Bonaventure V sailing

Bonaventure, Buffalo, and Beer

In the summer of 1975 I worked with Paul Dzuban For Bernie Herman on his C&C 53 racing yacht.

One of the more memorial stories was delivering Bonaventure from Toronto to Detroit. They were going to get the boat ready to race in the Macinaw Bernie gave me a 1000 dollars for food and a 1000 dollars for booze and we had a bunch of our friends for crew. Gord and katie, Krash and Wendy and Matt for a few. We had a geat time endless beer and I bought a bunch of really good wine. I cooked Sunday dinner in Lake Erie  of Roast leg of lamb and lobster for starters. That night we hit one of Erie's famous storms and we were flying my watch was around midnight and I loved it on the wheel when we were flying over 15 knots and I was was just as happy to take Matts watch as he was a bit apprehensive about his turn. So the storm blew out and before noon we were sailing up Lake St. clair approaching Detroit when we thought it best to throw our drugs over the side. As we started this Paul came up with a bright idea and told everybody to give him their drugs and we did. His idea was that when we tied up nobody was allowed to leave the boat except him.  He had to go to phonebooth and call customs and immigration. So he thought he would stash the drugs in the phonebooth and come back afterwards. So we tie up Paul makes sure he has a dime and heads for phonebooth. Suddenly over the otherside come a raid by customs and immigration with guns drawn. Who what where etc. Who is the Captain. Paul goes to phone loses dime comes back forgetting to stash drugs to get another dime. Paul sees all these armed policemen types and all of us pointing at him. That he didn't shit his pants at that moment is much to his credit. They searched the boat from stem to stern but did no body searches. They were pissed off because we still had so much booze on board. I explained to the man in charge that Canadians no longer smuggled booze into United States that we intended to smuggle booze out of the United States. I promised we would not touch the booze until we got back to Canada and flashing $500.00 I promised to go buy American booze immediatley. So they let us go booze and dope intact.

We had a day at the Detroit Yacht Club to get some work done and everybody went shopping. We went to some dance at a private club being careful to arrange cabs back to the Yacht Club as were i downtown Detroit. so we sail to Sarnia were the racing crew was to pick up the boat and most of us get off. After a long night of partying Paul and I tie up at the custom dock about 9 am on Sunday morning everybody else is sleeping.  Nobody about just a phone with sign call officer. We call a half hour later officer shows up in bathrobe and slippers. Got anything to declare Deckshoes a few beer we mumble- he reads long spiel about regulations He then asks if there is anybody else on board.We say yes. "Did they buy anything?" Deckshoes booze. He shrugs well tell them and reads spiel again. We laugh and tie up.



So Somebody came to Sarnia to pick us up to drive back to Toronto. I had to detour to Buffalo to pick up some part or something. There was Gord Jones And krash and Wendy for sure and a couple of others. When we got to Buffalo we picked up the part and it was like 1 oclock pm and everybody was hungry. We stopped at a restaurantand I saw a bar across the street. I told them to come over when they were done and headed for the bar. I was the only one there it was dark and weird and decorated with paintings of Vampires and Gansters. I sat at the end of the bar by a small stage with a big old Wurlitzer jukebox. The bartender got my beer and went back to what he was doing. So I look around had a couple of sips and walked over to the jukebox and put in a quarter and got 3 songs. I sit down to drink and listen when from out of the back comes out a totally naked, nude except for her shoes , gogo dancer gets on the stage and starts dancing besdide me. I say hey you dont have to do that for me," just as the gang comes throught the door. What is going on they ask"? I have no idea I say and we head out.

 I used to deliver Bonaventure V a 53 ft SORC raceboat for Bernie Herman but I refused to race it because he wouldn't allow beer aboard.until one time his crew could make a race and Bernie asked me to get my wedensday night race gang together. I refused until he allowed beer. We raced across Lake Ontario and it was the only race he won that year. (Oh did I mention we did it on one tack. We never had to do a thing except drink beer and watch John North sail to victory) We celebrated anyway