To participate in Buccaneer Days, you sail to a port on Catalina called Two Harbors. You can spend the days on land or sea, and you sleep on your boat, tied to a mooring about a hundred yards from shore. Unlike Avalon—the adorable tourist town on the far side of the island—Two Harbors is not a community. There are no structures to sleep in, only a flimsy outdoor bar (because you don’t need a roof, but you do need beer). The moorings in Two Harbors are limited and there’s a wait list to lease one. Apparently applicants can wait thirty years for a spot. It’s all very exclusive and old money. Whitney and her family strike me as far too normal to enjoy this kind of thing, but I’m grateful I’ve been invited along to witness the mayhem.
On the day we leave, Alex and I are still confused about the concept as a whole, but very excited. We scour our closets for anything on theme, pick out every article of clothing with so much as a ruffle on it, and stuff it into a bag. We stop at CVS to pick up a bandanna and an eye patch each. Neither of us has problems with motion sickness, but we grab some Ginger Trips, a holistic alternative to Dramamine, just to be safe. Upon inspection, the eye patches are a light gray, which makes them look distinctly medical and sad, so we toss them out. But we throw on our bandannas and take our Ginger Trips and drive to Long Beach.
We arrive at the marina and spot our hosts, looking spectacularly nautical. (I would describe the size and style of our vessel, but I don’t know anything about sailing, so I’m trusting you to picture a boat.) The rest of the party is already onboard: Whitney and her new husband, Brian, and her childhood friends Katie and Cecily. Whitney’s father tells me his name but I forget it immediately and hope that referring to him as “Captain” for the rest of the trip will be endearing. Then Whitney introduces me to her brother. Oh, unrelated: You know that thing when you meet someone and you’re immediately like, Huh. We’re totally gonna have sex—anyway, his name is Luke.
We throw our bags belowdecks and get settled into a cozy little section of the cockpit to enjoy the fresh air. Being from Maine and not knowing how to sail is one of those things that earns me lots of incredulous looks. Yet being from Maine is not the same as being someone who summers in Maine—so I don’t want to ask too many questions right away. Whitney’s father does appear to be the captain of the ship, and I surmise that Luke is a kind of default first mate. Oh, crafts this size don’t have a first mate? Cool, I’m gonna call him that anyway so us poor kids can keep following along.
The Captain is having a conversation with someone on the dock about high winds. It sounds ominous, but we are so excited to take our trip that we choose to interpret the phrase “not quite gale force” as a green light. The family—except for Whitney’s husband, Brian, who is on the bow reenacting scenes from What About Bob?—finishes readying the boat, while the passengers with no sailing experience chat and pass around a bag of chips. Luke is fiddling with something just behind me and leans down to whisper in my ear.
“Listen, I’m sure those chips are delicious, but this weekend you’re the only girl I’m gonna see in a bikini that I haven’t known since I was five. I’m counting on you.”
This is presumptuous and rude, but I am twenty-one, so instead of jamming my keys through his calf, I find him incredibly charming. I make a big show of eating another handful of chips, then put the bag away and resolve to restrict myself to alcohol-based calories for the remainder of the trip.
We get out on the water and it is beautiful, but we are met with high winds as previously threatened. We try to take photos but most of them are blurred as the boat is tossed from side to side. The water is so choppy that a cooler of beer falls overboard and Luke leaps to action. He jumps into the dinghy and goes after the cooler. Everyone onboard watches with bated breath as he rescues the cooler and a couple runaway beers. He lifts the final can of PBR over his head and we cheer from the deck for our returning hero. I have a couple blurry photos of this, and that’s where my pictures from this day stop.