Flash "Dave" Gordon

Photo Arwyn used to steal
Dave's face from.

We live in a pretty close community. We know everything about each other because the old saying is true: "there are no secrets aboard a ship." Out of this comes a strong bond, like brothers and sisters, where one minute you are angry with each other, and the next you ask them if they want to go grab a drink with you. 

With this intimacy comes an endless series of inside jokes. They have sources ranging from monty python movies, obscure English 80's rock bands, funny things that happened during charter, and former crew members, to having no discernible origin at all. One of these jokes, started by our fearless leader, Dave Hanna, involves Flash Gordon. Dave has endless energy and is quite eccentric. Anyone who has met him knows exactly what I mean. Dave will sporadically jump into the crew mess, or bridge, or wherever people are congregated and yell "FLASH!!!," and then the whole crew screams back "AAAHHHH!!!!" in unison like in the Queen song. It seems silly but when he yells  "flash,"  you HAVE to yell "aaaahhh!!!!" It's just the rules...

Flash "Dave" Gordon

So when Dave's birthday came up, Arwyn put that graphic design degree to work and spent the evening working in photoshop. She took an old picture of Dave and superimposed it onto Flash Gordon.  

Jared playing guitar in the crew mess with
Flash Dave in the background.

Everyone liked it so much that we took down a picture of Galileo and posted Flash David instead. Now the picture is part of the art living in our crew mess, above our dining table....

FLASH.......AAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!