_ I’m certain that everyone has a story.  It may be short.  It may be long.  (And, in the sum of human experience, who’s to say that a multi-volume tome is inherently more valuable than the shortest of stories?)

 Linda Andreotti is telling her story on Poseidon Cooks! and in the Kindle cookbook, ‘Ten Favorite Menus. Ten Favorite Anchorages.’ She’ll continue it in her new book, ‘Linda Andreotti’s Galley. I’ve told something of my story in ‘Fishing For Crocodiles’ and I’ve edited or ghosted many other people’s stories.

Now, more or less since I met him, I’ve been trying to persuade John Andreotti to write about his life – from being a boy in Eritrea, whose father, a photographer, compiled a unique record of Mussolini’s Eritrea; through his transition to Italy and the USA.  Often funny.  Often hard.  Inspirational and unique.  One day, I’ll convince him – and what follows will be part of that story.

_ Last week, America celebrated National Fig Newton Day.  Or those who knew it might have.  Linda made some of these wonderful cookies and as I bit into one I remembered the first time I saw my Uncle Caesar, the man who made his fortune in America and welcomed us with open arms.  He loved Fig Newtons...

I’m ten years old, standing on the deck of the ‘Vulcania’ as she pulls up to the New York quay where we will be reunited with my father, Constantino.  Although my mother speaks English, she has not taught her children the language and I will quickly discover that my father despises it and everything American.  In fact, he will soon return to Italy and excise himself from our American lives. 

But who is that extraordinary figure standing beside him – the man with the huge golden teeth, now glittering in a rictus of greeting?  And that monstrous nose? The massive eyeglasses?  The huge and bushy eyebrows?  If I’d even heard of Groucho Marx, I might be wondering why he’s standing next to my dad and waving at us.

Then I realize that this is Uncle Caesar, complete with joke disguises, the man who came to America before us to arrange visas and a new life. He’s a legend in our family.  Wealthy, worldly, funny, adventurous and the perfect example of the Italian immigrant who fulfills his dream in America.

_ I will quickly overcome my initial fear (those huge gleaming teeth!) and come to love his comical antics.  In fact, they start the moment he introduces us to American food.  At breakfast, he offers us pancakes with log cabin syrup and, according to Uncle Caesar, the American way to is stack everything on your plate and drink the syrup straight from its tin log cabin.

My mother is mortified but can’t help smiling.

At lunch, Uncle Caesar asks us how we’d like a couple of dogs.  Dogs?  What Godforsaken place have they brought us to?  A country that eats dogs! I think of Catuscia, the much-loved Great Dane we had to abandon in our flight from Asmara, barely a step ahead of the Eritrean rebels.

Unk, as we now call him, explains that it’s OK to eat these American dogs, hot dogs. It’s not long before I get used to American fare (though we will always preserve our Italian traditions), and memories of our flight from Eritrea to Italy, aboard a Red Cross ship, begin to fade.

_ Uncle Caesar was addicted to Fig Newtons and took them everywhere he went. We ate handfuls in his brand new Lincoln Continental, all the way from New York City to Hammond, Indiana, where we first settled. 

And now, on National Fig Newton Day, Linda is making her own version.  I wonder how she could possibly improve on the symmetrical little bars of which I have bought many thousands, always remembering that drive across the northern states with Uncle Caesar.  Naturally, I keep my doubts to myself (I may be a slow learner but I learn nonetheless!).

Once again, Linda’s culinary talent opens my eyes. She adds the ingredients that she calls ‘the Italian touch’ and I can honestly say that I have never tasted anything so delicious.  They leave the originals standing in the dust and I wish that Uncle Caesar were here to try them.

(This is part of an irregular series of stories about a boat delivery - Trinidad-Uruguay.  Suriname and Guyanne will follow...)

 Why would anyone pay $50-odd thousand to deliver a beater powerboat valued at, maybe, $20,000 from Florida to Uruguay?  (The bill eventually grew to about $100,000 and the boat never arrived… as you’ll eventually see.)

Why wouldn’t you simply import $10-20,000 of used engines and systems and have local craftsmen build you a stunning, unique vessel from local hardwoods?

Those questions had me examining every square inch of ‘Happy Daze,’ searching for the diamonds, the ingots, the contraband that might make sense of this delivery.  If I was going to end up rotting in a South American jail, I wanted at least to know why.

