Alcyone Sail Training

December 9 - Isla de San Andres.

Hello everyone. We are at anchor off a little cay, Cayo Cordoba, off the island of San
Andres. The water here is SO clear and the depths show up with in a variety of lovely
blues. Isla San Andres is an island about 270 miles northwest of Panama, owned by
Columbia. As we approached during an early morning squall it looked very developed
with lots of high-rise buildings clustering at one end of the island. There are hotels and
casinos and apparently it is a resort destination for many mainland Columbians.
However, as you get used to it the construction kind of recedes and you become more
aware of a classic tropical island - there's a barrier reef you sail past into a protected
lagoon area with a passage of sandy bottom about 20-30 feet deep. Some wrecks line
the channel into the town, and the reef is dotted with four or five palm-tree skylined
cays.

It is probably a good sign that the newsletters are getting longer and longer. It must
mean that lots of exciting stuff has been happening. Either that or Jeff is getting
progressively longwinded, draining Alcyone's batteries with unlimited computer usage.

But it has been a fun, exciting time. The Panama Canal - don't get me started. But
wait till you hear about Portobello.

After we exited the Panama Canal, we spent the night anchored off the Panama
Canal Yacht Club, near Colon on the Atlantic side. It rained that night and morning.
We topped off with fuel, found a Laundromat to dry our fresh-water cleaned clothes
in, and said goodbye to Bill and Harry, who took a cab back to Panama City where
they'd fly out of the next day. Then we powered the twenty miles to the little port of
Portobello.

Portobello is really a trip. It is a lovely bay, first visited by Columbus, who gave it its
name, in 1502. It was the one of the Atlantic ports for the Spanish Empire from which
they'd send the treasures of the New World back to Spain.

So here's the thing: there are these fortifications - big ramparts with tiny slits to shoot
rifles out of and old, old cannons. Almost everywhere you looked. There is an old
counting house (two stories - big - of stone and coral blocks and hardwoods) and a big
church. Yet, for the people living there, it is no big deal that they live surrounded by
these historical structures and ruins. The guidebook describes Portobello this way:

"Today Portobello is a sleepy town of fewer than 3,000 people who mostly make their
living from the sea or tending to crops. Their homes and small businesses (mainly food
stands) are situated among the ruins of military buildings, half of which retain some
their original form. The other half are simply small piles of cut stone or coral, and
their origins have been obscured by time."

There are no banks or tourist infrastructure there. The little general stores (the three
biggest stores, modest corner supermarkets, were all run by Chinese families) have no
post cards for sale and don't accept credit cards. It's a sleepy little place, oriented
towards the people who live there and not trying to profit at all from its
extraordinary historical environment.

Oh well. That was fine by us.

We were there two days. The first day we went ashore and wandered around to
increasing wonder and delight. Look! Cannons! Look at this fort! Look how green the
carpet of grass that blankets the inside of the fort is! Hey! Get a picture of Alcyone in
the bay from over the ruins!

As we wandered into the little town, we kept catching glimpses of tumbledown
colonial architecture, narrow streets, old cobblestones, little foot bridges over the
streams running down from the mountains. The town is built right up against the
water - there is no beach and not much of a tidal range, so the walls of houses and
little concrete piers serve as the shore. The people there paddle across the bay in
canoes called "cayucas" that are carved from a single log. We asked one man about
the "cayucas," how much they cost, and who made them? He said he'd sell us one for
$100 and that they were made by local Indians. If Sugar had had a bigger boat to
keep it on, he might just have bought it.

We stopped for a beer at the one bar that was open. It backed on the water with old
booths overlooking the bay. The bar was casually rundown and had a nice sound
system playing lively Caribbean music. We were the only patrons that afternoon and
Chris and Sugar played a game of pool.

We looked around. The people were small-town friendly, returning our "holas" and
making eye contact. Following a sign that said "Entrada" we walked up to the second
floor of the restored counting house. It was a vast, museum-sized room, but all dark
inside, so we opened up some doors that gave out onto a balcony/gallery (the doors
were just held closed with little piece-of-brick doorstops) and let some light in. On the
walls were copies of old documents - mostly plans of old Spanish New World
fortifications we learned when we returned the next day. After we'd been there a little
while, a man walked up and, in a not unfriendly manner, told us it was closed - we'd
have to come back tomorrow. We helped him close up the room and continued our
tour.

There were a lot of kids around, playing pick-up soccer and baseball and a lot of
vultures perched on roofs and the on the church and on the walls of a cemetery.
There was a dump that was Vulture Central. What monkeys and iguanas had been to
Quepos, Costa Rica, vultures were to Portobello.

The next day we spent the morning doing Alcyone projects and swimming around the
boat. Then we came ashore and visited the counting house in earnest and showed
Leslie the local stores to see if there was any provisioning that interested her. In the
lower floor of the counting house we saw old muskets and cannon balls and learned
from the woman in charge that the counting house dated from 1630.

There was another part of the downstairs counting house, across an outdoor corridor.
We asked the lady what that was, and she said it was where they kept the robes of
the Black Christ. She got up and unlocked the padlock on a heavy wooden door and
let us into a large, air conditioned room full of gorgeous gowns. It was a stunning
experience, to walk into this big, cool, church-like room and come upon all these robes
- spangled and intricately designed - hanging all over the walls. There were at least 40
of them. The power of these images was somewhat enhanced by the mystery of our
not knowing exactly what the Black Christ was.

Fortunately, there was a newspaper clipping in English on the wall explaining what it
was. Sugar read it aloud as we looked admired the gowns. The Black Christ was a
statue, commissioned for a church in Cartagena, that had been jettisoned by the crew
of the ship carrying it (this in the early 1800's) and recovered by the fishermen of
Portobello, who put it up in the church. Legend has it that a cholera epidemic
subsided when the Christ figure was found and since then the statue has had great
significance for the people of Portobello who, each October 21 have a festival to honor
it.

From the downstairs, we walked upstairs in the counting house - one big room with
the walls hung with old diagrams of Spanish fortifications and maps. Although it was
all in Spanish, the exhibit gave you a strong sense of how significant the Spanish
presence had been in the New World, starting from the time of Columbus'
explorations. We have already been witness to some of this, journeying along Mexico,
teaching Alyce and Darby (and ourselves) about the Aztec culture and the conquest
by Cortez, then on to Panama where the treasures of the New World made their
passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The spot where we are right now, San
Andres, was a hangout for both Henry Morgan and Sir Francis Drake as they made
attacks on Spanish shipping. The body of Sir Francis Drake was committed to the sea
in a lead-lined casket just off the coast of Portobello. So, there's all this STUFF, you
see.

