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Seven Years Bikes Babes, Booze and Boats
Por Randall Hammond
Acciones del libro
Comenzar a leerLongitud: 382 página6 horas
- Editorial:
- Randall Hammond
- Publicado:
- Nov 14, 2012
- ISBN:
- 9781301918058
- Formato:
- Libro
Descripción
seven years is a true life adventure. be part of the author's crew as he sails his rusty old yacht in huge seas, runs aground on sunken reefs and anchors off exotic shores. hold your breath, hang on tight, whilst you accompany this old biker and sailor as he navigates the shifting shoals of middle east politics and the south east asian marine industry. hold onto your heart strings as the passion brings tears to your eyes, share the tender moments and rough and raunchy nights. last but not least, feel compassion for our beleaguered author who suffers at the hands of unscrupulous fiends, and has battled through it all, and survived. loads of drama, grief, great sailing stories, lots of sex and heart rending life experiences.
Acciones del libro
Comenzar a leerInformación sobre el libro
Seven Years Bikes Babes, Booze and Boats
Por Randall Hammond
Longitud: 382 página6 horas
Descripción
seven years is a true life adventure. be part of the author's crew as he sails his rusty old yacht in huge seas, runs aground on sunken reefs and anchors off exotic shores. hold your breath, hang on tight, whilst you accompany this old biker and sailor as he navigates the shifting shoals of middle east politics and the south east asian marine industry. hold onto your heart strings as the passion brings tears to your eyes, share the tender moments and rough and raunchy nights. last but not least, feel compassion for our beleaguered author who suffers at the hands of unscrupulous fiends, and has battled through it all, and survived. loads of drama, grief, great sailing stories, lots of sex and heart rending life experiences.
- Editorial:
- Randall Hammond
- Publicado:
- Nov 14, 2012
- ISBN:
- 9781301918058
- Formato:
- Libro
Acerca del autor
Randall Hammond is an International Marine Consultant, Designer, Musician, Sailor, Entertainer, Traveler, and Writer.
Randall Hammond is an International entrepreneur, a man with passion, and a positive outlook on life.
Fortunate to be afflicted with "instant inspirations" brought on by an adventurous lifestyle and producing songs, poetry and writings of drama, grief, sailing stories, biker stories, lots of sex, and heart rending life experiences.
"My life, my attitude, my rules"
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Vista previa del libro
Seven Years Bikes Babes, Booze and Boats - Randall Hammond
Seven Years
Bikes, Babes, Booze and Boats
Randall Hammond
Copyright by Randall Hammond 2012
ISBN 9781301918058
Smashwords Edition
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Authors note
Randall Hammond left Australia with his wife and her two children on their yacht on August 1st, 1998. He had US$1.200, his old guitar, his tools and confidence that he could make his way.
On arrival in Indonesia, Randall’s life changed. He found that there is another way to live. He had escaped his violent past, but more importantly, he had escaped the constant onslaught on personal liberty instigated by the Socialist Governments of Australia.
My life, my attitude, my rules
Chapter 1
Wanderlust
My story begins back in 64; I was a mixed-up kid in a small town where I attended a primary school of perhaps 200 brats. The buildings were of British architecture, brick, painted white and were typical of the local, colonial buildings. To the left stood tall pine trees we loved to climb. To the rear of the classrooms were large wooden verandas that lead onto a vast playground where we all yelled and screamed and ran amok among the giant roots and in the shade of the one hundred-year-old fig trees. Each morning, we would gather for milk at a large open-fronted shed at the back of the playground. We each received a quarter-pint bottle and giggled like crazy as each kid would end up with a creamy moustache. Once a summer, as a group we would line up in front of the Kindergarten to Third Grade building with its tall, narrow windows frowning down upon us, like devils eyes, as we clustered, for the class photos. Mr Martin, the lower primary teacher would stand at attention to one side. He was a fastidiously tidy man; his hair slicked back with tonic and he was slightly bald at the temples. He had a stocky build and was a little scary, but I am sure he loved us all in his own way. There I stood, the curly haired, blue-eyed, daydreaming boy. To either side of me stood the other large kids like the Hanson twins and further off to the left and to the right, the size of the boys grew less, as was the way it seems with 60s group photos. In front of the boys were the girls. The back row was standing, the front row sitting, primly, with skirts delicately arrayed, shiny black shoes, white socks, smiling, some demurely and some, just grinning.
I often wonder what became of Barbara J who I was madly in love with at the time and I have thought as much about the very English Mary M. Perhaps Mary and I were soul mates from those early years.
