Do water engineers have pet peeves? Do you look at paintings of rivers or streams and see obvious mistakes? My mother and NBT both roll their eyes, because my father and I can't abide most pictures of sailboats. People like to give them to us, of course, and most of the time the scenic picture is either an inaccurate depiction of a sailboat, which drives us bonkers, or an accurate depiction of a sailboat that is being poorly sailed. Neither one is pleasant to look at. You may not notice all the times boats are used in fashion ads, but if the New York Times Magazine shows some model in a windswept white shirt lounging on the deck of a big yacht and wearing some lovely breezy clean perfume, I inevitably have to cluck disapprovingly, call NBT over, and say, "good lord, they've Photoshopped the forestay out of the picture! The mast is about to fall down, for heaven's sake. Who do they think we are?" I can ignore plain old impracticality, models wearing spike heels that will ruin the teak decks or bathing suits that can't get wet, but it makes me crazy when the boats are rendered physically impossible to sail or extremely dangerous by the Photoshop modifications.
Anyway, I have a particularly extreme form of nautical perfectionism, which is causing a problem this summer. I take flags on boats somewhat seriously, and try to observe the protocol. I notice flags on vessels, and pay attention to the story they tell -- where the boat is from, who's on board at the moment, what their affiliations are, etc. It's kind of fun, once you know the code, which is not particularly complicated. The problem is that there's a lovely boat in the anchorage that is driving me bonkers. They leave their ensign displayed all the time. The ensign is the American flag, and you only display it when you are on board the vessel; you take it in at night. But the owners of this very beautiful boat don't seem to know the rule, and their flag is displayed day and night, whether they're on board or not. I sit on the porch of my little cottage and am rankled every time I see it. I've considered rowing out to the boat, rolling up the flag, and stowing it neatly. Maybe I could leave a photocopied page from Chapman's, too. I've seen the owner, and have tried to think of a way to mention the flag rule that doesn't make me sound like a blowhard. It's impossible. There's no such way. I am a blowhard.