From the counting house we went shopping, bought ice cream and were sold four
pounds of shrimp by some local guys (it became such a perfect day that all the details
seem important). Leslie and Susan (our new crewmember who joined us in Panama)
went back to the boat to prepare dinner, Chris came ashore and we - Alyce, Darby,
Sugar, Jeff, Chris, Bridget and Mikey - set forth to climb a steep hill up to yet another
fort that overlooked the bay. This had been Darby's goal all along. As Leslie and
Susan were leaving they spoke with a 15 year old girl who was admiring a necklace of
Darby's. They asked if she knew the way up the hill to the fort and soon we had the
company of about 10 townskids, ranging in age from 5 to 15, acting as playmates and
guides.

It was cool. First, the hill we climbed was a perfect carpet of deep green grass with a
stream and waterfall coming down in the middle. The kids demonstrated that we
should kick off all footwear and scale the hill, which was pretty steep, barefoot. It was
not so steep that you had to use your hands to climb it, but steep enough that it was
close. It took about fifteen minutes, some people racing up faster than others, and
every so often you'd turn around and look back on this perfect image of this grassy
slope, then old battlements, then a bay with Alcyone at anchor.

By the time we reached the old fort we were friendlier, more relaxed and more joking
with the neighborhood kids. After we explored the old fort we all sat on a wall in
front, talking, enjoying the view and getting ready for the climb down. We noticed
that the grass up there was recently cut, a pretty impressive feat for a slope that
steep.

"How do they do that?"

"Weed whackers, probably," said Mikey. "But I've done some heinous landscaping
jobs in my life and I wouldn't want to do it."

So there was this carpet of fresh-whacked grass that you could run through your
fingers. After a while some of the younger kids were throwing it at each other. This
inspired some of the adults (starting with Mikey and Chris) to fling grass back. Soon a
full-fledged grass war was underway. Who could resist with this incredible fort (with
an actual moat-like trench around it) at our backs? Everybody laughed and ran along
the steep slope, gathered up grass, threw it and laughed some more. Having this
physical activity to share broke down most barriers. We played for about 15 minutes,
then began our walk down. When we got to the bottom the horseplay resumed with
everyone riffing further on grass attacks.

Finally the grass war wound down and we went across the road (the one road, the
one leading into Portobello) to the fort that is by the shore. The kids came up with a
soccer ball and soon we were choosing up sides for a match. How to explain it? It is
just so cool to be playing soccer inside the ruins of a 17th century fort with a bunch of
Panamanian kids in a backwater town that you sailed to from Washington state on
your schooner. Something like that. It was late afternoon and cloudy, so it wasn't too
too hot and everyone played with oodles of enthusiasm (a gallery of bruises that have
since blossomed on Sugar, Bridget and Alyce's shins attest to the ferocity of the
contest). Jeff made a run to a local home/restaurant to bring sodas that were shared
all around and beers for the chronologically grown-up. A yo-yo found its way out of
Jeff's pocket and was a source of entertainment for some of the younger set. Kids
demonstrated their acrobatic prowess by tumbling over cannon and jumping off of old
stone walls.

Finally we collapsed on a stone ramp that lead up to the battlements and drank
another round of sodas. Darby and Bridget sang some Christmas carols and we got to
learn some Spanish lyrics to "Jingle Bells" and "Silent Night."

The sun had set and it was time to go out to the boat. Leslie zoomed in and picked us
up in the inflatable. When we were all on board most of us went for a quick swim
around the boat to cool off. Dinner that night was shrimp with rice. Everyone was
relaxed and pleasantly tired. For a while afterwards Jeff was doing the dishes while
Sugar stood next to him peeling and feeding him leftover shrimp.

We left the next morning, heading north.

What follows is a long, detailed account of some of our recent adventures by Leslie's
brother Jeff. Because perhaps not everyone will get to the end of this newsletter we'd
like to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year at the beginning. It's New
Year's Day. We're anchored in sixteen feet of water just off the main drag of Isla
Mujeres right now catching up on maintenance. We've had a great trip so far and
have enjoyed all the places we've visited, the people we've met and the crew that we
have sailed with. The holiday season is a time to think of family and friends without
whom all this running around would be meaningless. Merry Christmas, Happy New
Year, best wishes and fair winds to you all.

The Alcyone Crew

********************

When last heard from Alcyone was in Roatan, a skinny island about forty miles north
of Honduras, to which it belongs. It runs east to west at a spot in the
Honduran/Central American coastline that runs east to west as well. A little ways to
the east the mainland coast takes a right turn and runs due north along the Yucatan
Peninsula.

Every stop has brought something new and, in ways, it has felt like a progression . . .
things get more exotic, more primitive, more different. Panama actually wasn't
primitive -- Panama City was the biggest burg we saw, but the canal with all the
world's shipping cruising past our mooring and the big third-world city (a mix of big,
bland public works edifices; Blade Runneresque neon; and old, old, crumbling yet
inhabited colonial architecture) right in the middle of the jungle, in the middle of the
continent felt removed in time and place from our regular experience.

The island of San Andres, for all its duty-free modernity, felt far away. It is
Columbian, frequented by tourists from Columbia and as such it was the deepest into
South America we would get. Plus it had that vestigial British, slave, Rasta,
Caribbean mix, along with a shopworn resort tropical paradise glitz. For instance,
when we sailed into San Andres one squally morning we thought we saw a
square-rigger in the harbor. We studied it through binoculars for a while trying to
figure out if it was a ship known to us. It turned out to be the Captain Morgan, a
faux-pirate-ship party boat that would circle us blaring reggae music with its crew
clad in buccaneer couture and its paying vacation pleasure seekers probably oblivious
to the difference between it and Alcyone. It's kind of charming, as long as it takes
place somewhere you've barely heard of before.

We showed up in Roatan after a wonderful four-day passage. We had a variety of
reaches. It wasn't all classic trade wind sailing -- we weren't completely off the wind
and the seas had elements of confusion to them -- but there was plenty of wind and
Alcyone felt powered-up mostly. Then there was the passage, the Moskito passage,
close in along the Nicaraguan coast protected by a series of reefs. Before the days of
GPS it was a short cut you normally wouldn't attempt. You need accurate navigation
to stay off the shoal spots. Even with GPS you want to go through it (it's about a 40
mile passage) in daylight. But it was glorious. Sailing close hauled in light blue water
twenty to thirty feet deep with a negligible chop -- the ocean swells had been broken
by the reef we were sailing inside of. You couldn't see it -- except for some low,
scattered cays the reef was all under water (as it should be, Jeff. Duh). But I associate
reefs with islands for some reason. This was a zone of protective shallows, invisible
except for their coloring and their protective effect, paralleling the coast for a while.

