Anchors Away!

So in interesting little tidbits of information, we see one of Holland-America’s passengers on a recent cruise was a bit of a prankster.

It seems that one night – while still dressed in his tuxedo and undoubtedly buzzed on several overpriced drinks – he went to the top deck and threw off a lifesaver.

Not the candy, but one of those round things that’s supposed to attract the sharks while you’re waiting to be fished out of the ocean.

Given that cruise ships have more cameras than a comparably sized bank, the people watching the screens somewhere in the bowels of the ship realized that one of their floaty things had gone astray, so they turned around to pick it up.

Nobody would ‘fess up to having thrown it in the water, so the Captain, in something of a fit of pique that was probably not going to please the passengers either, made everyone turn out to their lifesaving stations so that he could do a head count and make sure that nobody had fallen over.

This was at 7:30 in the morning.

And it took 90 minutes.

My recollection is that Holland-America is not especially generous with their coffee, either, so one can anticipate all those passengers in their jammies standing there waiting to be counted were not in the best of moods.

I can't say that I blame them, though.  Making everyone else stand around for an hour and a half to figure out if anyone is missing -- while continuing to go forward in the ship -- is more of a temper tantrum than a safety protocol.

If he threw it in the water before 5:30 in the morning, and they're not counting heads until 7, it's a cinch that any passenger who was out there has already become breakfast for the sea critters. 

Given Holland-America’s predilection towards elder guests, it’s not hard to imagine the ankle scrapes from wheelchairs or cane whacks that happened at breakfast later that morning.

It seems that just throwing the float overboard wasn’t enough for our little prankster, though. Sometime during all of this (before the roll call, but after the float – about 5:30 in the morning) he donned a pair of work gloves that he found either as a disguise or to protect the $80 manicure that he’d gotten in the spa earlier.

He then entered a restricted area and dropped the rear anchor.

While the ship was moving.

For anyone who has ever wondered what would happen if you threw the car in Park while going down the interstate, this would be a “must see”. Would it come to a stop, or would it go around in a big circle like on the cartoons? Either way, there’s going to be a LOT of excitement for a few minutes there.

I didn’t know that the anchors carried enough chain to reach the bottom out in the middle of the ocean. I just assumed those were for relatively shallow water use.

Mr. Personality apparently owns a 50 foot yacht that has a comparable anchor system, so he knew how to release it and was explaining it to his girlfriend, who accompanied him on the trip.

It’s good that he’s got enough money to own a yacht, because he now faces felony criminal charges that carry a $250,000.00 fine and up to 20 years in jail. He’ll be needing money from the sale of that boat for his defense.

Sometimes it costs more to get a lawyer to take your case just because everyone realizes that the client is so stupid that it’s going to take a lot more effort than with your garden variety criminal.

If I represented him, we’d rely on the “dumbass defense”.

“Your honor, my client did it and pleads guilty to the lesser included offense of being a dumbass. Please don’t send him to jail, though, because pretty boys who have their own tuxedos and 50 foot yachts don’t tend to fair to well in jail and get traded around for cigarettes.”

I bet they’re going to revoke his Captain’s Club membership, too.