Quiz Night for Dolts

Wednesday nights at Royal Cape are usually reserved for Twilight Races out in the bay. With winter weather, the usual Wednesday night racing slot is now occupied with Quiz Night. Friends from the Portugal Day sail invited us to join them. We told them in advance we were not good quiz kids. Our memories are shot … and short. I love trivia, but I never remember it. They decided to overlook our long list of shortcomings. With the lure of wine and camaraderie on a cold, dark Wednesday night, we decided to go.

A separate room was set aside for the Quiz Night participants. There were a raucous four teams competing. Kim, the Quizmaster, did her best to keep us in line. We named ourselves the Dynamos, ostensibly because we were such quick-witted folks. Truth be told, the Nine of Cups crew are more on the doltish side, but we kept it under our hats.

There were several rounds of questions. Some were easy like: What holiday did South Africa just celebrate on June 16th? (Youth Day). Some were not so easy like: “What's the name for those little plastic bits on the end of your shoe laces?” (aglets … really?).  There was a music quiz which our team did well at (despite us) and a movie quiz, to which we contributed a fair bit. The South African sports questions were over our heads completely, but we did know the year of the tragic Sydney-Hobart race (1998). You'd think we would have gotten the geography questions right, but we didn't. One problem we had was translating the questions. We  heard “What gopher has the nickname Golden Bar?” Huh? What was actually said: “What golfer has the nickname Golden Bear?” … aha … Jack Nicklaus!

After a round of wine tasting generously provided by Nederburg Wines where five bottles of wine were placed and left on our table for the duration of the evening, we were decidedly more lucid and, hard to believe, more raucous. There was endless gibing and  good-natured taunting and banter between the teams. At the end of the evening, believe it or not, the Dynamos WON! (absolutely not due to our presence on the team). Our prize? A free dinner at the yacht club over the weekend.

We've decided that if we were to stay in Cape Town, it wouldn't take long to become very involved with friends in racing and all the activities that are offered here at Royal Cape. The people, the city, and the yacht club are like magnets, a force field that keeps us close and participatory. Really … it's time to go!