Not really off topic but I keep laughing when I think back to this incident..I decided I could afford a night in quite a smart marina on the Spanish coast and was given a berth opposite an immaculate wooden Ketch, French flagged with a man, woman, a very young rather serious looking teenage girl and a little lad about 5 years old on board. The laid decks were spotless and her varnish work gleamed and she had cream coloured sun awnings rigged over her cabin and cockpit and I noticed the cockpit ones had neatly rolled up side curtains secured with tapes.
I don't know about other single handers but sometimes I forget to eat and then suddenly realise I'm starving! This was the case as I saw the two ladies opposite laying the cockpit table with wine glasses and bottles, smart shiney cutlery and real china plates. I dived down below and found in the icebox (no fridge) a pre cooked sausage of indeterminate age, must be ok though as there were no green mouldy bits on it...and three eggs. Ha! problem solved, bash the eggs up in the frying pan, bread and butter and a big mug of tea and from the grub locker one of Mr Heinz's little tins of beans with the ring pull lid.
I climbed up into the cockpit, frying pan with sizzling eggs in one hand, mug with three slices of bread balanced on the top in the other hand. Sausage on a fork (handle held in my mouth) and the beans dropped down my 'T' shirt. I sat down and started to eat the cold sausage on the fork, looking up I saw the ladies watching me...The girl with widened eyes and mouth half open, Mother with eyes narrowed and the beginnings of a sneer on her face. I attacked the eggs...in the frying pan..well, why make a plate dirty?
I heard a gasp! The girl held her Mother's arm and looked aghast at me. Mother said something and the man appeared from below where he was obviously playing the favourite French game of being cook, he wore a striped apron. He watched me...suddenly I remembered the beans and produced the tin from the neck of my 'T' shirt like a magician with a rabbit from a top-hat, popped the lid and took a fork full.
Mon Dieu Mama! cried the girl, Mother hugged her while father with his little moustache twitching like a demented caterpillar lunged across the cockpit and released the side curtain tapes. The curtain descended slowly like an old cinema curtain and the last I saw of them was the little lad grinning at me as the curtain came down and his private cartoon of the English barbarian ended.
They are so sophisticated those Frenchies..
Links: sailFar Gallery , sailFar Home page -->> sailFar Gallery Sign Up - Click Here & Read 
Author