More fun with the stories...

Water Taxi Bootlegger and the Rogue

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On a sunny day with a breeze blowing you can almost hear the laughing and bickering of the high school kids as they rode the water taxi to the mainland. Mind you, some of the kids were familiar with the after hours chores of this steel-hulled launch. By day, the owner of this craft was a mild mannered taxi-operator. By night he was a bootlegger. Some of the students were his customers, so it was a poorly concealed criminal enterprise, all things considered. Coastal villages and camps had thirsts that legal vendors couldn't quench. So you'd think that this boat was chased up the rocks on a stormy night by a patrol boat or dashed on the logs by a sou'easter during a gale that blew the arbutus trees flat against the ground. No, the captain and his accomplice were on a routine delivery, clipping along at an honest thirty knots on a moonlit night when outa nowhere they were lifted by a rogue wave and deposited on the beach, ten feet free of the hightide mark. Since they were relaxed due to being half cut dipping into their cargo and relatively unharmed, they climbed down from their lofty perch, surveyed the situation and the hole in the hull, and waited for daybreak and rescue. The cargo was unloaded and the boat was never retrieved.

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Ron Morrison