It was on one of those marvellous Christmas days long ago, when Great Grandma, Grandma and my mother spent all morning preparing an enormous baked Christmas dinner, complete with bread pudding and other assortments, when I received my Christmas present; a world atlas. It was to be my constant companion and I carried the dog-eared book with me to school and showed it off in Social Studies classes. The pages that displayed the continents and island nations sported a grid of lines, drawn like those on a sea navigation chart. These lines were of course the result of my own hand whilst daydreaming of imaginary voyages along uncharted coastlines. I regaled my travel intentions to classmates about the countries I would visit; these dreams, stories and plans, were the beginnings, I am afraid, of that curse, that is most aptly described by the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and Thesaurus as a: strong longing for or impulse towards wandering- WANDERLUST
Travel, I am sure is the best medicine. Travel wets the appetite for an endless amount of different things to see and do. Travel opens up a continuous variety of opportunities to the point where one tends to get quite blasé about it all. Travel, along with the passing of time, opens up your mind to other opinions and allows the reactionary ways of ones past to be swept away without too much pain and humiliation. In my travels, I was opportune to meet some rich folks, Australian, Thai, Arab, Chinese, Japanese, America, English and more, but it seemed that the life of the rich is far too restricted by their social obligations. There are some, who take full advantage of their prosperity and do some good in the world, and I take my hat off to them. Most of the folks I met are poor, struggling from day to day just to survive.
The majorities were Asian, from Kupang to Kuala Lumpur, Gili Air to Gujarat, and Singapore to Shanghai. Among appalling poverty, I experienced generosity. In desperate hopelessness, I experienced strong family values and in a world that is full of hate and bitterness, I found people with generous hearts. Unfortunately, there are just as many, if not more shameless fiends with no love or empathy for their fellow man and if there is a hell, I do hope not to be burning alongside them. Living and working alongside the poorer folks has taught me some valuable lessons in this journey of life- respect, family values, and selflessness. I am not a rich man, nor do I think I shall ever be, but I have been exceedingly fortunate. I still lead an eventful life, and I am happy to have gained the respect and admiration of the poor but honest folks with whom I have lived and worked in my travels. I am more than pleased with that. Perish in the thought of what type of person I would be had I not sailed away from Australian shores. I am happy in the knowledge that I have the wanderlust, which to this day remains a driving force within me and provides me with the tenacity to take on any situation with no fear. Along the way, I have managed to make a few enemies, and a handful of true friends, and I have a few stories to tell.
Chapter 2
Incredible Journey
One Sunday morning way back in 91, I awoke early with an intense feeling of unease that I just could not explain, like there was a power guiding me along, as if in a dream. On most mornings, I would be up at first light enjoying a cup of coffee on my veranda facing the ocean and watching the birds scurrying among the branches of the paper bark trees, that stand tall and wide among the coconut trees scattered along the shoreline. On this particular day, I just went downstairs, got in my car, and drove off.
There was no traffic as I pulled my old Ford wagon onto the Bruce Highway and passed the infamous Leap Hotel, where I occasionally enjoyed a beer or two on the wooden veranda in the shade of the giant mango trees. Besides the weatherboard pub, there is an oversized statue of an Aboriginal woman holding her baby. The story goes that, a long time ago, this poor woman with her baby jumped to their deaths from a nearby cliff rather than be captured by the troopers; hence, they called the area, The Leap.
I liked driving my old Ford wagon and enjoyed the early morning drive past the all too familiar landmarks, sugar mills, endless cane fields, and little settlements of red roofed houses surrounded by mango trees. Off to the side of the houses were the lofty corrugated roofed sheds that housed the machines that harvested the sugar cane. I automatically slowed down at the 80 Km sign on the approaches to the town proper. I was just going with the flow and let the invisible hand guide me through the quiet streets of Mackay and eventually hit the road that led to the Harbour; the deserted four lanes heading east into the rising sun gave me cause to lower the visor. To my left and right, the tall palm trees swayed to the slight South East trades, and that sweet, salty aroma of rotting seaweed drifted along with me until eventually I could see the waves surging up against the harbour wall where a couple of fellows were fishing with long fishing rods. I turned left and cruised slowly past the slipways and shipwrights sheds that lay idle at this early hour These sheds had always seemed a mysterious place to me. I had never gone there, however I did later, dragging yacht parts from the loft of a disgruntled shipwright. Perhaps he thought he had better give up the things that I demanded rather than argue with this tattooed biker with determination in his eyes.
I parked my car and walked towards the open gateway of a boatyard; the south Easter was picking up and, I knew, was promising 35 knots by noon. The sound of the waves was muffled; a soft distant booming and the salt air assaulted my nostrils, whilst the invisible hand guided me along. I ventured into the yard and walked straight up to a small yacht lying on her side, abandoned and deserted.
She was fibreglass and seemed sound enough; she had no mast, rigging, no fittings; she was free of any furnishings and indeed was just a shell, but I knew in my heart that I had to have her.
From fervent inquiries, I soon learned that the little yacht belonged to a biker whom I knew well; this was a little surprise to me as I could not imagine what an ex-Hells Angel would want with a small sailing yacht. I went to see Rocko; he was the manager of a drug rehabilitation centre. His appearance was, as one would expect an outlaw biker to be, with greased black hair, moustache, pockmarked face, short but solid build and wearing the leather, biker, cut-off jacket. The buildings were a mess; there was lots of trash and a poor folks stink about the place. When peering through a dirty window, I half expected to see junkies loitering.
