Surviving A Category 5
By Rob Ascough
Every year my father would suggest one of the island’s sightseeing boats as something different from the norm. As kids we’d grumble because spending a few hours bobbing up and down on a boat was a lame replacement for Mack’s, Fascination, and an obscene number of excursions into Jungleland, but every few years my mother felt it prudent to side with my father and deem it a nice alternative to the boardwalk (or setting off fireworks between the dunes on the beach, or waiting in line at Sea Shell for ice cream, or growing amused by the babble of the drunk guy at the Cape Cod Inn as he struggled to play a game of billiards by himself.)
Unlike the rest of the vacation it was all serious stuff, lining up to file onto the pink and white vessel in an orderly fashion as if we’d suddenly found ourselves enlisted in the Navy. But once the ship backed away from the dock, there was the overwhelming sensation of the crew not having planned anything beyond the pomp and circumstance of heading out to sea. The show was the departure, not the actual act of maritime travel
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