Marco Bay Yacht Club goes on wild goose chase
April 4, 2008
The breeze blew light. The sun shone bright. The early spring morning of March 29 was beautiful when eight wild geese flew in and perched in various places around Marco Island.
By Joan and Carl Kelly
They roosted on mangrove branches and in backyards, on a commercial dock in Goodland and under a bridge.
Then, the members of Marco Bay Yacht Club set out from Caxambas Park on separate courses in eight small boats to search about the island for these elusive birds.
Armed with a GPS and compass, the list of club members and sheets of paper marked with eight clues, one for each of the eight geese, these intrepid mariners chased the wild geese.
"This goose is the sweet goose."
"This goose hangs out with Star Trek's captain."
"This goose is a friend of Spiderman."
"This goose is grazing at N 25° 55.178' by W 81° 42.103.'"
Jim Meuller looked at the clues and said, "I suggest we head directly to the bar and wait for the others to arrive."
But his crew refused to take the shortcut. They would find the geese. And so said the seven other crews.
Each of the geese (cardboard cut-out geese) sported a numeral on its breast. The eight boat teams were to decipher the clues, find the geese, record the numbers and proceed to Old Marco Crab House for drinks, lunch and the awarding of prizes for first through fourth place.
The clues were obscure. Several of the boaters were barely awake at 9:30 a.m. and had difficulty getting started. Some passed the goose (not quite the same as passing the buck) and had to back track.
The sweet goose was discovered in Sugar Bay; the one that hangs out with Star Trek's captain Kirk was at Kirk Fish Co. in Goodland.
The friend of Spiderman was something of an Internet goose planted firmly in the yard of the Yacht Club's Webmaster, John Putnam. Interestingly enough, Putnam did not find this goose.
By late morning, Jim Meuller's crew had found all but one of the geese when Ginny Meuller dropped their clue/answer sheet overboard.
Newt Weiss reached over to pluck it out of the water, but kept going. Overboard he went, head-first into the water, cell phone and all.
"It was very refreshing," he said later during lunch, though he was still rather damp.
"I don't know what the problem was," Ginny Meuller said. "We had another copy of it."
Arrive by land
More than 60 Marco Bay Yacht Club members participated, but not all of them were in the water going on the goose chase. About a third arrived by land at the final destination, the Old Marco Crab House.
Several of the crews found only five geese. One crew found all of them-Jim Meuller's crew. The first prize of $50 and a treasure chest of Puerto Rican rum went to Ginny and Jim Meuller and Nancy and Newt Weiss.
The crew that took fourth place, who remain unnamed except by their boat name CC Rider, won $25. That crew also received the somewhat dubious honor and work of planning next year's event, procuring the prizes, writing the clues and placing next year's flock of wild geese for the chase.
