Our visitors and customers can ask the strangest questions about boating and life at the marina. They are too weird to make up!
Life working on the waterfront often brings fresh surprises daily. Ask any harbormaster or port director working with the public and you will hear similar tales. Visitors and boaters can say the darnest things! These questions do occur, really.
Just a few highlights:
- What's the elevation here? (The coast here is around sea level.)
- Pulling up to the floating dock with a 55-gallon drum of gasoline tipped over and leaking into his open engine compartment, the boat owner asked, "Where's everyone going?" (A cup of gasoline mixed with the right amount of air has the equivalent destructive force of five pounds of dynamite.)
- When will I catch a fish? (Charter boat operators would pay dearly to answer this one!)
- What time is high (or low) tide? (This is where you look out the window and guess with some authority or just hand them a free tidebook.)
- What does a harbormaster do? (Make something up, they would never believe you anyway.)
- How does that boat float? (You could try Archimedes or mention the owner's missing maintenance plan...)
- How do you get to Anchorage, Phoenix, et cetera? (We're at the end of the highway, how did you get here?)
- Can I dump this contaminated gasoline here? (See question number two.)
- I've been trying to start this outboard for three hours, what's the problem? (Where's that clip for your kill switch?)
- What's the weather doing tomorrow? (Quote the National Weather Service's annual budget as a helpful statistic?)
- Why can't I feed the Sea Lion? (Count your fingers and read the article on Marine Wildlife Viewing.)
