OF COURSE THE MAIN REASON: you can't get off and leave whenever you want to.
Especially a problem when, as I have done TWICE (repeat your mistakes) you agree to go to a party that is called a booze cruise, sometimes called a booze cruize.
You should know straight away that this is not right. You should know in advance that it will be boring and the music will be terrible, and you won't be able to get off and go home whenever you want to. There are no french exits on boats, nor is there any ghosting. The only getting off will be with other people's boyfriends, because you don't have one of your own. I absolutely know that this is not a good idea. Nothing good ever came from it. Not even having a laugh, came from it.
Another time you agree to go to a party called a booze cruise, because you feel you have to. And you feel you have to dress to the tropical island theme demanded on the invitation; AND OF COURSE nobody else feels they have to. Perhaps one other person wears one hibiscus necklace, another maybe a pair of jolly trousers. But nobody else wears coconut husks and a grass skirt because nobody else feels quite as compelled to please the host. Nobody else believes it to be their very own responsibility and duty to make the party WORK OUT. Nobody else exhausts themselves with talking more nonsense than has ever been possible, because no one else has quite the same terror of awkward silences on boats. Not at all.
OF COURSE THE SECOND MAIN REASON: vomiting
You don't only vomit when you are on the boat, but you vomit when you are looking for your flip-flops which you put in the supposedly water-tight cubby hole, so that you can walk on the boiling hot sand when you get out of the boat. When you open up the cubby hole after going paddling you realise that this place has never really been free of water; and one of your flip-flops has floated down to the middle of the under-section of the boat and you cannot get it out. Putting your head in to try and see where it is stuck makes you vomit because the water in the supposed-to-be-dry part of the boat is disgusting.
THIRD MAIN REASON: you have to go to the DUC
If you want to go kayaking in Durban you have to hire a kayak at the Durban Undersea Club. If you are not a member of the DUC this is very tiresome. You will eventually be granted the exceptional right to go on a boat on a Sunday (a day reserved for only members to hire boats, although no one does because one of the main reasons to become a member is because you want somewhere to stash YOUR OWN BOAT. ) If you are not a member of the DUC you cannot go to the toilet or buy any drinks, not even water. Getting other people to buy you drinks isn't too hard, in fact I like that, but asking strangers to help you go to the toilet is demeaning and horrible.
4. Going to the DUC makes you feel like you are still living in Apartheid.
5. Going to the DUC reminds you how much you hate jet-skis; water-skiers and people on motor-boats, especially people on motor-boats at Port Edward.
6. If you go on a sailing boat you trip over all the piles and piles of ropes that are constantly getting all tangled up. You are in a lot of danger in that you may at any moment be struck off the sailing boat by the sail itself.
7. You know someone who offers to take you on a trip on their boat. This doesn't feel at all right to you and you don't want to, but you don't have the toughness or power to say no thank you, because you are still a child.
8. You know someone who was a journalist for the Rand Daily Mail during Apartheid, although usually most of his sentences were blocked out with black marker pens by the government. In his spare time he makes himself a yacht. It takes 20 years. Then when he goes off to Singapore to buy the sails, the last thing he needs to do, the Special Branch burn it down. Nothing is left. So he moves to Australia forever.
9. Horizontal navy blue stripes are not slimming.
10. So many many more reasons. When I am stuck for something to write about I will revisit this issue easily. For now, I do just want to state that Rafts are not the same as boats. Rafts are for people stuck without boats, so they are fine. In case Georgie reads this.