No, this post has nothing to do with Governor Christie. It’s all about encounters with critters, good and bad, while aboard Betty Ann.

On board, we see wildlife we don’t see in our every day lives. When the Betty Ann is in the Carolinas or south, it’s not infrequent that the shout “DOLPHINS!” rings out and every one runs on deck to see the creatures cavort in the bow waves. Everything you learned about dolphins from the 1960s TV show Flipper is pretty much right on. They really do play in the boat’s bow waves, dive with incredible grace, and occasionally fend off sharks. (Well, I never witnessed the sharks part, but I like to think that they do.) If a Madison Avenue advertising agency was “branding” species, golden retrievers and dolphins would be the gold standard.

We’ve been fortunate to see some other pretty amazing sights. In 2005, we saw a pod of Minke whales just as we crossed over the rise of the continental shelf east of Montauk, Long Island. Apparently, Minke whales feed on the up surge of plankton that happens at the continental shelf.  Off Delaware, I saw a huge tuna explode straight up out of the water. Out in the Gulf Stream, we’ve had schools (or is it flocks?) of flying fish thud against our main sail in the middle of the night, only to be found rotting on the deck in the morning.

Not all encounters with nature are enjoyable. Our most morally vexing encounter was with a duck. Between crews, Archie had left the Betty Ann in New Bern, North Carolina. Several weeks later, Archie, Rick, Alison, Bill and I met at the New Bern airport and took a taxi to the marina, all set to go. As we loaded our gear and groceries on the boat and got ready to cast off lines, someone made the mistake of glancing down into the dinghy. Comfortably ensconced among the lines and mop in the dinghy was a duck, proudly laying on top of a dozen eggs. Archie grew up on a farm, spent his adolescent autumns hunting ducks, and was not fazed in the least. But for the rest of us tree hugging suburban dwellers, the moral dilemma was paralyzing. Do we sail north with our duck, tearing her from her beloved Carolinas? Do we call off the trip and surrender the boat to a duck? Do we move her and her nest ashore and hope for the best? And if so, how exactly do you move a duck protecting her chicks? She showed no sign of giving any ground.

At some point, Archie had enough of our tortured debate, threw a towel over mama’s head, picked her up, and carried her squirming off the boat. The rest of us grabbed the eggs and a comfortable rope and created, as best we could, a nest on the dock next to the boat. Sad to say, mama, in a righteous huff, flew off down the river. We have no idea whether she ever returned. It still haunts most of us. But I think Archie sleeps just fine.

Ducks are not the worst of it. The least pleasant encounter with wildlife occurs every Spring, without fail, off the coast of New Jersey. Just opposite Cape May, whether we are 10 miles or 50 miles off shore, flies descend. Not just a few. Hundreds and hundreds of blue bottle flies. They cover the windows down in the main cabin, buzzing about, acting like they want out (but then why did they come in ??!!)

Stuck on a sailboat alive with buzzing, we debate the origins of the flies for hours. Do they really fly miles from the shore to descend on the Betty Ann? How do they know where we are? Or is there some floating patch of garbage that they call home? Is it that we carry the fly eggs north and it is just coincidence that they emerge every year off New Jersey?

Or perhaps it is just a cheap political trick by Governor Christie, a devout duck devotee out to revenge our heartless destruction of a duck family.