Our second boat was a Catalina 27 sloop that we called Yes, Dear. She had a dark blue hull and a Mercury outboard motor that didn’t quite fit into the outboard well, but we loved her and learned a lot about sailing and boating in general in the years that we owned her. She was large and heavy enough to take the rough summertime conditions on the bay, but not too big for novice sailors to handle. As a matter of fact, she was so easy to handle that I learned how to single hand.

We had taken the Yes, Dear to a yard in Redwood City for a haul out. Sweetie was working and, for some reason or other, I was designated to bring the boat back to our slip in Oyster Point on my own. This was to be my first attempt at taking full responsibility for the boat. Not quite confident but still wanting to prove myself, I asked my friend Chuck if he would like to come with me and help me bring the boat back from the yard. Chuck is an easygoing fellow who wasn’t a sailor, but he liked boats and was eager to spend an hour or two on the water.

The boat had been launched and was ready to go when we arrived. The day couldn’t have been more glorious and perfect for boating. There was a gentle breeze from the south, which during the summer is very unusual. It was blowing about 10-12 knots -- ideal conditions for the little Catalina. We set the sails and stayed inside the channel markers. The warm breeze lulled us into contented conversation. We had both taken a half day off of work (Chuck was a co-worker) so that we could take advantage of the ebb.

We were watching the cormorants diving for fish and enjoying our trip when, in the distance, Chuck spied what he thought was a seal or sea lion. “Oh look Kimmie, there is a seal!” he exclaimed. I never tire of watching wild life from the boat. I took a look and thought that the seal, or sea lion, or whatever it was, wasn’t very active, but I had seen seals during the winter floating on the surface, their contented bellies round with bait fish. Chuck asked me to pass him the binoculars. After taking a closer look, he snapped the glasses down to his chest, then back up to his eyes for another, closer, look.

“What is it, Chuck?” said I, concerned. “What did you see?”

“I don’t know, here, you take a look...” was his reply.

Chuck passed the binoculars over to me and as I brought the lenses into focus, I saw what I thought was a head. Not a seal head, but a human head. It was floating along with the current. Chuck and I exchanged worried looks, and then decided to go in for a closer look.

“I wonder if somebody was murdered?” I speculated to my friend.

“I wonder if somebody jumped from the bridge or fell from a boat?” Chuck replied.

We came closer and the closer we got the stranger the apparition seemed. We noticed that not only did the head appear unconcerned, but that it was actually smiling. Also, the hair was unusually well groomed for someone who had been floating in the water. There isn’t enough Brilliantine in the world to keep hair looking that good under these kinds of circumstances.

Finally, we were within shouting distance. Chuck pulled the binoculars to his eyes one more time and brought them down with a chuckle. “What, what??? What are you seeing Chuck?” I pleaded as he passed the glasses to me. It was indeed a head, and a human one at that.

However, it belonged to a mannequin, not a flesh and blood real person. We laughed and carried on all the rest of our trip, getting full mileage out of the experience. We considered picking up the head and bringing it home as a trophy, but decided not to steal the encounter from another passing boater who might come across our smiling friend.

Besides, it was well out of the channel and I didn’t want to take the chance of running aground on my first semi-solo voyage. The strangest part of the story occurred the following morning.

The Far Side was very a popular comic strip in the newspapers at the time. The day following our encounter, Gary Larson, author of The Far Side, drew a sinking container ship filled with merchandise from the Acme Mannequin Company. The circling sharks had legs, arms, heads and torsos in their jaws and were saying, “What is this? Some kind of joke?”