I went out yesterday on a lovely little 1947 Chris Craft to celebrate the “Opening Day of Boating Season.” Given the limerick below, it’s appropriate that the boat’s name is “Flagrante Delicto.”

There’s a poem that starts out “Hooray,”
And the word that rhymes with it is “May,”
If you know what I mean,
Then I won’t be obscene,
Outdoor boating is what starts today.

My essay last year about Beltane and other early-May holidays even used “Hooray, Hooray, the first of May” as a title…but I never published the rest of the poem.

Said the famous explorer, de Gama,
To his proud but befuddled old mama,
“I’ve got spices galore,
Precious jewels, silk, and more,
But I wanted to find Grand Bahama.”

Vasco de Gama was the Portuguese sailor who discovered, in 1497, a sailing route from Lisbon to India. The goodies he brought back made him famous and made Portugal’s King Manuel wealthy.

The Bahamas had actually already been discovered by then, by a much more famous sailor, Christopher Columbus.