From afar we saw some local boats sailing out to the cays. They looked like rough,
homemade craft with funny, charming rigs and patched-together sails. One was
schooner rigged, between twenty and thirty feet long. We were also approached by a
couple of pongas with big outboard motors. One came alongside and watched us, then
zoomed ahead to cross over in front of our bow. Unfortunately they were trolling and
their fishing line caught on our hull, so for about five minutes they followed off our
starboard quarter trying to figure out how to disengage it. Finally they zoomed
forward again and crossed to port. That did it. I didn't know this at the time but
Sugar later mentioned that he was a little wary being approached by boats in these
waters (this ponga was filled with an entire clan of six or seven men and boys) because
there had been recent reports on the cruiser's net of violent piracy in Nicaragua.

We made it to Roatan one early morning sailing along most of the length of the island
- east to west -- and checking in at the largest town, Coxen's Hole. There is a lot to
say about Roatan, in part, because we stayed there for a week, our longest stop of the
trip so far not counting Oxnard where Leslie's parents live. Roatan is a long, slender
island, 30 miles long. Until about 1850 it belonged to Great Britain. Then it became a
Spanish possession and ultimately became part of Honduras. Until recently it didn't
matter to the Honduran that the people of Roatan be taught Spanish, so English is
widely spoken. (We saw a couple of bilingual schools, some church affiliated. I suppose
the bilingual-ness is a response to the government's new requisite.) The English the
people of Roatan speak is lilting and Caribbean-inflected, like a Jamaican accent. By
and large the English speakers on the island are those of African slave heritage rather
than European or Indian. If you go up to an older black person, chances are they
speak English. Then there are the folks who look more Latin American (Indian or
Spanish lineage) and they speak Spanish. A lot of people speak both. Some villages are
more predominantly one language than another. We were directed by Robert (more
about Robert soon) to a landing where he said that fifteen minutes walk up the road
we'd find a "Spanish village." Something about the dynamic mix of the two languages
on this small (relatively small. It has a population of 24,000, said one guidebook, and
people have been living there since the 1600's) island makes it very appealing. Perhaps
it is that you can find someone to speak English with you (accented, island English,
but that makes it better) to answer your more complex questions and, at the same
time, you can listen to and practice your Spanish as well.

There is one other group on the island, the Garifuna population. The Garifuna are
descendants of the survivors of a 1797 slave revolt on the island of St. Vincent. Those
slaves who weren't killed in putting down the uprising were exiled to Roatan. There
are Garifuna communities scattered all over the Caribbean coast of Central America
(I read about something like that when I was in Costa Rica six years ago). Punta
Gorda, on the north side of Roatan is a Garifuna village. We asked a
Spanish-speaking cab driver about them, supposing that they speak English. No, he
said, you can't understand them. So maybe they speak a mix of African dialect and
the English they were in slavery under. Before we learned about the Garifuna, we'd
passed through the village of Punta Gorda on a bus to Coxen's Hole. Just having
driven through such a place helps to make it more vivid for you. The historical,
cultural mix of the area - slavery, colonialism - reveals itself in everyday life.

So we checked into to Honduras at Coxen's Hole, wandered around town to see what
we could see in an hour (Leslie checked out Warren's, the big supermarket. Not big
by our standards - it's more of an expanded 5-aisle general store - but definitely
serviceable) and then headed east along to the south side of the island to find an
anchorage where there wasn't trash floating in the clear water of the harbor. We
found such a spot - Evertime Bight - and anchored just as the sun went down. Darby
and Alyce were in the water immediately, swimming and singing Christmas carols
around the boat, under the fiery glow of the barbecue as the coals burned down to
cook the yellow tail tuna we'd caught on the passage from San Andres.

The next morning we moved on to Caribbean Point Bight, a larger anchorage that
promised more adventure. There are perhaps fifteen potential anchorages on the
south side of Roatan - not all of them deep enough for Alcyone's 10-foot draft, but
still a whole bunch by anybody's standards. The funny thing is there is no detailed
chart of the island, which is mostly surrounded by a barrier reef and where some of
the anchorages have reefs and wrecks as well. We were navigating using a cruising
guide which had sketches of the anchorages, but which you wanted to back up with
somebody in the rigging and, often, somebody in the inflatable with a lead line. Using
this cautious, old-fashioned approach we got into all the anchorages we attempted and
felt like honest explorers.

As we felt our way into Caribbean Point Bight, a local young man in a small fiberglass
kayak paddled up to Chris and Bridget, who were sounding a shallow spot in the
dinghy, and offered his assistance. Soon we were anchored and he was alongside
Alcyone talking with us. His name was Robert and he lived in the bay with his wife
and two children, looking after somebody's property. He spoke good, not perfect,
English. Soon we had him on the boat and were peppering him with questions about
the area that he answered as best he could. Sometimes you wonder how we must
come across to local people. We ask questions - concerning where to get water or how
deep this bay is or where Alyce and Darby can play or where you can get fresh
produce or are there conch or lobster out on the reef - that you can tell are things
they haven't necessarily thought of much before.

In the course of the two days we stayed in the bay we learned that Robert was 26,
that he had worked on shrimp boats and been to Jamaica and San Andres and
Venezuela, that his father was Spanish speaking and his mother English speaking, and
that his wife was from the mainland (he'd met her during Carnival). You kind of had
to solicit this information from him in the course of making conversation. Otherwise he
seemed happy to stop by and say hello and be of assistance. He brought Alyce and
Darby shells as gifts and let us fill our fifteen gallon water jugs from his cistern (where
he filled our water jugs he had two baby pigs that Darby got a look at).

The cruising guide had mentioned a canal through the mangroves from Caribe Bight
(that's what Robert called it) to the neighboring bay. Soon after we were anchored
Susan and I [Jeff] got a dory down to go explore. Robert had already volunteered to
show us the way (this on relatively brief acquaintance), so the three of us paddled off.
He showed us the way to a narrow passage, perhaps three quarters of a mile long, cut
through the mangroves. In places it was eight feet wide, too narrow to row with the
dory sweeps, so Robert towed us with his kayak. The water was glassy calm and clear
(maybe six or eight feet deep most of the time) and for long stretches the mangroves
grew over the canal to form a shady canopy. In other places the canal opened up into
lagoons where there were flimsy docks and wooden houses on stilts. It was a
well-traveled thoroughfare. A couple times fiberglass dinghies roared up to us on a
plane and then slowed to a crawl until they could get around us and zoom off again.
This with maybe a couple feet clearance on either side.

We came out the other side of the canal into a bay with a lot more houses along its
shores than Caribe Bight. According to Robert this was Jonesville. According to the
cruising guide it was Bodden Bight. Robert said the NEXT bay was Bodden Bight.
We never quite cleared up this discrepancy, although we tend to give Robert the
benefit of the doubt since he lives there and, we found out, his last name is Bodden.

