On a recent trip to Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island, I took a quiet evening by myself to hop a ferry and mosey on over to the Dinghy Dock Pub for dinner. As an ordinarily landlocked lubber I thought it would be appropriate to order seafood – especially given how fresh it must be when you’re surrounded by ocean. Surely that’s the best time to eat it.
While I was there I had the opportunity to watch a yacht race. I kept hearing a horn sound and there were two men standing at the end of a long pier while five or six yachts of various sizes tried to line up for the start. Finally, a gun went off, and all the boats trundled on out of the harbour to the south. It was a leisurely spectacle. Someone in the pub hooted once and everyone went back to their beer.
About an hour later a lone yacht came back, circled around and crossed the finish line. Most of the people who had seen the regatta leave were already gone, so I reflected not on what I was seeing, but on what I had missed. The whole race had unfolded in the time it took to eat my fish and chips and down my little pint; it had started and finished in the same spot, and I hadn’t seen I thing.
So there you go: a new slant on “can’t watch this“.
Here’s the race winner.