The Yacht Catastrophe: A Brief Tale of Seafaring Ineptitude

As ever, it is I, Carson, your faithful—if increasingly world-weary—butler. I write today to recount the recent debacle that unfolded when the Aristocrats, in their infinite wisdom, decided to acquire a yacht, christened The Imperial Imbecile, and promptly set out to prove that none of them had the faintest idea how to command a vessel. The day began with Lady Lorraine, the

Countess of Burgundy, swooning before we had even reached the marina. The sight of the yacht’s anchor—"so terribly industrial!" she exclaimed—sent her into a spiral of melodrama, culminating in her collapsing onto the deck with such theatrical precision that even the anchor itself seemed impressed. I carried her smelling salts, as usual, and revived her, only for her to promptly swoon again at the sight of an ominous seagull circling overhead. "It’s a harbinger of doom!" she wailed. I informed her it was merely a bird, but she insisted it was wearing a particularly menacing expression. Meanwhile, Béarnaise was preoccupied with his handkerchief. The sea breeze, though gentle, appeared to offend his delicate sensibilities. “Oh, the wind! The salt! The chaos of it all!” he cried, flailing his handkerchief in the air as if engaged in an elaborate fencing duel with invisible forces. His white handkerchief—embroidered with a gold "B"—flapped majestically as he swanned about the deck, clearly oblivious to the fact that we had yet to even raise anchor. Faux Pas, our intrepid and self-proclaimed leader, insisted on captaining the yacht. I, naturally, had reservations. After all, this was the man who once referred to a horse as "the tall one with four elbows." Nonetheless, he donned a comically oversized captain’s hat—purchased, I presume, from a costume shop rather than any reputable maritime outfitter—and proceeded to bellow orders that made little sense to anyone, including himself. "Lower the sails!" he commanded, despite the yacht having no sails. "There are no sails, sir," I informed him. He blinked twice, nodded as if this had been his plan all along, and then pointed decisively at the anchor. "Then... hoist the anchor! We sail at once!" Faux Pas declared, throwing his arms wide with great flourish, knocking Béarnaise’s handkerchief into the water in the process. Béarnaise shrieked in horror, declaring it a national emergency, and demanded we turn back at once. “My handkerchief! My one true comfort in this world!” I refrained from pointing out that he had at least three more identical handkerchiefs tucked away in his jacket. As Cliché attempted to reassure Béarnaise with the classic, “There’s plenty of fish in the sea,” I heard Hors d'oeuvre muttering to himself, visibly perplexed. He sidled up to me and whispered, “But... where are all the fish? We’ve been sailing for twenty minutes and I haven’t seen a single one.” “We haven’t left the dock yet, sir,” I replied with as much patience as I could muster. He gave me a slow nod, clearly processing this revelation as though it were the most profound insight of his life. The real chaos, however, began when Faux Pas finally managed to engage the engine. With a triumphant cry of, “We sail into glory!” he pushed the throttle to full speed. What he had not accounted for—naturally—was the fact that the yacht was still tethered to the dock by multiple mooring lines. The result was an impressive display of inertia meeting stupidity, as The Imperial Imbecile lurched forward with a groan, then immediately snapped back, launching all five aristocrats across the deck in a spectacle of flailing limbs and muffled yelps. Lady Lorraine fainted again, of course. Béarnaise landed in a heap of silks, crying out for his beloved handkerchief (the one now floating somewhere in the marina, being examined suspiciously by a seagull). Faux Pas, undeterred by his own incompetence, insisted that the mooring lines had somehow “sabotaged” him. He then attempted to blame the wind, despite there being none. Cliché, pulling himself upright with great difficulty, dusted off his jacket and announced, “Well, you know what they say—if at first you don’t succeed...” “Do stop talking,” I muttered. Hors d'oeuvre, who had been thrown headfirst into the ship’s bell, emerged dazed but otherwise unharmed, ringing it repeatedly in a state of utter confusion. “We’ve arrived! Dinner time!” he cried. I informed him we had, in fact, moved no more than four inches. He nodded thoughtfully, then asked, “So... is it lunch, then?” After some considerable effort—and no small amount of untangling various limbs from ropes—we finally managed to untie the yacht from the dock. Faux Pas, now with a renewed sense of misguided confidence, revved the engine once more, and this time, we did indeed set off. Straight into a cluster of nearby sailboats. The resulting cacophony of shouting sailors, scraping hulls, and the peculiar sound of Béarnaise’s wails (he had, in the melee, lost yet another handkerchief) was nothing short of spectacular. Faux Pas, in a desperate bid to salvage the situation, bellowed, “Fear not! This is all part of the plan!” before promptly steering the yacht into a large buoy, which rang out like a death knell for any remaining dignity. And so, dear reader, that is how our maiden voyage came to an ignoble end, not on the high seas, but in the shallow waters of a marina where we managed to cause chaos within a radius of approximately fifty feet.

As I stand here now, polishing what remains of the yacht’s once-pristine deck, I can only reflect on the simple truth that perhaps some people are meant for land. Or, at the very least, for yachts with captains who actually know how to sail. Until our next disaster... Carson, Butler of the Aristocrat yacht