Whatever it was, we rowed across that bay, then along another inside passage,
between the big island and a little barrier island. There were houses on both sides. It
felt neat to be rowing along on what was so obviously a water-oriented environment.
Most all of the houses had rickety docks and the houses themselves were built right on
the water or over the water - as you rowed by you were looking into people's living
rooms like some Caribbean Venice. There was a larger dock with rusty shrimp boats
tied to it. We stopped there and went for a walk through Jonesville. We looked
through the local market (3 aisles, a nice English-speaking proprietress, a mix of food,
clothing, toys and hardware) and a little ways down the road came across a house
that some men were working on.

"That's my cousin's house," Robert said.

A man came up and introduced himself as Robert's uncle. You get the sense that in
these little communities everybody knows everybody else. As we walked along the
muddy dirt street of Jonesville we saw plaques above the doors of a couple houses
pronouncing that they belonged to So-and-So Jones. Later we were anchored in a
bight about four miles east from Robert's bay, near the town of Oak Ridge. I learned
the little bump of land on the way to Oak Ridge was called Pandy Town. Later I
found a phone book for the island. There were seven or eight people named Pandy, a
bunch named Jones and maybe forty with the last name of Bodden. A small town feel
with a lot of local history.

We stayed at Caribe Bight for two days. All the crew took the trip through the
mangrove canal, and we learned how to paddle the dories (rather than rowing them)
through the narrow parts. Bridget, Darby and I did the walk along a trail to the little
town in the interior Robert had described as the Spanish town. It was an interesting
walk, first through a ramshackle banana plantation, then in a rain forest back and
forth over a stream headed up towards the center of the island. Bridget commented
that it was like what she had expected Costa Rica to be like, natural and overrun with
plantlife, with the incursions of man into the rainforest impermanently perched on the
landscape and ready to be reclaimed by nature. When we got to the village (which we
didn't see much of because we were late and had to turn back soon), it had a different
feel from the coastal villages. It was hillier, obviously, but it also felt . . . more Latin in
a way, maybe a little poorer. At Jonesville we had remarked on the degree to which
dogs seemed well-regarded and well-cared-for. At this other village dogs seemed a
more left to their own devices and more wary.

From Caribe Bight we sailed to Port Royal, towards the east end of the island, a
larger bay, more isolated, with some reefs and white sand beaches to explore. We had
snorkeling and exploring and were visited by an expatriate named Eric who brought
us a log book that had entries of all the boats (one page per boat with photos and
drawings and crew lists and comments) that had visited the bay. We enjoyed looking
through the most recent volume of the log book (there were four volumes) and Eric
left it with us to make our own entry.

By the time we were at Port Royal we were looking forward to our departure to Isla
Mujeres, Mexico, where we were scheduled to meet Grandma and Grandpa for
Christmas. One thing we had to do was check out of Roatan, but rather than take
Alcyone all the way to Coxen's Hole to check out, we wanted to get somewhere where
Sugar could catch a bus into Coxen's Hole and get our passports stamped. That way
we could stay more on the eastern end of the island which would give us a better,
more weatherly, jumping off point to head north (against the northeast trade winds)
from.

The nearest bus service was from a town called Oak Ridge, the third largest town in
Roatan, located at about the middle of the island. So we left Port Royal and nosed
our way through the reef into a little bay called Fiddler's Bight. There was a sketch of
it and its depths in the cruising guide, although there were no specific directions on
how to come in. It was tight, no more than an eighth of a mile across. We sounded all
around with the dinghy and had to drop the hook twice to get it set, but when we
were there it felt nice and snug.

[Sugar, fact-checking the newsletter, reminded me of a Fiddler's Bight-related story.
The second day we were there we had a visitor. Sugar, Mikey, Susan and Jeff gone off
to Coxen's Hole. A cold was running rampant through the boat, so Leslie, Alyce,
Darby, Chris (who, in a rare concession to ill-health, spent much of the day in his
bunk listening to the second Harry Potter tape) and Bridget were working on getting
better. Dave from Victoria stopped by. He's the ham radio weather guru for the
island whom we'd heard on the cruiser's net and whom we'd consulted personal on
VHF. "I'd have come by yesterday when you came in," he told Leslie, "but I figured
you must know somebody in Fiddler's Bight. Nobody anchors here without local
knowledge."]

Fiddler's Bight had houses all around and was obviously on the behind-the-reef
highway from one place to another because lots of traffic zoomed by all day. This
traffic wasn't obnoxious; it was nice to be so much a part of the daily life of that bay
where you'd often be waving to people as they passed within thirty or forty feet of the
boat.

The traffic was either little hard dinghies with big outboards or an elegant style of
water taxi that are worth describing. The water taxis are narrow, long double-ended
canoe-style craft with stern hung rudders that are controlled by lines lead to a wheel
slightly forward. Sugar observed that the bottoms part of the taxis were carved from
single logs and then their freeboard was built up with planks on top of that. They had
inboard diesel or gasoline engines and were in nice repair -- painted bright colors with
cove stripes. They looked like craft you might see on rivers or lakes in England and felt
much more part of a nautical tradition than the fiberglass dinghies that everybody
seemed to use as the family car.

The morning we anchored at Fiddler's Bight a nicely dressed woman holding a
hymnal had herself driven out in a dinghy to say hello.

"We just wanted to welcome you," she said. "Do you know what this place you're at
is called?"

"Fiddler's Bight?"

"That's right. How long you be stayin'?"

"Just a couple of days. We need to get in to Oak Ridge to take the bus to Coxen's
Hole."

"Well, Oak Ridge be just over dere."

We were just about to re-anchor when this exchange took place, so we had to chase
the lady and her chauffeur away, but it was a charming welcome.

On the way to Fiddler's Bight we'd listened to the Western Caribbean Cruiser's net
and the weather report presented a problem. We had planned to get checked out that
day and leave for Isla Mujeres before sundown that evening. The weather report
indicated that several fronts were headed our way and the weather window for
heading north would be effectively shut for the next couple of days. We learned that
in the winter the storms that hit the eastern U.S. often continue down into the Gulf of
Mexico and down along here. Their primary characteristic is that they turn the
northeast trade winds into hard northerly blows which didn't make the traveling
north (a bearing of 355 magnetic) to Isla Mujeres sound inviting.

