We're boarding the ship when I hear the skipper on his phone: "I just thought I'd call in case we went down." This is a weekly summer event on Lake Union: Every Tuesday, sailboats get together to race, and then to party. It's called the Duck Dodge, and today—the last one for 2006—40 boats are racing.

Sailing's so dramatic: Someone shouts, "Tacking!" which in English means, "lay down flat on the deck because the sail is going to fly over you." Then someone else shouts, "Bring out the jib!" and then someone else responds: "You're going to bring out the jib right now?" "Now!" "Not so fucking fast!" People are shouting about spinnakers and we're going at six knots and there's an empty bottle of vodka rolling around the deck—the skipper is sober, but his crew sailed into drunkenness a ways back.

At around sundown—we didn't win, but according to one seadog, "That was a good race... no one got hurt!"—all the boats raft together in the middle of the lake and crews crawl from one boat to the next on the huge manmade island, drinking as they go. The Seattle skyline is all around us, and it's hard to imagine feeling more carefree. When a ship named Shoot the Moon leaves the raft, its crew predictably moons us all. The winner of the Duck Dodge earns a duck sticker for his mast, but, honestly, to be a part of this temporary island oasis in the middle of it all—who cares about winning?

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