Praying to the Gods of Marine Mischief

Every boat crew that has ever taken to the water has one thing in common.

I hear you speculate that it is a “love of the water” or “a common bond of mateship and male bonding” or even “a desire to get away from the womenfolk for a few days.”

You’d be wrong.

The correct answer is snoring. Put your hand up if you’ve never laid awake on a boat or in a motel unit during a fishing trip listening to the horrific symphony that is the half pissed boatie praying through his nose to the Gods of marine mischief.

On every boat crew there at least one really bad snorer. Usually there are more. And why is it that the worst snorers take the least time to get to sleep? It takes the really bad snorer an average of about 30 seconds before they are bellowing away while the rest of us wrap our pillows around our heads and know … it’s going to be a long, long night.

Of course most boating trips involve a few … well, Ok quite a lot of …. medicinal snifters. And this is like adding a turbo to the snore, as any good wife can tell you. Even the quietest sleeper, with alcohol added, can make fearsome noises at about the same volume as a Mack truck with a busted exhaust grinding up over the Rimutakas.

Please note: nicknames in this article have not been changed to protect the innocent. These blokes need to fully appreciate just how much noise their finely tuned noses can generate.

The Jon B snore.
Takes pride of place as the man who introduced me to really bad snoring when we sailed as crew on a 46ft ocean racing yacht. I didn’t know it was possible to snore so hard and still remain alive. The fact that he didn’t wake in the morning with his whole face turned inside out and his nose dragged half way down his wind pipe, was truly staggering. Is cacaphonise a word? It should be.

The Kezza snore
It’s rumoured that no one has ever heard this snore. That’s because he’s such a tight arse that rather than pay for a camp or motel to stay at, he brings his truck, parks it down the road and sleeps in the back of that. And readers, you can be sure that no red blooded male is ever going to share those accommodations with him.

The Billy snore
An unusual animal, this, and tends to take two forms. The first is a full on bellow, like a cow with bloat stuck under 3 half rusty sheets of corrugated iron. The second follows the ingestion of several party pills and looks, and sounds, like Mr Bean after drinking 43 cups of strong coffee and a bottle of rum. This can be both funny and deeply disturbing.

The Ski snore
Rattles off his nose at a thousand miles and hour, while his mouth babbles a mixture of slurred profanity and 103% proof alcohol breath. When he gets like this you’re best to padlock him to something solid because he invariably thinks it would be a good idea to get on a kayak or into a leaky old dinghy borrowed from the foreshore and venture out into fast flowing current to catch live baits. Keep him snoring, that’s the answer with this boy.

The Boulder snore
This is capable of sonically stripping the paint off the walls of motel units and the front runner from the hull sides. Its not often you find someone who can snore at both ends simultaneously, but somehow this man has mastered the art..

The Squid snore
If you can imagine the entire American “desert storm” campaign taking place inside a small corrugated iron shed, you will be part way to understanding this man’s snore. Possibly the champion snorer of all time. So powerful it has the potential to blow the door open and shove your bed half way down the road or out around into the middle of the bay.

The group snore
The fisho’s version of synchronised swimming. Too horrible to even imagine. If you wake up in the night to take a jimmy riddle and come back to the group snore - it’s time to go out and catch livebaits for the morning fishing because there is no way you are going to get back to sleep any time soon.

The Shane Kelly snore
A gentle purr reminiscent of the wind sighing through the rigging. The ironic thing about my snoring, is that the addition of earplugs to drown out the others’ snores causes the volume to rise until it sounds like the howling of a bull that has tripped and caught his nads in a cattle stop. Serves them right.

And there’s never a time when I don’t take a set of good earplugs on a boating trip, ever. That’s one other thing Jon B showed me. Cheers Jon.