There was a flurry of contingency plans and things to be investigated. Bridget and
Mikey had flights home for Christmas from Cancun, Mexico, and so needed to get
there before Christmas, even if Alcyone had to stay put to wait for better weather.
Susan was meeting her children for Christmas in Isla Mujeres. Grandma and
Grandpa were flying into Cancun December 23rd with reservations at a hotel in Isla
Mujeres. Should we reroute them to Roatan or maybe fly Leslie and the girls out to
stay with them while the remaining crew (when you took away Bridget, Mikey, Susan,
Leslie, Alyce and Darby that left Sugar, Chris and Jeff) waited for a window to sail
north in?

To cut to the chase, it was resolved that everybody but Sugar, Chris and Jeff could fly
out -- Roatan to Belize City then a bus from Belize City to Cancun was the cheapest
fare we could arrange on short notice. For a little while Bridget was considering
taking a ferry to the Honduran mainland and then buses all the way to Cancun (or
was it New Jersey?), but she forsook the possibility of that adventure to accompany
the larger group. What else? Grandma cast a frosty eye on the possibility of spending
Christmas on some island she'd never heard of where they exile recalcitrant slaves, so
it was definitely Isla Mujeres for Christmas.

Narratively this seems like a good cliff-hanging spot to end this newsletter as it
approaches the 3,000-word limit where it starts to bore even me. Still to come are
early Christmas in Roatan; the manly bash to windward of Sugar, Chris and Jeff; the
that-was-one-of-the-most-impressive-displays-of lightning-I've-ever-seen arrival in Isla
Mujeres of Leslie, Alyce, Darby, Grandma and Grandpa and some other odds and
ends.

January 9, 2001

Dear Everyone,
Here is part two of our holiday newsletter. It begins with Alcyone at the island of
Roatan, held up by predictions of bad weather, with most of our crew soon to head to
Cancun where they all had appointments of some sort.

We were in the little bay of Fiddler's Bight for two evenings. The first day Sugar, Jeff,
Bridget and Mikey took the bus into Coxen's Hole to figure out options if Alcyone
couldn't get to Isla Mujeres for Christmas. The next day Sugar, Jeff, Susan and Mikey
went to Coxen's Hole to finalize plans travel plans. The result was that two days later
Leslie, Alyce, Darby, Bridget, Susan and Mikey would fly out early in the morning for
Belize City, then take buses from Belize City to Cancun.

Also that second day we picked up our remaining Christmas supplies. When we
returned that evening the boat became a hive of present-wrapping and tree
decorating. In town Sugar had bought a two-and-a-half-foot-tall plastic tree that
Darby and Alyce delighted in trimming. It stood on the cushion in the saloon just
above the engine. Soon it was surrounded by presents wrapped in all manner of
paper. The presents came in waves - first Leslie's, then Susan's. Sugar was busy on
the chart table for a long while ("Don't come UP here! Oops, sorry, Jeffrey. That
wasn't yours anyway." Who ever knows if he's telling the truth?) and came up with
oodles of gifts. Then Mikey and Chris dove back into the lazarette and brought out a
bunch of stuff that they took to the forward cabin and wrapped in newspaper. This
kind of activity is heaven for Darby who becomes excited and secretive and
spilling-the-beans and hyper-alert to fluctuations in the Force all at once. Imagine a
boat full of Santa's elves busy in their respective cabins, curtains drawn, and you get
the picture. Plus, Bridget and Chris had been augmenting Alyce and Darby's
repertoire of Christmas carols and there had been plans for a Christmas concert of
flute, guitars and vocals, so the boat rang with Christmas music emphatically
declaimed by Darby with everyone chiming in around her.

That was our Alcyone Christmas Eve, December 19th. It was a day with some rain -
the predicted front was moving in. In addition to the gift wrapping, Jeff took a
twilight stroll around the town of Fiddler's Bight (a nice feeling -- people all around
walking on the one red dirt road, now slick, muddy and rutted from the day's rain, or
hanging out at stores or on the porches of houses). The light was rich and red and
ominous -- the time of evening when interiors glowing with light seem so inviting -- but
the rain held off long enough for him to grab a water taxi and enjoy a putt-putt back
to the boat. Sugar and Alyce took the inflatable to a store that jutted out over the
water. They too enjoyed the small town warmth. They bought wrapping paper from a
lady who spoke perfect Caribbean English and made it back to the boat a little after
Jeff and got caught in some rain.

It stormed that night and blew in the morning. We dragged anchor a little (we had
both the Danforth and the Bruce set) and it was time to move on anyway. It being
Alcyone Christmas morning Alyce, Darby, Chris and Jeff had stockings (Alyce had
made and embroidered the names on stockings for Chris and Jeff) stuffed with candy
and small presents. Then we picked our way carefully out of Fiddler's Bight and
headed off to Coxen's Hole where the travelers would leave from the next morning at
5:30.

In the afternoon a bunch of us (Leslie, Darby, Susan, Jeff, Bridget, Mikey. Alyce
stayed on the boat with Pa and Chris nursing a cold) visited an exotic bird park on
the north side of the island at Sandy Bay. The park was a modest compound an acre
or two large, but it had everything necessary to provide a delightful afternoon for
Darby (Bridget the ornithologist too, for that matter). There was a big, friendly
German Shepherd named Bird Dog who greeted us at the entrance. Then there were
parrots and toucans that would perch on your finger, arm or shoulder. It had been a
private collection of a woman who'd left the island. Since then it had grown to about
100 birds, mostly varieties of parrots, macaws and toucans. We were led around by a
sweet island woman who told us both scientific lowdown and stuff from personal
experience about the birds. One species of parrots she described as being like "the
golden retrievers" of parrots - calm, very good with kids, not terribly exciting. As we
stood by their cage (there were maybe ten of them) they were screeching. She
beckoned us away and said, "The thing about all the different parrot species is that
each one has some drawback. These birds, for instance. It's time for them to be fed.
They can get so NOISY."

Another species she described as being clever, but you had to be careful around them.
"These birds, you don't want to say anything around them that you don't want your
parents to hear, because they'll hear that ONE thing and they'll repeat it. They're
very sharp about recognizing your emotions. If there's ever a child here and he gets
upset and throws a tantrum, that's all we'll hear all day."

That evening we had Alcyone Christmas. Chris had been making ceviche; Sugar had
gotten everything ready for spaghetti a la carbonara. We opened presents in a round
robin, starting with Darby as youngest (and most eager) and working up in age. We
did about three rounds and then had dinner. Then we opened the rest. It was a neat
Christmas - the cozy Alcyone main saloon filled with presents, wrapping paper, candy,
excitement and the warm feelings that come from having lived and traveled together
as a unit. We had a Neapolitan ice cream feast for dessert, then went on deck and set
off sparklers and bottle rockets that Sugar had bought. Then we broke open the
pi�ata that Alyce, Darby and Bridget had made of papier maiche. By then it was ten
o'clock and we had a four-thirty wake-up call for the departing crew.

