Ever since I was little, as all my family and long time friends will attest to, I’ve wanted to be a pirate. I have dressed up as a pirate every second Halloween for as long as I can remember. On a trip to Disney World I went in to a gift shop, after having saved all my birthday and Christmas money, where a salesman tried his very best to sell me some princess something or other. Of course, I gave him a steely gaze and set out for the pirate section where I proceeded to purchase a very formidable skull piggy bank and a wooden shot gun. I have various eye patches from different years piled up in my basement along with a large collection of swords my father patiently made out of wood for me. I can make the freshest of bruises and cuts appear out of makeup in only a few minutes. My childhood heroines were Anne Bonney and Mary Reed, the two most famous (and ferocious) women pirates in history, who crewed on Captain Jack Rackhams sloop Vanity. I can remember whispering the lyrics of “Dead Man’s Chest” and other pirate ballads to my horse, Sassifrass, as I rode her on the “wild open ocean” of the fields behind my house. And now, sixteen years after my fantasy began, I am sailing the very same waters the pirates I had idolized passed through. We sailed the Sir Francis Drake Channel passing by famous pirate spots such as Blonde Rock, The Bluff, Buck Island and Dead Mans Chest (the island made famous by the pirate ballad “Fifeteen men on a dead mans chest, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum”). We spent the afternoon snorkeling a pitch black cave where hundreds of pirates attempted to steal the gold and jewels allegedly hidden inside.
That evening we made our way to Tortola (a pirate central according to Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean) where my day of exploring pirate waters came to a close.
If I don’t make it home it’s most likely because I ran away to be a pirate J
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