Tortuga

So there I was...scrambling to get the boat clean and in some kind of order before Princess, I mean Kim, came on board for vacation.  The place was beginning to look more like a man cave with nobody around to create any kind of decorum conscience in me.  In my haste I knocked Tortuga on the floor.  Who or what is Tortuga?  Let me tell you.  For those who know Spanish, you know that it is the word for turtle and he is indeed a turtle though only a soft plastic one.  He was brought back from Florida by Kim on a business trip where she stayed in a Ritz-Carlton Hotel and he lived on the bathtub with the little bottles of shampoo and conditioner.  His new home was on our boat until our good friends John and Jan kidnapped him without our knowledge and whisked him off to Martha's Vineyard on their sailboat for vacation.  We received a treasure map with instructions of how we might find our beloved pet from the devious abductors since they knew we were vacationing on the Vineyard a week later.  It was quite detailed and after following it with fear in our hearts we found Tortuga shaken but alive in the hollowed out section of a tree just off the path that snaked through a woods in a harbor on the Vineyard called Lake Tashmoo.  After that harrowing experience Tortuga stayed with us and he was in all kinds of pictures with Kim and I as we traveled through the islands.  In restaurants waitresses would take pictures of Kim, Tortuga and I dining together and there were shots of him having hor'derves in the cockpit of the boat at sunset as well as laying out at the beach.  All of these were sent to John and Jan to show them how happy he was to be back with us.  Eventually, John took him on the high seas with him for a multi-day blue water adventure when he helped to sail a boat to Bermuda.  Yes, this little turtle has had an exciting life and shows no signs of slowing down.  He, again, sits above the helm station on Eventide looking for the next harbor.