Everyone had been packing for several days. It is no simple matter to get your stuff off
a boat. For Leslie and Bridget it involved choosing what to take, because they'd be
coming back. For Mikey it involved finding room for everything he'd accumulated
over the course of two months. It made an impressive pile. That morning was
hurriedly emotional - people dragging up bags that you hadn't seen since they'd come
on board. Take the inflatable off the hip, load it up with baggage and crew - several
runs to the dock - saying goodbye and wishing happy holidays lit by the early-morning
glow of lights from Coxen's Hole. Then they were gone and the boat felt considerably
more roomy and empty.

We (Sugar, Chris and Jeff) checked out of Coxen's Hole that noon and took the boat
up to Port Royal. We left the next morning, December 22nd, headed north. There
wasn't a weather window to go north in - they were still predicting fronts bringing
northerly winds - but there wasn't anything dangerous out there either - nothing
predicted above 25 knots.

It took us three and a half days. We saw a lot of squalls and we were almost always
motorsailing close-hauled, but generally it was easy - a delivery cruise where you stood
watch for two hours and were off for four hours, trying to get as much sleep as
possible. A couple things worked in our favor. The seas didn't get particularly large
until the last twenty-four hours when it started blowing twenty-plus knots constantly.
And, especially towards the end of the trip, we were helped by a northerly current --
the beginning of the Gulf Stream -- that gets funneled up between the Yucatan
Peninsula and the tip of Cuba.

We ended up sailing most of Christmas Day, arriving in the evening with the blaze of
lights from the strip of hotels in Cancun to port. Because of the current we got to
crack off to a reach for the last two hours. We had double-reefed mainsail,
double-reefed foresail and staysail and we were averaging a lively, fun eight and a half
knots. We ducked into the lee behind Isla Mujeres, felt our way up against the island
and anchored among some shrimp boats around 10 PM the night of Christmas.

Here are a couple computer entries written on Christmas day underway:

Last night (Christmas Eve) was the most dramatic. We had insistent, dramatic
lightning on two sides of us and the wind gusting occasionally to 30 knots. Because of
the lightning, for a while Sugar shut down all the electronics. You get so used to your
GPS, to know exactly where you are and what speed and course you are making. Its
little green screen is like a TV, an electronic hearth. Anyway, the wind came up. We
were motorsailing, trying to stay close to the wind. We'd reefed the foresail and
double-reefed the mainsail at dusk. Now, around 9:00 PM, the wind came up more. I
[Jeff] was on watch and feeling as though it were time to reduce sail and maybe even
heave to. Sugar and Chris came up. Sugar suggested I put the throttle in neutral (it
worked wonders) and they threw a second reef into the foresail. Double reefed, the
foresail looks like a little toy sail. That made things more mannerly, although the
waves were high so there was a lot of motion. It was pitch dark, except for the flashes
of lightning -- the white backs of waves lit by the starboard running light as they slid
beneath us and a couple of stars peeking through the cloud cover overhead. But all
around us were dark cloud masses and, during the previous two and a half days, we'd
watched the approach and experienced the force of enough squalls to have an uneasy
appreciation of them.

Nothing was wrong; it was just dramatic. Every time the forces at work on you
ratchet up a notch, there's a moment of discomfort and unease before you get
everything back under control. When the lightning had moved far enough away,
Sugar reconnected the GPS and got a look at our speeds. We were moving to weather
at two to three knots. There was a hullabaloo of wind and waves and spray and
motion that went with it, but we were actually just jogging along pretty nicely. Below
the motion was not so extreme that you couldn't sleep. Since the trip was just Sugar,
Chris and myself, aside from steering the boat, one of our most important jobs was
sleeping - staying rested.

The next morning -- Christmas morning -- we had a bit of mess in the rigging from
the previous night. Sugar had known most of it during the night, but there wasn't
anything to be done in the dark. During a tack, in trying to clear the running
backstay from the shrouds, I'd released the flag halyard and it had made a ferocious
tangle in the port-side main rigging. If we didn't clear it we couldn't really tack,
because the running backstay was included in the tangle. Also, as we'd taken the
second reef at dusk, I'd released the main gaff topsail sheet and that slack had taken a
turn around the end of the gaff. Without clearing that up, we couldn't take the
mainsail down.

In the morning it wasn't raining and there was some blue sky, but it was still blowing
about 25 knots. We were moving comfortably to weather, towards the island of
Cozumel. We'd have to tack in a couple of hours, so Sugar put on some shoes and, as
I steered the boat down wind to take the shock out of the waves, he went aloft.

It was better watching him do it than thinking about him doing it. In the past I've
seen Sugar get out to the end of the gaff with the sail up to clear something.
Thankfully, he didn't do that this time. He said he'd probably just cut the main gaff
topsail sheet and have Chris pull the remainder onto the deck. As it turned out he
was able to clear it by tossing a loop of the sheet out towards to the end of the gaff.
After a couple of tries he got it to turn around the gaff and disengage itself. End of
problem one.

Now Sugar started untangling the flag halyard. It took about ten minutes. He
wrapped himself around the rigging sometimes to have the use of both hands, but he
got it all clear. Chris made the halyard fast at the deck and Sugar climbed down from
the rigging. It was a nice Christmas present. Those were our two big problems and
Sugar solved them without too much fuss. And he came down from the main mast
spreaders in one piece in 25 knots and ten-foot seas.

The morning after we arrived in Isla Mujeres, we took a look at the place we'd sailed
into in the dark. It was still very windy (great for drying laundry). The shallow (20
foot) water was a gorgeous light blue. We cleaned up the boat till ten o'clock then
brought Alcyone into the inner harbor. The immigration official wanted to see all
three crewmembers, and we came ashore just as Leslie and Darby walked up to greet
us. Then, while we were in town, we ran into Leslie's mother and father who were out
with shopping with Alyce for her up-coming birthday.

Leslie told us about their trip to Cancun. The plane flight was quick and uneventful;
the bus ride came in three parts -- one bus that was a local run, four hours of making
every stop along the way (I've just learned that they nearly lost Bridget at the first
bus station. They had missed the express bus and Bridget, assuming that Leslie
wouldn't take the milk run, had gone off in search of food. She came back to find
Mikey telling her to RUN and the bus pulling out with Leslie, the kids and Susan on
board. Leslie was leaving Mikey behind to explain their departure to Bridget. They all
made it.) Then a three-hour wait at a bus station just over the Mexican border, then
a six-hour express trip (with three movies en route) to Cancun. It was pouring rain
when they arrived in the bus station in Cancun and they (Leslie, Alyce, Darby, Susan,
Bridget, Mikey and all their luggage) managed to squeeze into one taxi and head to a
hotel that Susan had reservations at. This was about 9:00 PM, after sixteen hours of
travel. The girls were good travelers, but long is long.