I found all the evidence of a fire below decks, corroded electrics and a sadly cared-for boat… but nothing else – and tonight I'm transferring diesel from cockpit drums to side tanks in 4-8 foot seas.  It’s slimy work and will engender a hatred of that fuel’s smell and texture (though the smell at least is infinitely preferable to gasoline).  World War II submariners wrote and spoke of the ever-present stink of diesel, how it permeated their skin, their clothes and their lives.  Only now can I imagine how that felt – but just that aspect of their otherwise impossibly heroic lives.

The fuel transfers, and the need to check the engine and transmission fluids every few hours, crouched in a rolling, roiling engine room inferno, struck Amerigo down with as bad a dose of sea-sickness as I have ever seen.  The autopilot is equally sick (but, unlike Amerigo, will never recover) so Skip and I handle the wheel 2 hours on, 2 hours off, for most of the 30 hour passage Tobago-Guyana.

And if you want to know why we’re undertaking this long-range journey in a boat that can barely cover 200 miles without refueling, the answer has to do with corroded tanks that would cost more than the boat’s value to replace... 

Guyana is low-lying, and the Esquibo spews muddy water into the sea for at least a hundred square miles.  Even just a few miles off, there’s no visible land and if I were navigating only by paper I’d doubt the accuracy of the plots.  Here, however, Garmin and the Maptech/laptop combo agreed and, eventually, the approach became clearer.

‘Clearer’ is relative.  No buoys anywhere in sight. Just GPS coordinates which one might reasonably doubt – and hundreds of sticks projecting out of the calm waters, marking shoals.  Or are they?  The guide, again, is more or less useless.  No tide information.  No worthwhile comments on fuel or provisions but a lot of smug promotion of friends’ eco-tours and lodges.  And nothing about the mysterious multiple sticks.

_Happy Daze arrived at Parika, Guyana, several miles up the justly described ‘mighty’ Esquibo, with a few gallons and a few miles to spare but within the hour of our ETA.  That’s another strange and wonderful sensation for a sailor but still not enough to make diesel my friend.

Despite an accurate ETA, the drama isn’t quite over.  The river is in full tidal flow when we tie up to Roeden Rust marina’s pier in a sudden squall. If ever he needed to, Captain Skip proves his boat handling skills in these hairy moments.  Anyone with even marginally less cool or a heavier hand would have added Happy Daze to the collection of dead and dying boats scattered up and down the Parika/Esquibo shores.

Ironically, we have, later, to unhitch from the pier and anchor out.  The tide would have put us on the beach.

_ Roeden Rust’s pier is barely a pier and Roeden Rust is hardly a marina; a collection of pilings jutting into the brown river, and, on shore, shacks and sheds collected around a beautiful fading colonial house.  Wrecked and beached vessels everywhere, from coastal freighters and trawlers to old wooden river boats.  Runabouts in storage.  Bones of marine engines, transmissions and steering systems scattered through corrugated iron sheds. Everything guarded by straggly dogs with xylophone ribs and hopeful eyes. 

Behind a small and beat-up desk in a small and chaotic office, Mr Silver is the proprietor of Roeden Rust, grey-haired and bespectacled, a man who has sailed from Jacksonville to the Falklands and every port in between during his career as a shrimp boat captain.  When we ask about a shower, Mr. Silver directs us to his own home, the laundry area, I suppose; shows us the buckets and bowls to use.  300 tough miles transform these facilities into the Ritz but Mr. Silver isn’t finished.  He reaches into a drawer of that battered desk and extracts a great wad of Guyana dollars which he hands to us to pay for everything we need until we can get to a bank the next day.

_ He also provides us with an escort, Colin, the young Guyanan who helped us anchor and whose entire mission in life seems to be to make us love Parika and Guyana.  There is nothing obsequious about this light-heavyweight with big shoulders and a King of Parika strut.  He’s a genuinely kind man-boy.

Parika is dirt poor, but blessed with race-driven cabs which sprint from speed bump to speed bump, smoke their brakes, and barely avoid the oncoming.  They do, however, slow (or at least honk) for the little pi-dogs that can’t cross a narrow road without stopping for a flea scratch.

At 8 PM, the beauty shops are doing big business.  Easter Sunday tomorrow and everyone must look her or his best.  That’s an assumption.

Colin’s never going to make it as a restaurant guide.  His only choices seem to be bad Chinese.  Regardless of quality, the food and service are dispensed from behind iron bars. Hard to believe anyone would smash-and-grab these dishes; must the scant money in the till that’s at risk. In Colin’s choice restaurant, the music is numbingly loud and the conversation between the patrons, all at least a 6-pack high, is at full yell.  At any moment, this one looks as if he’s going to bottle that one, but it’s all apparently in good spirits.  I had forgotten that not every culture smiles easily and that it’s too simple to assume unfriendliness.  The smile only comes in direct conversation, so that what might appear intimidating here is a misapprehension.

