I was sailing aross the Atlantic earlier this week on my way to Lisbon with a shipment of premium-grade cork, and something very strange happened to me. I dabble occasionally in the merchant-marine industry much like the way a toddler ends up with more food on his clothes than in his mouth, but that’s irrelevant to the story.

I had just steamed 800 miles at the helm through icy Arctic waters, and was just plain tired. Fortunately, my mother had packed a beach chair for me … so I threw the ship on auto-pilot and laid out on the fly-bridge to catch some rays.

It was so comfortable!! I must have fallen asleep, because before I knew it, it was four hours later. However, there was something wrong … I could feel it. I rushed down below to find, in horror, all of the premium-grade cork had vanished.

I’d been robbed!! In the middle of the ocean!!

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a pair of sails out in the distance … not to far from the horizon. With a some binoculars, I could just read the name of the ship: The HMS Zivic. That explained it; Andrew Zivic had stolen my cork from right under my nose!!

Not to mention, as I discovered later, he stole every ounce of grease from the refrigerator door hinge … so now it squeaks when you open it.

I wanted to go after him with guns blazing, but I needed to do something about the cork. It was due in Lisbon the following morning. So I had to do what every captain loathes with every filament of his being. I had to find an deserted island with cork trees, and harvest as much as I could with only a pocket knife. This proved to be very difficult given that I was in the Arctic.

But I found one eventually, and muscled all the cork trees into the boat, and made it to Lisbon four minutes before the stock market opened.