Wrong Place at the Wrong Time, September 28th, 2008

Port of Sidney to Roche Harbor

As it turned out, we had flat water and fair wind for crossing Haro Straight. Kate's seasickness meds were completely unnecessary, but this could not be known 12 hours ahead. It's unlikely that Kate will test Transderm V again. She woke up feeling dizzy and off-balance with dry mouth and sore throat. She became accustomed to dizzy within a few hours. Later she felt nautious. Kate read the instructions to find out how to take the patch off. Unfortunately, potential side effects of the aftermath of the patch were worse than just leaving it on. So the patch was left on for the critical part of the day. By 9pm drowsiness set in and Kate couldn't think straight or stay awake. The crew found it quite hilarious to see the Captain all strung out on Transderm V. The patch is off.

After docking at what the guide book had shown to be the customs dock, Captain Kate instructed the crew to stay on board, collected passports and marched down the dock to the customs office. Part way there, she remembered that she should have brought the customs decal number but didn't turn back as it didn't seem right to march around on American soil without clearance quite that much. The customs office had closed about half an hour earlier but they had a special black phone to call in arrival with a list of required documents. Kate marched back to the boat, picked up the rest of the papers and the customs decal number and then went back to the black phone. She called and told someone the passport numbers, names, birthdays, etc of everyone. You would think that would be enough, but at the end of it all she was told that a customs officer would be calling me back shortly and that we were not cleared yet. The marina office was also closed and Kate quite illegally spoke with someone on the way back to the boat about what slips were usually available to visitors.

No phone call, just an announcement "Coming aboard!" The customs officer came on board to a table full of rum (unspilled, mind). "YOU are in the wrong place at the wrong time!"
Hmmm..did you know? Customs closes at 5pm as of Sept 17th. And Roche Harbor moves the customs dock in then too. So there we were at 5:30pm on the dock that used to be the customs dock but currently wasn't. Which meant that Kate had invaded the USA twice already, but that wasn't worth mentioning at the time. It really is too bad that Kate was not in top thinking form at this stage in the evening. When the customs officer asked what kind of rum, Kate looked at the crew who answered honestly, "Bacardi." The customs officer then asked, "No Havana club?" Kate, who would normally exercise restraint of her smart-ass tendencies in circumstances involving people with army boots and guns then says, "No. Should we have? Is that your favourite kind?" We'll have to chalk it up to the seasickness meds that Kate took the response that that sort of thing would put a black mark on your file forever meant that the customs officer didn't like jokes about bribery. It wasn't until somewhat later that Kate remembered that America has this whole strange hang-up with Cuba. Who knew they would be so serious about stopping import of Cuban goods? Thank you, Cy, for realizing in Sidney that passing up the opportunity to buy Havana Club was a good idea right before going back across the border.