_

Easter Sunday:  Colin takes Captain Skip to the bank while Amerigo and I prepare the boat for its departure to Suriname.

The fuel dock, everyone forewarned by the influential Mr. Silver, is nothing more than a giant floating diesel tank with a rudder.  It’s tied to a trawler dock constructed of telegraph-pole-sized pilings with fraying diesel-soaked rope.  There’s no access ladder from the trawler dock to the floating fuel tank, just a more or less precarious passage by crosswise plank, climb down and jump.  God knows how many people must have fallen and, perhaps, injured themselves quite badly but still no ladder.  I cannot think of any reasonable explanation.  It's a Personal Injury Attorney's heaven - or would be in the US.

Fuelled and ready to move, Skip goes back to Mr. Silver to repay his last night’s loan and settle up.  No charge.  For anything.  Just a smile and a handshake.  And when we go to pay Colin for his friendly attention, he's surprised.  He explained – patois sometimes difficult to understand – that he only wanted us back – to explore further; that this was a poor place and a poor people; that he loved his country, Guyana.  We exchanged phone numbers.  If anyone wants to visit, Colin and Mr. Silver can make it so.

I would go back in a heartbeat.

“So let me get this straight,” I say, reaching for the cognac.  “You want to take Poseidon to all the beautiful anchorages and harbors in Southern California…”
   “We could go to Mexico, too,” says the show’s star cook who also happens to be the love of my life and is certainly ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed.’
   “And the Mediterranean!” adds the producer/director.  Easy for him to say.  He just lost his mast and sold his boat to an unsuspecting German (if there is such a thing).  I think he’s eyeing Poseidon’s Guest Suite.
   “So… we can shoot the pilot at Smugglers,” Linda says.  “It’s like our backyard.”
  "A lot of planning… ” I muse, not meaning to say it out loud.
   “Don't forget your wine pairings.”  A low blow.  She knows that second only to her, wine is my passion so if I’m having any doubts about this adventure (which, I have to admit, I’m not), this would be a clincher.
   “We’ve got to really figure out the anchorages; where to place the boat so we have the best views, the perfect backgrounds. That kind of stuff.”  I know I was going to need a second cognac. I can just hear the director asking me to stop the boat from rocking because the cameraman’s feeling seasick.

   “And so will the viewers.”
   “What?”
   “The viewers.  If the food’s rocking and rolling, they’re going to be queasy.”
   “But seas move,” I protest.  “Even King Canute figured that one out. Can’t you gimbal the cameras?”
   “Maybe – but we need some movement.  Otherwise we might as well be in a studio.”  So how much movement is too much movement, I want to ask, but figured that might be one of those ‘how deep is the ocean?’ questions.

_
“Guests,” says the star cook.  “What are you thinking?”
 “Chefs who can play and musicians who can cook!  That’d be great. Live music as part of the show.”  But all I can think of is how to get them onto the boat, off the boat – and all those damn instruments.  (I played an accordion when I was a youth, and had to lug it around.) 
  "And what kind of music?
  “As the sun goes down.” 

Oh. Now I have to organize the sunsets, too?

And so it begins, this voyage called ‘Poseidon Cooks!’  And, sure enough, the cameraman asks for a little less swell, the soundman requests a quieter generator, and while there’s a lull in the battle I find myself driving the crew around the bay, looking for ‘B-roll.’  Whatever that is. (Turns out to be all that additional material that brings color and life to a piece; that additional material which studio-bound cooking shows do without.  Perhaps that’s why they need cooks who swear at their helpers and throw the utensils around like grumpy babies in an uncomfortable stroller.)

 

Linda’s been on camera all morning and now there’s a break between courses.  Everyone’s looking at me and I remember that this part of the shooting schedule sees us in the dink, exploring the anchorage, with me giving it the Carl Sagan about the history, the geology and anything else that I can think of.

Halfway between Poseidon and the shore I make a violent U-turn.  The cameraman be overboard but the soundman grabs him.  They shoot me very hurt looks.

   “Sorry,” I say.  “I forgot to put the wine in the chiller.”  I haven’t gotten this old this gracefully by forgetting details like this – show or no show.  I go to full throttle, imagining the scene as Linda serves the dish she’s been preparing for three hours, then turns to camera and says.

   “Let’s talk about John’s wine pairing,” and I have to admit that the Trimbach is still in its case, at least twenty degrees warmer than any self-respecting Grand Vin d’Alsace would like to be quaffed.


Yes, it’s a tough job but someone has to do it and I’m the first to volunteer.

