I recently spent a pleasant afternoon on my brother's boat off the New Jersey shore. We enjoyed sandwiches, chips, and lots of beer. Lots of beer = lots of pee, of course, so soon I asked to use the head.

My brother offered a bucket.

Wait a minute. "Why can't I use the head?" I asked. From our outing last year, I recalled that the head is a plastic box the size of a beer cooler, but more square-shaped, with a toilet seat attached. It's hidden down in the tiny cabin of the boat -- an area about the size of a small closet, but half the height. This boat is designed for serious fishing. It's not a cabin cruiser with any amenities other than lockers in which you could store a five hundred pound tuna. But at least it has a head!

So again: "Why can't I use the head and not the bucket?"

Here's why.

Very early one morning last November, my brother sailed his boat to the marina where it would be kept in dry dock for the winter. He allowed lots of time for the trip, arriving so early that no staffer was yet at the marina. He tied up his boat at their pier and waited.

Suddenly a big brown yacht began to travel toward his bottom porthole at forty knots and gaining. Then came gale force winds that smelled worse than a tuna would if it were left in the fish locker for a week. My brother leapt off the boat onto the dock and made haste to the tiny business district adjacent to the marina, desperately seeking a port in this storm. But it was so early that no place was open.

Mayday! Mayday!

There was only one option left: to climb back aboard the boat and poop in the head. But then the poop would have to stay in the head until the following spring when the boat was put back into the water.

Well, this captain was not going down with the shit. So he threw caution to the winds, dropped anchor, and then swabbed his stern. (To his credit, my brother always keeps lots of high-quality toilet paper aboard.)

Below the head's seat there's a curved plastic part that mimics the appearance of a landlubber toilet bowl. Beneath that there's a tub of blue liquid similar to what you'd find on a train or bus toilet. The head has a little hand pump to flush the catch of the day down into confinement within the blue stuff.

My brother pumped and pumped to drown his catch of stinky brown eels below deck. Some went down. Suddenly the pump handle broke off in his hand, leaving a few squid stuck to the bowl, festooned with tentacles of toilet paper, plus a few splattered barnacles.

Just then the marina guy arrived, calling out a cheery yo-ho-ho. He was ready to hoist the boat out of the water.

Bro clambered out and asked the guy to wait a minute. He scuttled back inside. He heaved the head out of the cabin, hefted it onto the deck and then onto the dock, and hauled it into the back of his SUV. There's no way he was leaving that pirate's booty in the boat all winter.

The marina guy looked quizzical, but asked no questions. Bro watched his prized boat lifted and berthed into its winter refuge. Then he drove home, wiped his maritime mayhem off the head's bowl with Clorox, put the head in his garage, and took a nap. He then completely forgot about the eels he'd deep-sixed in the blue fluid.

He completely forgot about them -- until the morning of our outing.

That's when he recalled with horror that he had stored poop in his garage over the entire winter. With hesitation and trepidation, he dismantled the head and peered into the blue chemical tank beneath the bowl.

There was no evidence of the captain's logs and bounty of eels! The blue chemical had completely dissolved and obliterated it, as if the poop had never existed! The chemical soup was even still bright blue. It was like a miracle!

Well, not quite -- there was no way for my brother to repair or replace the pooper pumper attached to the head. Even if there was a way, there's no sense repairing a ten-year-old boat head. Of course, Bro could buy a new head, but he's too cheap. Hence, the bucket. For pee or poop, for the foreseeable future.

And on future boating outings, as we squat over the bucket lined with a plastic bag from the sandwich shop to take home, we can ponder the phenomenon of the phantom poop. Here in the head in November, gone in the garage in May.

And then, we have another beer!