Ah, Larry Gamble. He and his lovely wife had a house in Sandpiper. In the early 70’s we did a lot of partying together. One summer he and I sat up all night  drinking and talking. As the sun came up, Larry said “Let’s go fishing.” I said” You don’t have a boat, I don’t have a boat. How are we going to go fishing?”

“No problem” said Larry “Don Nixon lets me borrow his boat.” So, at 5:30 in the morning we headed down to the spit. (In those days many people left their boats pulled up on the beach in front of the Shingle Spit Resort.) We climbed into Nixon’s 12 foot aluminum runabout and headed off into the chuck clutching a jug of Beau Sejour between us.

We ended up with lines in the water just outside Ford Cove drinking and joking. We had been out for about two hours when we spotted Joe Lowery heading our way.

“You boys are in big trouble you’d better head back to the Spit.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Why, you stole a boat!”

“What do you mean? This is Nixon’s boat.”

“No, it ain’t! The owner’s phoned the cops so you better get your sorry asses back to the Spit.”

“Oops.” We started the engine and followed Joe back. On the beach was a very angry looking chap with a wife trying to constrain him. As we beached we noticed a cop car just coming off the ferry.

Humble Pie, Mea Culpas, many apologies later we managed to convince the guy it was a stupid mistake. The cop was happy to see the problem resolved and also happy that he’d just spent an hour or so riding the ferry on a beautiful sunny day and he could tour the island before heading back, (Back then the police would jump at the chance to visit Hornby and I can’t confirm this but people told me that they would sometimes phone ahead to warn folks they were coming so we could get all our illegal vehicles off the road. They didn’t want any complications interfering with their mini vacation.)

I never did like fishing very much and I liked it less after that day.