_“Everything begins with story.”  It’s our director/producer speaking, AKA Attilla the Hun. I’m thinking, what kind of story?  Forced labor as a way of life?  Of course, I don’t say that but ask, instead:

“Even a food show?”
 
“Everything,” he says.  “Why do you think every great religion tells stories?  Morality plays,  myths and legends – story, story, story.  And it’s our story – Poseidon Cooks!’ story, that’s what makes us different. The stories of the dishes, the ingredients, the voyages we make, the guests.  Linda’s story.  Your story.  Otherwise, what are we – just another few minutes of electronic wallpaper.”

__Well, he may think it all starts with story but if you ask me it all starts with planning.

First up, the menus.  What’s Linda going to cook?  Do we need a trial run?  Some sampling and fine tuning?  Once she’s set, it’s on to the provisioning, scouring our local markets and stores for what we’ll need – and always doing our best to shop local and organic.  But wait a minute, maybe Attilla’s right because there’s nothing better than listening to the market people’s stories.  The fish guy.  The herb guy.  The egg guy – boy, has he got a story.  Knows every hen by name and probably her eggs, too.  Feeds them more carefully than most people feed their families which, of course, is why his eggs are so delicious and as far removed from a Big Store egg as golf is from contact sports.

_Then I listen to what’s going on in front of the camera, Linda, my wife, star cook and star of my life, talking about how we met, how she started cooking, what she cooked as a kid and how meeting my mother changed everything, starting with garlic and olive oil.  A story!  And even though I know it well, I’m riveted.

By the way, there’s nothing politically correct about our shopping local and organic. It’s quite simple: local and organic almost always tastes better than big-store-bought or factory-processed, and if you’re going to put a lot of time and effort into your cooking – let alone taking everything out to sea and working under sometimes trying conditions -  why waste that effort on inferior ingredients?

Provisioning is demanding.  There are no stores in most of the places where we voyage to cook.

_“So what are you going to say about the wines?”  I was on my way to the engine room, to check the new bilge pumps, but there he is again.
   “Well,” I say, “I’ll say why I chose this one or that one.  You know, weight, mouthfeel, flavor…”
   “No, no, no,” he says, “I know all that stuff… ”  (which, I’ve got to say, he doesn’t) “What are you going to say?  What story are you going to tell?”  I look at Linda for help.  Perhaps she’ll ask him what the Hell he’s talking about but, no, here’s her contribution:
   “Just like we talk about where we first cooked this dish… or when Cisco persuaded us that Alaskan Halibut really is tastier and better textured than Californian.”  Good Lord, I think, he’s even conned her – but then I recall so many vineyard visits and how the story of the wine… its origins… the history of the cellars and cellarmen – that’s as much a part of the experience as the tasting.  It really does add to the enjoyment and I doubt that a dull vintner can make a bright wine.

I go back to listening to Linda and the conversation at the galley counter, Joe describing how saffron’s collected, Nick talking about a trip to Provence and the rosé he discovered with a bucketful of mussels.  Before I know what’s happening, I’m talking about Leo and one St. Paddy’s Day, how two Italians invented a perfect cabbage-based accompaniment to corned beef.

_The conversation goes, around and around, funny stories, shaggy dog stories, informative stories – and all the while the cooking continues, the instruction, the information, but all in this wonderful, embracing, anecdotal context. And at the end of the day, a wonderful informal evening of live music.

I get to thinking:  maybe our Attilla is right.  And maybe the original would have achieved even more if he’d left the slicing and dicing to the cooks and concentrated on charming the hordes with… story.

That, great food and wine and some good music...

 Gordon Ramsay’s entourage came to our spot this week, all set to debase and sneer at a local restaurant in the name of entertainment.  It’s a pretty crappy restaurant but phenomenally successful, with waiter-performances and tables packed with escapees from the drudgeries of life, determined to enjoy themselves no matter how lousy the food.  Fortunately, the drink’s cheap.

Good luck to them.  They’re very successful and have always been pleasant to me.  Presumably, too, they knew exactly what they were in for when the King of the Self-Impressed came to town.  Sure enough, he fomented dissension, screamed, bloviated, strutted and generally behaved like a medieval monarch with live lampreys gnawing at his vitals.

What gives me violent indigestion is the fact that this crass act, this perfection of the art of humiliation, this elevation of profanity, poor taste and personal classlessness, is presented as a cooking show, on The Food Network.

