man had friends in Eindhoven, so we exchanged a few Dutch words. And then Emma’s parents passed by to pick up the group (no luckily no drunk driving with the speedboat). They also were invited on the catamaran. The mother was much fun: ‘Sambuca! That’s my favorite drink!’. We had never expected when we going into this harbour that 1 hour later we would end up with 11 people on the boat having drinks and lots of fun!
Then Emma’s Pussycats took off again in their speedboat, her parents had a summer holiday house closeby on the island. Many Swedish from Goteborg or Stockholm have holiday houses on the Swedish islands. When they took off in their speedboat, the song ‘Why Tell me Why’ by Anita Meyer sounded on their speakers. ‘No way!’, we thought, ‘how did they know that Anita Meyer was one of the great Dutch singers? Very thoughtful of them! ‘). Later we discovered that Anita’s hit (1981) was recently covered by the popular Swedish singer Zara Larsson in 2020 and became a great hit in Sweden 😉.
