Leaving on a Hash Cruise...

The following morning, we took an Uber to the port in Rosyth, north of Edinburgh. We don’t usually fall for these silly staged photos, which were taken while still on land, but this time we couldn’t resist.

Here was our first glimpse of our ship, the Marco Polo...

…and our room. We didn’t have a porthole, but our room was conveniently located and we didn’t spend a lot of time in it anyway. Our hash goodies didn’t include a shirt, but instead a really nice travel towel, small foldable backpack and classy whisky glass.

The ship, built in 1965, was much nicer than we’d expected, especially considering that it was willing to be filled with over 700 crazy hashers.

Cockatool was the mastermind behind the entire trip. I wasn’t the only one skeptical that this young guy could pull off the complex logistics for the entire weekend, including hashing in Edinburgh, on two islands and then a final time scattered across the mainland. Luckily he exceeded all expectations and everything was incredibly well organized. 

Aberdeen rock band The Lorelei played throughout the weekend and even hashed with us.

The girls were the youngest on board, but that didn’t bother them at all.

Footnote: Sadly, due to coronavirus, the cruise company closed in July 2020 and the Marco Polo was sold for scrap (here’s an article with photos showing the ship beached in India). Some hashers think perhaps it was because we broke the ship, but more likely it was that the ship knew it could never have that much fun again.