(And here I confess a bias and a vested interest.  I, too, have a cooking show – one that the Food Network rejected (after weeks of prevarication and, even then, I’m pretty sure it was reviewed by the doorman’s dog-walker) on the grounds that it is … a cooking show.  That is, a show built around the art and love of provisioning, preparing, cooking and sharing.  It also has a unique element which separates it from every other show out there.  But enough!  This is simply my confession of interest and the Food Network and its BUJI* executives have every right to reject any show they wish to.)

Ramsay may once have been a decent cook.  He may even be a decent man who has assumed a disgusting persona simply to make the millions he needs to overcome the failures of so many of his cooking enterprises.  Now, however, he is a parody of everything that is most shameful about the way we live.  He revels in anger and cruelty; in his superiority over his victims; in his – assumed or not – inability to articulate any thought without violent language (this comment coming from someone who has problems controlling his own profanities).  He is the apogee of celebrity success – a reputation, a trajectory, an essentially vacuous persona constructed upon our own hunger for distraction, our willingness to submit to any degree of meanness and scorn simply to appear on television.  A moment of strange, fleeting and bathetic glory which we believe will separate us, for that fraction of our existence, from the herd.  In fact, of course, like back to front caps, sagging shorts and untied laces, it welds us inseparably to the herd, for true individuality stems from other personal qualities altogether: the courage to speak up, for example, and to smack anyone upside the head who treats us the way Ramsay does.

Far worse than that, this spluttering exhibitionist has taken an essentially warm, embracing, loving aspect of life – the preparation and sharing of food with family and friends – and reduced it to a low-class cooking circus which might even disgust the Emperor Nero’s gladiatorial audiences.

Nothing Ramsay does deserves to be called a cooking show (which begs the question: does the Food Network deserve to be called a cooking network?).  He ought, rather, to be confined to the lowest circles of cable Hell, where humiliation, disrespect for humanity, personal cruelty and emotional abuse are transformed from the sadness of the mass to the immense riches of the few.

In fact, if this is the future of food TV, then I have a show that’s perfect for it and this execrable one-time chef:
 

Gordon Ramsay’s New TV Show

The kitchen is on a stage, displayed before a tiered audience which looks down on the action.  In front of the kitchen is a small spot-lit area and into this area walks Chef Ramsy accompanied by an adorable blond muppet who holds a freshly shampooed lamb in his or her arms.

Ramsey introduces the muppet then says to the audience:
     “For one thousand dollars, who will shoot this f#$#$%^g lamb so that I can make (and here he names the dish).”
Naturally, an audience member desperate for a thousand bucks will volunteer and then Chef Ramsey will ask:
      “For eight hundred f#@$%#g dollars who will shoot this f@&^%$g lamb – shoot it right here in this f#$@#%^g kid’s arms?”
Again, there will be a volunteer, driven by the money and the desperation for his or her moment of fame.  (And, perhaps, the chance to show off his or her shiny big new gun.)

So the show will proceed, a reverse auction to discover just how low we, the audience, will sink in pursuit of a few bucks and a few moments of celebrity.  My view is that someone will shoot the unfortunate lamb for maybe five dollars.

And who cares whether Ramsey actually cooks the dead beast of not?  After all, like his other shows, this isn’t about the cooking.  It’s about our apparent willingness to abandon any pretense that we’re human beings who possess qualities like taste, dignity, emotional generosity, kindness or … class.  It’s about our nauseating pursuit of celebrity.  It’s about that fact that if we can make enough money from a particular endeavor, those earnings elevate the endeavor to a point at which we lose sight of the values of which humanity is capable and descend into a rabble, a mass hysteria which would make the average chimpanzee regret that he shares well over 90% of his DNA with homo sapiens.

* BUJI
Building Up Job Importance, the word BUJI having been coined, as far as I know, by Mark London, whose biggest claim to fame was writing the song ‘To Sir With Love.’

It’s a trend which is accelerating exponentially as those fortunate enough to have a decent job – or any job – build up its importance in order to minimize the chances of being laid off.  BUJI has nothing to do with the qualities or the contribution of the job itself, which brings us back to those thousands of TV executives whose precarious existences, salaries and expense accounts are supported by a churning over-population of so-called creatives who, like Gordon Ramsey’s victims, will endure any degree of humiliation if it means they might – just might – get their own moment in the lens of the TV camera.

When you live in California, you're rugby-deprived.  For one thing, you have to be the second coming of Einstein to figure out how to find rugby on the 7000 available channels.  The alternative is to go to an 'English' or 'Irish' pub which bears about as much relationship to a real pub as Budweiser does to beer and serves the kind of food which maintains Britain's reputation for the worst food in the world despite the fact that the average transport cafe in the UK will serve you a better meal than Denny's in the US. 

But I'm already off track.

