Dreamed last night of sailing. I must have been thinking of The Spanish Prisoner right before falling asleep, because it was Steve Martin who asked me to crew his boat on a little trip to Hawaii. Also, it must have been taking place in the past, because I reckoned that if we made the trip in 5 days I would still be back in time to make dinner for a guest this evening.

Fortunately the boat was very fast. After driving around trying to find the marina (among some beautiful hills - I kept thinking I needed to come back on my bike once I was awake), we stowed the gear on the boat and motored out to the middle of the channel where we attached the boom (!) to the mast and raised sails. Once the sails were up we were making about 30 or 40 knots going down a river channel (the Columbia?). In my dream it wasn’t very clear to me whether we were going upwind or downwind; instead I was trying to make some guesses about the hull and keel shape from the way the boat was handling. Apparently my confusion transmitted itself to the third crew member, who raised the spinnaker.

As it turned out we were in fact going upwind. Normally the spinnaker will capsize even a rather large boat when deployed incorrectly, but instead our mast broke off. We motored to the shore. My cell phone had no reception (I had been putting off calling my dinner guest because I thought she would understandably be a little miffed that I decided to sail to Hawaii (a) without her and (b) with no chance in hell of getting back in time). Fortunately there was a payphone whereever it was we had docked, which Steve (we’re definitely on a first-name basis after an experience like that) used to call some people. A woman came by and laughed at us, and at that point I woke up.