Gloucester Imposter 1 (glostah impawstah)

 Sailing  Vessel Zhai Mo 1

Several days after my last attempt at retirement, my wife noticed a story about a Chinese sailboat on the front page of the local newspaper Gloucester Times. Heather insisted: "Why don't you go give your countrymen a hand since nobody on the boat speaks English?" I said since I had more than a billion countrymen, what could I do to help these three? 

At any rate, curiosity got the better of me and I went to Gloucester Marine Railways where the boat was being repaired and ran into the famous Captain Zhai Mo.  We had a pleasant chat about their aborted journey to circumnavigate the North Pole and invited the crew to come to my house in Rockport for a weekend cookout. 

Long story short, for the next 2 months, I did manage to help them with the shipyard as well as hordes of admirers. Not only were there Chinese wellwishers, we also were constantly invited to museums and art centers by the excited art community. (Zhai is a professional painter and the shipyard is smack in the middle of the biggest art colony around here.)

At some point the captain sort of jokingly asked me to go back to Shanghai with them, I quipped I only need to go grab my toothbrush and we both laughed it off.  Perhaps I didn't take it as a joke completely because I found myself casualy mentioning it to Heather hoping to de-sensitize her to the idea.

Click here for the Gloucester Times article

Click here for 翟墨 自传