Here are some tales Leslie and Bridget related, giggling most of the time, either
because they were funny or because they were glad it was over.

Their first day in Cancun they accepted an offer of a time-share condo promotion,
where they bus you to the condos and wine and dine you in exchange for listening to
their sale's pitch. The guy who set it up told Leslie not to say she was married, so
they'd take her seriously (if she were married then, in the minds of the promoters,
financial authority would automatically devolve to the absent husband and they
wouldn't give her lunch). They got a buffet lunch with all the Shirley Temples the
girls could drink, they got to swim in the pool and play on the beach (it was a cold,
windy day, but where Darby is concerned water is water) and while they were sitting
through the sale's pitch Alyce worked loose one of her baby teeth and the whole spiel
changed to a comparison of cross cultural tooth fairy myths. The salesman explained
that when you lose a tooth you have to put your tooth on the floor and wait for the
tooth mouse to claim it and leave you some money. They also received half-price
coupons for a water park that they'd attend the next day.

That evening everybody went out to dinner and the girls got their hair braided.
Darby still has hers.

The water park was fun. It was a cold, windy day (and, I'm sure they could barely
bring themselves to have fun, fraught, as they must have been, with concern about
our well-being aboard Alcyone. Then again, they had no way of knowing when we
left), so the park, which sounds pretty spectacular, was not at all crowded and you
could go on the cool rides as often as you wanted. There were six waterslides - two of
them very big. Of the two, one - curvy and a little lower - looked the easier, so they
climbed to the top of that one. The attendant said something in Spanish that Mikey
and Bridget interpreted to mean, "Before you can go on THIS slide, you have to go
over on that larger slide [which was called the Kamikaze] twice." Later - after they'd
gone down the Kamikaze twice (Leslie and Bridget both claim they were launched
airborne at times and Bridget says they lost most of the skin on the backs during the
course of the day) - they figured what the attendant really said was: "To be on THIS
slide you go two at a time. To do that other slide [the Kamikaze] you have to go
alone." Whatever.

There were waterslides, a wave pool, and an air dome with a rope to climb on. There
was a "river," a narrow ditch of waist-high water with a current weaving through the
park. Somewhere, across this river, there were parrots in a cage that Darby wanted to
get a closer look at. (Darby was already a great animal enthusiast before the exotic
bird park. Now she's sure all birds secretly want her to pet them.) Darby, already
blue with playing in the water on a cold, windy day, tried to cross the river and got
swept downstream (Leslie and Bridget laughing, until I hear otherwise) and probably
had to make another cycle of the park to get to her birds. Finally Bridget reported
that there was a cool ride where you start in a dark tunnel which shoots out into a
bowl (like a roulette wheel) that spins you round and round until you drop out the
middle.

[All of this sounds pretty cool and I'd like to observe that once you get out of the
United States they let you do all sorts of neat stuff - handling exotic birds, sliding
down waterslides unsupervised, letting six-year-olds drive golf carts, swimming in
underground limestone caves and hanging from stalactites, petting monkeys, sharing a
beach with iguanas - that you wouldn't ordinarily have an opportunity to do.]

That afternoon, Leslie, Alyce and Darby split up with Mikey, Bridget and Susan.
Leslie and the girls had to go to the airport to welcome Grandma and Grandpa, then
they all would take the ferry over to Isla Mujeres where Grandma and Grandpa had
rented a condo. Bridget and Mikey were flying home the next morning. Susan was
meeting her son and would eventually be at Isla Mujeres for a while, too.

A storm blew in sometime that evening with oodles of rain and thunder and lightning.
It made Grandma and Grandpa's plane late. Leslie and the girls missed them at the
airport. They all met up on the ferry to Isla Mujeres, arriving in the pouring rain.
Somehow a luggage carrier-- a man with a bicycle with a modified front, two wheels
instead of one with a carrying platform between the front wheels - convinced them
NOT to take a taxi with their luggage to the condo, since the condo was nearby. So
they walked fifteen minutes through ankle-high water to the condo. Then, as they
were climbing the four stories of slippery stairs up to the penthouse, the lights went
out. Darby and Alyce led the rest of the way up in the dark.

The condo was nice enough, but the lightning that night was so close and dramatic
that Leslie went around unplugging all the appliances. There was a patio wrapping
around two sides of the room that, in the pouring rain, became a wading pool about
two feet deep -- the drains to the balcony couldn't keep up with the water pouring in.

Bridget and Mikey walked through thigh-high water in Cancun trying to find a taxi
to the airport the next morning. Water so high that you couldn't put the bags down
(Mikey had a LOT of luggage) for fear of their drowning. Buses going by created bow
wakes that splashed you even higher. We're talking rain.

A fond farewell to Mikey, who had been with us since October, and who may be back
later on. He represented his generation with humor and confidence and style. He
certainly wasn't a kid and, although he hung pretty well with the adults, he wasn't
completely that either. We did visit upon him adult expectations sometimes, which
wasn't always fair, although often he came through in spite of that. It was a fun
having him on board. The blowfish lamp he bought in Cabo San Lucas and which Jeff
foolishly volunteered to mail from here is, however, another matter. Also, goodbye to
Susan, who we saw again in Isla Mujeres. As we were guiding Alcyone into the inner
harbor the morning after our arrival from Roatan, she swam out, within about
twenty feet of us, to say hello. Chris, who was aloft checking the depth, says somebody
calling his name from the water was the last thing he expected to hear. Susan's tenure
aboard Alcyone was a period when there was more feminine influence than guy things
and that was nice. Now she has her own boat to return to and she'll no doubt
continue to scratch her traveling itch independently.

We've had a good time in Isla Mujeres. Grandma and Grandpa stayed till December
29th. Grandpa helped install the new ham radio which, so far, has proved to be a
pretty slick and painless unit. Leslie has even started to send and receive short,
non-frivolous e-mails over the radio, kicking Sugar out of his bunk around 5:00 AM
when the propagation is best. We drove around the island in a golf cart (both Alyce
and Darby took turns steering) and saw a turtle farm.

Jeff and Chris took two days away from the boat, rented a red VW bug in Cancun
and drove out to Chichen Itza to see the Mayan ruins. They had a great time. The
more they saw and read about in their guidebooks, the more they wanted to rush
around and see. There was a lot to discover out there. Chris is now reading a couple
books on Mayan civilization.

