talking to relieve the tension and purposely skipping answering his question at the same time. “I am not sure, exactly. I was asleep on Right Guard earlier this afternoon when I felt some people get on the boat. I got out of the sack and started to go out into the cockpit to tell them to get lost, when a guy with a gun drawn came down into the cabin and said he was with law enforcement and they were executing a search warrant,” Bubba sputtered, his anxiety level rising noticeably. Doobie arrived with Bubba’s third beer, and his angst subsided slightly. He had his hands around the beer mug as he continued. “I asked them what they were looking for and the officer said they were looking for ‘illegal substances.’ That could be anything. It could be Niger yellow cake. It could be ANFO. It could be Micron 22,” Bubba complained. “What did they do?” “They took apart everything in the boat. They got into lockers and took the contents out and piled it on the cabin floor. They looked in all the drawers. They brought a dog on board and had it sniff everything. They dumped the sails out of the sail bags. They pulled all the settee cushions out. In general they made a nuisance of themselves and a damn mess out of Right Guard,” snarled the live-alone, live-aboard sailor. “And to add insult to injury they took my red baseball cap, the one with the Peterbilt emblem on it, off my head and examined inside the sweat band.” “Did they show you the search warrant?” I wanted to know. “Yeah. They showed me a piece of paper with my name on it and the name of my boat on it. It was signed by a judge
News & Views for Southern Sailors
of some kind up in Tampa, so I guess it was legitimate,” Bubba explained, holding up his hand to get Doobie’s attention again. “How long were they there?” “I guess about 30 minutes. When they started to get ready to go, I asked them who in the hell was going to clean up the mess they had made. One of the police guys said it wasn’t in their job description. And then he laughed,” Bubba groused. “When I asked them what they were looking for, one of the cops said they were looking for ‘roaches.’ Someone, it turns out, had heard me talking about all the cockroaches I had on board Right Guard. They called the DEA. I told him that they didn’t need a whole bunch of guys with guns and dogs to find roaches on my boat. All they needed was a flashlight after dark. He said to me that it was another kind of roach they were looking for. What in the hell are DEA agents doing looking for a specific kind of insect? “Can you imagine the trouble this country is in when armed men who are supposed to be arresting druggies and terrorists and rapists and murderers come aboard a guy’s boat in the middle of the day looking for cockroaches? That’s just a waste of manpower. They should have sent the Orkin man instead. That’s what I think. I am going to write my congressman, Katherine Harris.” After listening to Bubba’s take on this latest outrage, this invasion of his personal space by law enforcement goons, I signaled Doobie that I would have two beers for myself and ordered two more for Bubba. It seemed like the decent thing to do, attempting to smooth out storm-tossed waters for a guy whose surprising innocence sometimes reminds one of easier times, like pink cotton candy from the county fair.
SOUTHWINDS
August 2005
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