I read that Ben Foden was arrested for some small hours aggravation with a cab driver, cautioned and set free to go about his business. Fair enough, it's happened to us all.  Or some of us.  A day or so later, I saw that no action will be taken by the police, his club or the RFU - and that set me thinking. 

Not that long ago,  Delon Armitage roundly abused a Drug Official (whatever that is) and was promptly banned and excoriated by one and all.

So let me get this straight.  One full back behaves like an idiot in the early AM - and it's reasonable to assume he may have been celebrating and therefore - to plagiarize - was probably somewhat tired and emotional.  He suffers not even a slap on the wrist (at least at this time of writing).  Another full back behaves like an idiot in the hot aftermath of a critical loss and is banned: a substantial loss of income - rugby is, after all, his job; and possible denial of his chance to secure his place in the World Cup. He's also roundly abused by the Rugby Establishment.

Is it just me or does this reek of hypocrisy?  Who makes these idiotic distinctions and on what basis?

I also see that Matt Stevens is back playing, apparently well and in line for an England recall.  The same Matt Stevens who was banned for two years for habitually shoving Bath Marching Powder up his schnozz.

And who banned him?  A committee of ex-players and administrators who never once in their lives altered their states of mind with any substance - leave alone alcohol - and, even if they did, never made a habit of it.

It must have only been me who was as pissed as a rat at those post-game wind-downs and post committee meeting debriefings.  I must be the only player at any level who ran on the field, or staggered, with such a monumental hangover that I had to get someone else to tie my bootlaces.

I don't give a damn who puts what up or down which orifice and when.  That's their own privilege and prerogative; and if they choose to insert something damaging that's also their choice and 'right' (since we all have all-encompassing rights now).  Matt simply indulged his own form of self-destruction: a white powder rather than an amber liquid.  How is that the business of any other amber-swilling hypocrites other than his employers?  If they saw his performance affected, that's what gave them the right to terminate him.  Nothing more or less.  And don't give me a raft about the illegality of drugs because then I'll give you a raft about the illegality of driving back from the clubhouse when you can't tell a cat's eye from a cat.

But somehow, committees and all who sail in them - and that includes everyone who's incomplete without telling everyone else what to do, when and how to do it - and, more important, what not to do, when not to do it and how not to do it - have seized control of our lives.  We're not just a nanny state.  We're a nanny people and, until you leave for the wilder shores of a non-First World Country, it's a nanny world.

Whatever happened to freedom of  choice, including the choice to alter your state with whatever powdered or liquid chemical you choose?  It's not that Matt reaped the consequence that seems like a crooked feed (something I know about).  Clearly no one can play rugby with a snootful.  No, what looks like a monstrous forward pass to me is the sanctimony that accompanied the judgments. 

Which brings us back to the difference between Ben Foden and Delon Armitage.  Explanations on a postcard, please.

A skipper with less sense than I asked me to help deliver an ancient powerboat from Trinidad to Uruguay.  For a start, it only had tankage for about 150 miles.  I, having less sense than he, agreed.  This is Part Two of the journey.

Amerigo looks about 20 but this morning I discovered he’s 36.  He asked me how old I am, but I side-stepped.  My daughter’s older than he.  In Uruguay, he’s a mechanic.  Cars, trucks and buses.  He’s also had a couple of spells working on the crew of race car teams in Europe and proudly showed me pictures of himself at tracks in Monaco, Germany and France.  Here, he’s somehow connected to the new owner of the boat we’re taking to Uruguay, under the command of bearded and broken nosed Captain Skip.

Skip’s not too impressed by Amerigo’s mechanical nouse but then again Skip had his own Saab shop in Florida, for twenty five years, and anyone who can keep their sanity with that experience has forgotten more about engines and electronics than any Formula One hotshot mechanic can remember.

Skip speaks no Spanish and Amerigo no English.  I have some Spanish but learned entirely by ear, in Antiochia, Colombia – and so rather pure and Castillian.  It’s tough to understand Amerigo, though not as tough as it is to make sense of the Mexican Spanish they speak in California.

We’ll get by.  Just as long as he doesn’t ask me how old I am again.

