I won't fish, don't ask me.

Be it the most tranquil weekend of dangling lures, or Hemingway-versus-the-sharks heroics, I won't fish, merci beaucoup.

Adventure, however, is my best friend's middle name, so when the sales manager chartered a 55-foot boat with a skipper and crew to take a bunch of visiting sales prospects out on the high seas, a-fishing we did go.

Sing ho! for the open waves, and all that.

It was a crack-of-dawn start. Boats cost 24 hours a day, and the eight hours my company had purchased were the cream of the crop. A motley bunch we made: a sweating Howie, sales manager for my esteemed employers, purveyors of doodads and such; several rather klutzy gentlemen from the North-Eastern United States with blue legs, who might be persuaded to buy whatever it was we sold; myself, in the capacity of Morale Officer, freebooter and freeloader; and a distaff companion of mine, Ruth by name. She was a babe I'd met at a party the night before, truth to tell, on whom both I and a tattooist had designs.

Away to the ocean blue we chugged as morning overcame Hamilton Harbour. The Captain drove from upstairs, me hearties. The sales prospects milled around the rear deck, getting in the way of the extraordinarily aged fisherman who was the one-man crew. My companion and I stood at the pointy end, staring in the general direction of Cuba.

We trolled. My, how we trolled. Dragging huge lumps of steak behind us, we bobbed up and down for what seemed like hours. It was hours. Only the smell of previously caught fish, rather than any interested piscine equivalents of the sales prospects, disturbed our bobbing. The actual sales prospects, I recall, became dispirited as the June heat bore down on us.

I attempted to dance the hornpipe, but they would have nothing of it, uncultured as they were, and unversed in ways maritime. These efforts proved exhausting, so my companion and I repaired below decks for a nap. This occasioned chortling from the fellows, whose legs had already turned ominous shades of red.

"Chortle you may,'' I thought as I fell into a deep slumber brought on by the lull of the mighty ocean sway, and a three-day round of partying that would have knocked Arnold Schwarzenegger into a cocked hat.

I awoke sweating in that filthy hold some time later, alone. My companion had vanished: it's hard to get good distaff. Strangely hungry, I rustled through a collection of coolers until victuals presented themselves.

Suitably armed, I wandered upstairs, as they say in the boating game, a half-eaten sandwich in my left hand, a glass of orange-type juice in my right, and a cigarette - a Gauloise, this is my movie - dangling rakishly from my lips, in search of the companionship of fellow sailors.

A medical note: sea-sickness apparently affects some more than others.

Another: a catalyst is an agent that, without undergoing any change itself, increases the rate of a reaction.

At the sight of the orange juice, the corporate captains all took the same executive decision and turned themselves over the nearest rail for a conference call of nature.

"Ruth!'' they cried as one man, but she was on the poop deck having coconut oil liberally splathered all over her by a real Captain who now had the satisfaction of but one customer in his evil heart. Being a Captain, he'd probably already married her, so little hope remained unless she would consider a bout of creative adultery.

Ruth waved me away, so I strolled past the pea-soup-and-carrots brigade, made myself another sandwich, and went back to sleep.

I awoke once again as we pulled into Albuoy's Point. Howie had given his all for the company, and his potential clients had shared a peak experience of unending horror. Eight hours we'd paid for, of which four they'd spent investigating the sides of the boat.

No wahoo had we seen, not a barracuda, nor even a cod and chips the entire day, and just as well, in my opinion. Why, these fellows had brought along abaseball bat to greet their catch, and any fool knows marlin don't play baseball outside Florida. Surveying my unhappy colleagues from the wide world of purchasing, I delivered the day's epitaph: "And that, gentlemen,'' said I with asperity, "is sport fishing.'' I know not what became of Ruth, although in darkened taverns late at night, sailors throughout the Island often speak of a tattooed "catch of the day.'' When next I tried to sleep following the disastrous bout of fishing, that very night in fact, the room bobbed up and down, up and down, up and down, all the livelong night.

No caption RG MAGAZINE JUNE 1993