MAYDAY

Billy Johnson is sixty-one years old, owns a heating and cooling company, and has never once in his life had an idea he was willing to sleep on. His latest idea is to cross the Gulf Stream in a thirty-eight-foot 1988 motor yacht named the G-WHIZ, arrive in Nassau by sea, and to meet the woman he loves like a man in a movie. There is only one problem. Billy does not know how to drive a boat. His best friend Pete does not know how to drive a boat either, but somebody has to go along and make sure Billy comes back alive. What follows is a two hundred page argument for staying on dry land, told through a busted impeller, a dead refrigerator, an autopilot with a mind of its own, two head incidents that will not be described, and one distress call to the United States Coast Guard that Billy will insist for the rest of his life was not really necessary. Mayday Mayday is a comedy about love, stubbornness, and the particular kind of confidence that gets otherwise reasonable men killed on the water. It is also, against all odds, a story about a man who was a fool and went and did it anyway, and it worked out.