We've had busy time at Isla Mujeres, maintenance-wise. The decks are newly painted
and non-skidded with about thirty-five pounds of sugar. The aft head, which went
south during the bash to Isla Mujeres, is working again -- a worn wire needed to be
located and replaced. The topsides are rust-free, although looking forward to haul-out
in Puerto Rico. We've done a major provisioning and crossed so much stuff off the
list. Mr. Bedford has been gone over - new oil, filters (water pump). Varnished the
sole, main saloon table and nav table. The electric windlass was torn more fully apart
(Sugar got a "puller" [some device that allows him to take stuff even further apart
than previously] for Christmas), then, Sugar seeing a bunch of ball bearings at the
next level, he chickened out and put it back together. It still doesn't grab. Chris
spliced new lazy jacks on the topping lifts. Leslie got Sugar a manual fuel transfer
pump for us upcoming birthday so now Chris no longer has to siphon fuel from 55
gallon barrels to the fuel tank orally. We varnished (twice) the aft companionway
slider, after everybody put their fingerprints on it the first time.

Alyce and Darby made two friends here - Victor and Carla. They are Mexican
children, ages thirteen and eight, who were raised for about six years in Los Angeles.
They were here with their parents during Christmas break from school. Their parents
have a stand selling trinkets and the kids lend a hand. One afternoon on the beach we
ran into Victor selling balloons to the Sybarites stretched out on the sand. We made
their acquaintance when Alyce, Darby, Victor and Carla all shared a trampoline (five
pesos a piece for ten minutes of bouncing) and found they had a common language.
From then on every afternoon Alyce and Darby made a run into town to go to the
Zocalo (the town square with the church) to play with Victor and Carla. The play
often usually involved zooming around on Alyce and Darby's scooters. They played a
form of freeze-tag; the "its" were on the scooters, those escaping got to run on foot.
One afternoon they came out to the boat with their mother Dolores. They were very
nice kids. Victor was responsible and understanding with the two younger girls and he
and Alyce shared a big-kid bond. Carla and Darby were about the same size and
enjoyed each other's company immensely. They also had a puppy, Buddy, that Darby
and Carla loved to hug.

Alyce's birthday was January 4th. She was sick that day (she'd recovered enough by
the evening for a party with cake), but the next day she was well enough to enjoy her
present from Sugar - a interactive thingie at a dolphin park where for a half hour she
got to pet, kiss, touch, feed and examine a pair of dolphins under the guidance of an
instructor. When Bridget came back from her Christmas vacation (bringing her sister,
Mary Catherine along, for the trip to Puerto Rico. Two Arbour women. The boat is
full of giggles and song and energy.) January 6th, the birthday spirit was regenerated.
And Christmas vacation is over. Alyce and Darby have resumed their studies with
enthusiasm.

One other experience was New Year's Eve. Chris experienced the most of it (he stayed
out celebrating - responsibly, it sounds - till 4:00 AM) and Sugar and Alyce took a nap
after dinner, then went ashore for midnight. Both Chris and Sugar report that the
scene at the Zocalo was neat - crowded with Mexican families, lots of people dressed
up, dancing, two bands, food stands all around. Knowing Victor and Carla, we hang
around the Zocalo a lot, but they'd never seen it so nicely crowded - at least a
thousand people. The church was overflowing. A general celebration. You could hear
the bottom pulse of dance music booming out over the water till 5:00 AM, which is as
it should be.

So now we're topped off with fuel, water and provisions (no chicken or turkey or their
ovum can enter Cuba. Leslie is coming up with alternative proteins for us) and
awaiting the passage of another weather system. We should take off for Cuba
tomorrow.

Fair Winds, the Alcyone crew
[We've been watching a lot of movies on DVD recently. For Christmas Alyce and
Darby received "Chicken Run," "Annie Get Your Gun," "Toy Story I & II,"
"Fantasia I & II," "Oklahoma" and "The King and I." Some of these entertainments
contain supplementary material - outtakes and documentaries features and the like. In
an indulgent DVD spirit I'm going to offer a couple of outtakes of my own. These are
experiences I wanted to get down, but felt would render the newsletter even more
cumbersome than it already is. If you don't read this, you won't miss anything about
Alcyone's progress or well-being.]

Bonus material!!!

[Back at Roatan]

On the trip into Coxen's Hole, where we ran around making travel arrangements, we
were looking for a roast chicken to bring back to the boat for Leslie. One
establishment on the main drag had a sign that read "El Pollo Rey." We found no
chicken, but we met a man who, out of the blue, started French to us. Jeff speaks lots
of French, Bridget has college French and Sugar can follow French conversation
(Mikey was adrift with his German). The man, Claude, was DELIGHTED to find
people to speak French with. He was originally from Haiti. He was so glad to speak
French, he declared, that he would buy us all a beer. We went inside this little cafe
and talked with him for the time it takes to down three rounds of beer. He was one of
those large-personalitied, twinkle-in-the-eye, ebullient charmers about whom you
wonder what his angle is. In the course of our conviviality we learned that he was a
doctor -- not a doctor who'd ever gone to school, but one who cured people with
plants. He sent someone to fetch his Roatanian, Spanish-speaking wife and daughter.
He wanted her to see him speaking French, he said, and for us to see her because she
was very beautiful. He also explained that he had two other wives on the island
(although we weren't to translate this into English for Mikey, because someone might
overhear) and a former wife in Pennsylvania with some kids of his, who sends him
money every so often to fly to the US. He takes the money, but has no intention of
moving to Pennsylvania, he explained.

He had a friend, Anderson, who spoke English and was as taciturn as Claude was --
whatever Claude was. If you wanted to make sure Claude was telling the truth, you'd
check with Anderson who would smile and nod and say, "Yeah, that's so." Anderson
lived on the hill above Caribe Bight. Bridget and he discussed music (an MTV-like
program played on the TV on the shelf and Bridget and Mikey and Anderson had a
number of tunes in common) and he recommended a discotheque to go to. We never
got there, but as we taxied home Bridget, Mikey and Jeff, stuffed in the back seat,
practiced boogieing to tunes the taxi driver had playing. You meet people, feel as
though you've gained a little entr�e into the local culture (discos? beer? Claude, the
Haitian medicine man?), have an impromptu happy hour and it gives you a kind of a
lift. We made it back to the boat more or less on time without worrying Leslie too
much, but without any rotisserie chicken either.

[Another Roatan story]

Another morning, as we were taking the water taxi into Oak Ridge, we saw a fracas
among the pilings under one of the houses on stilts. Closer examination revealed it to
be some guys wrestling with a big black and white hog, tying him to one of the pilings.
We thought nothing of it until that afternoon when we were taking the water taxi
back. We passed by the same house. Jeff looked for the hog, but didn't see anything in
the shade beneath the house. Then he caught a glimpse of a big pot. We asked the
taxi driver if there hadn't been a pig there this morning. "Yes, that's right. They're
cooking him up right now."