One sunny afternoon several of us were sitting in Cabo Bob's cockpit, sipping cocktails and swapping stories. His lovely side kick, Diane, noticed that the fire-hose box at the end of the finger pier looked like a silhouette of the famous cartoon character Sponge Bob Squarepants. She thought that it would be a kick to get some stick-on stuff and make eyes, nose, a shirt collar and tie and of course the little brown trousers to dress up the large yellow box. We laughed and carried on about how we might get in trouble, but nobody except Cabo Bob and his neighbor Randy would be able to see it anyway. It's not that we were naughty or trying to cause mischief, but we didn't want the harbormaster to bust his buttons over something so silly as Sponge Bob.

I never thought another thing about the project until a few weeks later, when Diane came over to our boat, giggling like a goose. "Come see what I did!" she said between giggles.

There he was, in all of his Hollywood glory, Sponge Bob himself, complete with tube nose and silly smile. Diane had used colored craft foam and double-side tape to adhere Sponge Bob's features to the back fire-hose box. "Do you think I'll get in trouble?" she asked.

"Heck no, anybody who would give you a bad time about something this cute should be ashamed," I told her. We celebrated with something bubbly and admired her work for the rest of the afternoon.

It wasn't too long after this that Diane came over with a heart-struck look on her face. "Come and see what happened," she said.

Someone had cut off Sponge Bob's nose and ripped his eyes off his face. We knew it couldn't have been the wind because there had been one of those 50-knot days the week before, and Sponge Bob had stood unscathed. It had to be one of the neighbors, or the harbormaster.

Diane went to the harbormaster with her tail between her legs, asking if he was cross with her about the "decoration." "Heck no, I love it!" said Tim, our handsome harbormaster. It's always good to know that your harbormaster has a sense of humor. It's also good to know that we could cross him off the list of suspects.

We still don't know who did the malicious damage, but Diane dutifully removed every scrap of foam from the back of the box, and now Sponge Bob lives only in our memories. I don't like to think that I have a mean-spirited neighbor who would do something like this, but every neighborhood has one, even when you live on a boat.