My immediate instinct is that these are two good men and that, whatever other excitements we may face, personality clashes will not be among them.  On the other hand, I may have to throw a temper tantrum about my bunk.  There’s a busted spring strategically designed to cause severe back trauma and early indications are that it’s directly connected to the boat’s emergency self-destruct button …

Happy Daze is an older 46’ cruiser.  Fiberglass as thick as a door jamb and the only vacuum bagging in sight would be in the Hoover.  If there were a Hoover.  The boat is not as clean as it might be but it took a pounding en route Miami-Trinidad.  Fell off a twenty-some foot wave at one point, and hit so hard that it broke its positive bus-bar.  That’s a lot of impact and it speaks highly of the vessel’s construction that the bus-bar was the limit of the damage.  It was, however, enough to send the original crew home in a funk.  Which is why I’m here, believing that the rest of the journey is downhill.  A two knot current pushing us down the coast of Brazil, 200 miles a day and home in three weeks.  Except that who knows anything at sea and a breakdown in some obscure Brazilian fishing port might throw a curve into the schedule.  On the other hand, with internet and FedEx, most items can be in most places in the world in just a few days.  That in itself takes some of the adventure out of any trip on this planet. 

Roll on the day when we’ll be able to roam the Galaxy in surplus Space Cruiser lifeboats, much as many of the early Earth cruisers explored the oceans in various unlikely sailing craft, including converted lifeboats.

There’s ying and yang everywhere if you don’t pull the trigger too fast.  For the morose official who did the stamping in Trinidad, there was a Cheerful Charlie who wished the Happy Daze well.  For the rapacious Customs Officer, there was a delightful marina clerk/manager.  For the miserable fuel boss, a smiling young lady operating the cash register.

So, now, 500 gallons of fuel later – 300 of it stashed in 50 gallon drums lashed into the cockpit, a neon-lit invitation to any drug intercepting force – we’re boogeying along the northern shore of Trinidad at 11 knots.  Yes.  Just 200 gallons in the integral tanks.  300 in drums.  Ten to twelve gallons an hour at 10-12 knots.  None of it makes sense but what do I know – I’m a sailor.

10-12 knots steady, and especially zero to 12 more or less instant, is a new experience for me (as in ‘I’m a sailor,’ above). I’m not sure, yet, that it’s enough to drag me out of the sail closet.  There’s a high price to pay for this speed and control: huge consumption, a lot of sturm, stink und drang; constant noise and vibration but we’re certainly eating up the miles and that’s the whole point.  My friends with more sophisticated vessels than this poor old beater which, by the look of  the wooden beams in the engine room, has suffered a major fire, do not suffer the sturm or stink – but diesel is diesel anywhere in the world and never free.

The next port of call is Guyana,

A straight shot from the north eastern tip of Trinidad.  30 some hours of passage in all, with 40 some hours of fuel aboard. We’ll transfer from the cockpit drums to the main tanks underway – but at about 5 in the evening Captain Skip decides that it would be better to anchor and make the first fuel transfer in daylight.

Good decision, halted for the night in a delightful bay, Grand Rivere.  No other boats in sight, just a couple of houses back from the beach and a small hotel, which we will not have time to visit even if we could persuade the dinghy through the surf.  

The moment the engines die, the island jungle smell wafts over Happy Daze, fecund and fragrant with tropical flowers – if regularly overwhelmed by the fatal pong of the skipper’s Marlboros.

Why anyone who takes this much pleasure from his life as Skip would want to end it in coughs and splutters is beyond me.   Maybe he’s worked on internal combustion engines too long.

As the anchor rattles down, an upturned industrial wheelbarrow floats by.  How can that be?  Then it morphs into the biggest turtle this side of the Pliocene.  It has a bright orange flash on the back of its head, some kind of an eco-tracker? 

Within moments, several more turtles pop their heads up, all more or less the same giant size.  Whatever brutal  collective unconscious they may share about the murderous tendencies of homo sapiens, they’re curious and peer at these particular humans from beady prehistoric eyes.

Insect song.  The music of the surf. Canned soup.  Sandwiches. We’re halfway to Paradise.  Ditch the canned soup and we’d probably be there …

TO BE CONTINUED ...

A skipper with less sense than I asked me to help deliver an ancient powerboat from Trinidad to Uruguay.  For a start, it only had tankage for about 150 miles.  I, having less sense than he, agreed ...

American Airlines has become a Third World operation.  My neighbor unwraps palm leaves and chows down on a sickly colored stodge lump and the aircraft’s air conditioning is not man enough to deal with the smell.  Perhaps it’s been turned down to save fuel – or to keep the cabin temperature up because there are no blankets on the plane.  The lady on the other side of me, a Trinidadian grandmother en route home for a family wedding, is shivering. 

    “I could travel first class,” she tells me confidentially, and without bragging, “but what a waste of money.”  She gives me a sly look.  “Air miles.”  A couple of hundred years ago, travelers spoke equally reverentially about Letters Of Credit, except that an LOC, drawn on the right bank, could be exchanged in any obscure corner of the world, in days when a communication from the cashier to the London bank might take six months, whereas to redeem air miles in the electronic age of instant communication one has to mortgage the yet unborn daughter whose destiny, otherwise, it might be to save the world.

