The DU Lounge

I was in San Francisco on the last night of some gathering, and our host, who lived in San Fransisco, remembered the tall ships in town. So after dinner, she took us in her car, and we rushed down to the port.

All ships but one were closed for the night, and the last one had JUST closed the last tour. It was the Russian ship. They said come back the next morning. I said I was flying to Boston early the next morning. I pleaded with the guy in Russian. He got the captain. The captain came over and said, “one of you speaks Russian?” I said I did. He said, well, in that case, OK. He called over some 19 year old sailor, and told him to show us around. The poor kid spoke ONLY Russian, which normally wouldn’t have been a problem, except that he was using dozens of nautical terms I had never heard of. I had him repeat almost everything, and had him explain what half his words meant. I had never read “Captains Courageous” in Russian, after all.

But all in all, it worked out, and we DID get our three person private tour (I translated for the other two), where most people were in groups of 20 or more.