Our crew didn’t win the sailboat race, but we recuperated on the grassy slope outside the New Berne community center, drank a few ‘Daddy Cokes,’ visited with our competitors.
We had flown our orange spinnaker…decorated with the dark skull, a blackened rose in her teeth…from the Oriental, North Carolina harbor to New Berne, twenty-some miles down the Neuse River.
Captain Jack had sailed his first regatta aboard the 30-foot sloop “Anne Bonny”, named for the female pirate who was a buccaneer’s 18th Century lover. Captain Jack didn’t bark any orders to the crew, but then he was only eight months old. A handsome Golden Retriever puppy whose registered kennel name was Captain Calico Jack Rackham, same as Anne’s pirate skipper.
A clean-looking college age man arrived, asked if he could walk Captain Jack on his leash. Margaret agreed. After he left, some of us worried aloud about a possible ‘dog-napper.’
But Joe College returned our dog. Then he came a second time and walked Captain Jack. When he returned the third time to walk our puppy Margaret observed, “You must really like dogs.”
“Yes, Ma’am, I do. But to tell the truth Captain Jack has also been admired, and petted, by some others. And the Captain has helped me meet some good-looking young girls.”
Image by Garfield Beso from Pexels
