Hornblower v. Captain Ron

24 November 2009 - Somewhere in Malaysia en route to Phuket.

It was my first night on Sirius when Simon insisted we watch ‘Captain Ron’ and start memorizing it because, [bxA] he warned in his theatrical British accent, “no one is allowed to say anything for the rest of the week unless it is a quote from the movie!”

Captain Ron (Kurt Russell / Martin Short, 1992) is an American comedy about an average yuppie family from Chicago that inherits a dilapidated boat and hires a madman, Captain Ron (Kurt Russell), to help them sail it from the Caribbean to the US. It’s hilarious, well worth memorizing.

Simon assigned us all roles from the movie. Thirteen year old Patrick got the role of the young boy, whom Captain Ron deems ‘swab’ and orders around constantly (“swab, bring me another brewski!”). Fiona got the role of the sexy teenage daughter who paints her toenails and lets a non-English speaking Cuban boy give her a tattoo “somewhere private.” I got to be the mom, a hopelessly naïve optimist in the face of extreme discomfort and danger. Mick and Simon shared the responsibility of quoting Captain Ron throughout our journey.

As we snuggled into the main cabin around the television to watch Captain Ron, I remembered Horatio Hornblower, a television series a young Royal Naval officer during the French Revolutionary & Napolenic wars. Each night of the 15 day sea passage from India to the Maldives on Millennium, we watched Hornblower get himself into a heap of trouble, then heroically get himself out. It’s definitely a guy’s show, but we girls respectfully made the best of the daily ritual. Many days into the sea passage, Captain John teased his Thai girlfriend Nat that she only watched Hornblower because Horatio is her new boyfriend. Alyssa and I erupted into giggles. We hadn’t discussed it prior to John’s remark, but finally it was on the table: Horatio Horblower is kinda hot.

Speaking of Alyssa….Captain Ron reminded me that Kurt Russell stars in ‘Overboard’, another great boat comedy and one of Alyssa’s most favorite movies (mine too). Patrick once asked me, “Are you ever going to stop talking about Alyssa?” No, I’m not.

Let us not forget Sybaris, the boat on which Alyssa and I sailed from Egypt to Lebanon and Cyprus. Life on Sybaris was too exciting to allow for much television and we never quite settled down enough to watch Per’s favorite film, Monty Python’s the Life of Brian.


I’ve never seen it and don’t know that it has anything to do with sailing, but the film was also mentioned on Millennium and I just got an invitation to sail from Italy to Greece next year with a guy who mentioned ‘Life of Brian’ as key qualifier for compatibility.

What was I doing all those years everyone was watching these films that I missed? I was busy watching ‘Caddy Shack.’