Not that I have anything against American Airlines except that, like many others, it owes its very existence to a suspension of free market rules even while its pilots (in my personal experience at least) hew to a line pretty much east of Ayn Rand.  I own you, you miserably rude crew.  It’s my taxes that kept you afloat.  The least you can do is be pleasant.  Or have a blanket for an elderly Trinidadian.

And it’s free market rules that have brought me here, to Trinidad and Tobago – Chaguaramas Bay, more precisely – to crew a  Tollycraft power boat to Uruguay.  Seems the owner bought the vessel at auction in the US and, if it makes it all the way, Miami-Montevideo, on its own bottom and under the power of its turbo’ed twin Perkins diesels, there may be no taxes to pay …

They nearly killed my journey at the airport, Trinidad and Tobago immigration ruffled by a one way ticket and no Captain’s letter confirming my status.  This in an island where crime is rampant.  Today’s paper reported three murders and several shootings.  One of the killings being of a handyman-vagrant born mute.  You might think the law enforcement engine would have more to worry about than me, a fully documented in-and-outer.  Perhaps the pervasive tremor that has spread from the once fearless shores of the US has infected every official worldwide who has access to Homeland Security bulletins.

But, here, a clean up is under way for President Obama’s visit: the Fifth Summit of the Americas.  Street-livers are being hauled out of sight and riot police flown in from London to teach local law enforcement how to handle rioters.  Personally, I’d leave it to the locals.  I’ve seen the London riot police at work, up close and personal, and they’re from the same gene pool that guards death camps.  Just following orders, m’lud. 

I eventually passed through Immigration, passage eased by a strange passport:  Producer of ThunderCats, a successful animated action adventure TV show I ran in the late 80’s.  The Immigration officials beamed with delight at its memory, but the same passport failed at Customs where a large and beautiful lady with cat-eye glasses and two harnessed Zeppelins beneath her jacket hauled me out of line and wrote her orders in triplicate.  I was carrying a small box of oil filters for the trusty Perkins, and they triggered various obscure bureaucratic alarms which were only assuaged at the other end of the island by the exchange of exotic bank notes.  Standing at my shoulder, throughout the pleasant but incomprehensible negotiations, was a 280lb law enforcement officer of some stripe, dressed in tough blue overalls with a Glock strapped to one leg.  His name tag read ‘Austin,’ which was about as incongruous as the British Ministry of Ag. and Fish’s decision to rename Pollak, Colin; apparently, British housewives don’t like the sound of a fish which might be confused with an Eastern European.  ‘Colin,’ by the way, when it applies to this particular fish, must be pronounced as if one were French: Co-lin, which is French for Hake.  It probably all makes sense in some alternative dimension.

Which brings us back to riot consultants from London.  Put Austin on the street and no one would dare boo Mr. Obama, let alone heave the first rock. 

On to the cab ride from the airport to the marina:  here, there’s big business – or was, before AIG and Citibank ripped the heart and the guts out of capitalism – in importing used Japanese cars.  For a start, they’re right hand drive, which works well in an island not so long ago under British influence and, consequently, antipathetic to left hookers.  So most of the cars, trucks and cabs now driving in the island of the sweltering heat originate in the land of the rising sun.  My cab, however, was a leftover left hooker from the USA, a big Chevy driven by a big Indian who muttered to himself and to me in a friendly, articulate way.  We discussed his family – originally from the Bombay area, taken to Trinidad by the British who then mastered both countries, as indentured labor.  We spoke of politics, cricket and the disequilibrium of the distribution of wealth, both on the islands and in the world, and all the while he drove at an excruciatingly slow pace, foot shimmying between throttle to brake for no apparent reason.  On arrival at Chagauramas Bay – Crews Inn Marina – he took his own shot at the redistribution of wealth.  Refused TT currency and overcharged me in dollars.  But he had all Hell’s of a drive back, through the nightmarish Port of Spain traffic, and where else do you get good conversation and new surroundings for a couple extra US dollars?

Negotiating the oil filters through Chagauramas Customs – another exercise in paperwork and makework.  Another few TT dollars, some of which seemed to stick to the local official, who had no change.  Then again, from his point of view, here comes a foreigner with time to sail a luxury item from his island to God knows where while he’s stuck in a small office with an iron bar gate.  If the oil filters earned him a cold beer that night, who’s counting the change?  I was planning on a couple of Cuba Libres myself.

TO BE CONTINUED