Pirates for Sail

It was a long and sometimes very damp weekend, but the crew ran loose at VARF and got to perform for pirates, peasants, merchants, nobles and Queens alike! Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I even made us Minstrels to the Queen herself! Though official minstrels or not, we shall always be Her Majesty’s Privateers for Sail.

Ye old shoutouts must go to Letter of Marque, Son of Strum, The Pyrates Royale, Calico Jenny and the Shire minstrels fer their bloody brilliant performances!

What we learned:

• Geese are the pirates of the avian world, because they’ll attack ye and steal yer booty.
• We can make the Queen cry and not get hung…twice!
• Meteorologists should be keelhauled.
• No one expects the Ferret Inquisition!
• The proper Wild Rover callback:
  “And it’s no, nay, neveeeeeer!”
  “TAKE! OFF! YOUR! PANTS!”
  “No nay never, no moooore!”
  “YOUR PANTS!”
  “Will I plaaaaay the Wild Roveeeer!”
  “OH GOD PUT ‘EM BACK ON!”
  “No neveeeer, no mooooore!”
• Gute’s bologna has a first name…
• Jimmy Buffett has “Parrotheads”, but we have “Ferretheads”!
• There is no such thing as too much bacon.
• Ye never have the cash to buy hundreds of ping-pong balls when ye really want to.

Last Saturday (5/16), Pirates for Sail took over and promptly rocked the Emerging Artist stage at the Unicity Performing Arts Festival…to the excitement of the crew, the confusion of the MC, and the acceptance of a crowd mixed with pirate enthusiasts, drinking song enthusiasts, and people who probably just saw us wandering around and showed up out of a morbid sense of curiosity.

What we learned:

• There’s never a bloody Tilt-A-Whirl when ye need one.
• Pirates like to swing…in every sense of the word.
• The “water” is fantastic.
• An adult gifts shop and an Egyptian cotton bedsheets shop tie as strangest performance festival vendor.
• Being armed doesn’t increase yer chances of getting into the bounce castle.
• Ninjas? HAH! Pirates are the masters of drunken karaoke!

Next up for us? The Virginia Rennaisance Faire!