Friday, March 20, 2009

As Promised: Horny Soviet Sailors!

When I was a teenager, I participated in Sea Scouts. It was a lot of fun and because of my involvement in it, I was able to do a lot of things that most kids my age didn't. In 1986, I sailed aboard the California Maritime Academy's Golden Bear to the World Expo in Vancouver, British Colombia. It was a lot of fun and I have many stories from that trip. I won't go into them now because I promised to tell you about how I got the nickname Misha, so here it is.

The Golden Bear at that time (the one I was on has been moth-balled and the school has a newer one now) was a 350ft steam powered ship. We when arrived in Canada, we docked in an industrial shipyard. We were the only ship on the dock for several days. When we didn't have duties on the ship, we would walk out of the shipyard and then find various modes of transit to the many points of interest in Vancouver. Many times, some of us would be hanging out on the dock waiting for our friends to finish up with their "watch" so we could all go out exploring.

One morning while I was on deck, a huge ship pulled up to our dock. The first things I noticed were the Cyrillic letters on the hull and the Soviet flag. THE RUSSIANS WERE COMING! THE RUSSIANS WERE COMING! Everyone went quiet on deck as we watch the crew tie their ship up to the dock. It was all the talk over breakfast. All of us wanted to know what they were doing there. The boys wanted nothing to do with "The Commies". The girls had a different idea. We decided that we would go over as goodwill ambassadors and introduce ourselves.

Of course, I was still on watch and no one wanted to wait for me. So I stayed on board with one other girl and the rest of the girls went over to introduce themselves. The girls went over and said it was kind of freaky. They said you could pick out who the KGB guys were right away because they all looked like Mr. Clean and they spoke English. They acted as the translators between the girls and the crew. It turned out that the ship was a fishing boat.

The guys were really excited to meet all of the girls and they all stood around learning each other’s names and exchanging gifts. The girls gave the fisherman California wine and cheese, commemorative wine glasses, little stuffed California bears and patches from our Sea Scout Ship, The Sea Otter. The Russians gave the girls bottles of Russian mineral mater, t-shirts with their ship logo on it, Russian cigarettes (gross) and pins. They tried to give them vodka, but the KGB guys knew they were too young.

After the names and the gift exchange, things got a little awkward. They all just stood around for a while staring at each other. I guess one of the fisherman dudes wanted to break the silence so he pointed over to the Golden Bear and said, "That boy over there he is moving very slow." The girls started to roar with laughter. You see, the "boy" he had pointed to was me. I was climbing up a ladder. I had really short hair at the time and he only saw the back of me. Before the girls could explain why they were laughing, I turned around and the fisherman saw my boobs, blushed and grinned.

Of course, the girls couldn't wait to tell me the story when they got back aboard the ship. I quickly showered and got ready and went over to meet the Russians too. As soon as we got aboard, my friend Liz said, "This is the guy that thought you were a boy!" I held out my hand and said, "Hi, my name is Michele." He said something in Russian and the KGB guy snickered and said, "He said we are going to call you Misha, it is like Mike, in Russian." Everyone laughed and that was my name for the rest of the trip.

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