Coming-of-age tale set aboard a shipping freighter traveling America's Great Lakes. Dale is an Ivy League college student who briefly joins a world-weary crew. Exposed to a seafaring lifestyle which falls short of his literary visions, Dale instead finds the experience rich in unexpected ways. The men's bravado and comical posturing gives way as their lively story-telling reveals more about their mythologized view of life than about what actually may have happened.