Hey Rocko, whats the go with this little yacht; I hear you own
? I inquired. He answered with that Clark Gable smile and told me that, sure enough, he owned the yacht and he went on to enlighten me about its colourful history. After he was through with his barely believable story, he agreed to let me have the little yacht for what he owed the boatyard. The next day, I paid the boatyard $1,800, hired a flatbed truck and, with my little ship secured to my liking, I followed the truck along the highway. The convoy arrived at my house after negotiating the narrow streets and overhanging tree branches, much to the amusement of my friends and neighbours. It drew quite a crowd that day; I hired a crane to lift it off the flatbed and onto my front lawn. The local residents came to watch, but kept their distance, and they amused me with their small talk as I set up the supports that I had hastily built the previous day. The excitement grew inside me as I worked quickly; the neighbours were a little afraid to come too close to this crazy person fussing around his latest project. I was happy, yes happier than I had ever been. I had tapped onto some unknown energy source that drove me on until I finally launched her, one year later. The southeast trade winds eased, as they do in the evenings; the sea was a darkening deep blue as the first stars twinkled between the dark tree shapes and I sat there in the front yard, with a beer in my hand, just looking at my little craft. The nights were too long; I would be up with the first rays of light and, with coffee in hand, go downstairs to my garage and get stuck into the work. I had no plan, no drawings. I was just guided by a mysterious force that just filled me with a sense of calm confidence. Never once did I doubt my ability to complete this boat. It was as if I had been a boat builder in another life; I was being driven by an unknown force. I did not challenge this, nor did I try to analyse it. I just went with the motion and followed my dream. After all, it was my long-time desire to build a yacht, and navigate the world.
I was extremely happy to learn from that first meeting with my old friend El Rocko that the little yacht was at one time complete, however the parts were scattered all over the city; including the drug rehab centre. With his reluctant cooperation, I managed to salvage the rigging and some sails that I am sure were in this den of inequity for many years. I went searching for the rest of the parts and found about half of what I should have; the rudder, I located in the Shipwrights loft I mentioned earlier. Many parts were missing, presumed stolen, or just lost in time, but I had the basics.
Some years prior, I attempted to restore an old Hereshoff yacht, Huon Pine on Kwela wood frames, flush decked, a dreamy sheer and the famous Hereshoff transom, nicely put together she was. Economic circumstances at the time put an end to the project and so I decided to dismantle the vessel of all that was useable. The hull finally came to rest in a childrens playground; just the thing to inspire some budding pirates from the regions youth, eh? I salvaged the engine, portholes, bronze deck fittings and boxes of parts that I stored at a friends farm near Brisbane. It was an exciting day when I returned to Ball Bay with the Ford and my monster trailer, full of the parts and the mast on the roof racks, all destined to be useful once again.
There was, at that time, quite a colourful cast of characters who made up the inhabitants of this quiet, little seaside village- an odd mix of former cane farmers, fisher-men, drug dealers, coal miners, single mothers, and former armed forces people. In fact, there was only one retired military man, he looked like someone from a Paul Hogan movie and his wife was a skinny version of Lucile Ball. She kept a low profile and was a soft-spoken woman with impeccable manners. Proper old-fashioned retired Australians they were. They both smoked Rothmans and, I am sure, enjoyed too many gin tonics for sundowners. They had a sprawling, low fibro place on a hill overlooking the sea and the driveway was shaded by paper bark trees. Someone had graciously volunteered my services to improve that driveway. At the time, I had at my disposal some earthmoving equipment. I had volunteered to take care of the machinery over the Christmas holidays and the machines were all parked in my front yard. One was a small excavator with a dozer blade, quite useful and suitable for forming up the road. My mate Mick, who was always on the lookout for a bit of enterprise, arranged a couple of trucks to haul some gravel from a nearby Council Quarry. He did not provide the holidaying council staff any form of payment, but of course, he charged the ex-army hand a packet, seeing as how it is the Christmas holidays, and things are expensive at this time, etc
. My old mate Mick explained. Hed got the nod from a local cane cocky (cane farmer) to drive the truckloads of gravel through his property and, for payment, we patched up some of his farm roads. Two houses to my left lived a retired, cane farmer couple, in their 70s but looking fit and well. On some days, they would haul their aluminium, centre console, fishing boat past my place on the way to the beach using an old farm tractor and my dog would always fly out and bark at them. Oh shush China
, the woman would say to my dog whilst looking quite charming with her scarf over her broad hat and, standing on the platform behind the tractor seat, they both looked dead serious about the whole affair. There was talk that the government, in its infinite wisdom was planning legislation to prohibit the use of these old tractors on the beach. It was, of course, an absurd piece of bureaucratic bullshit as the practice of launching ones fishing boat from the beach in this fashion was, at the time, necessary due to the distance one had to tow your boat at low tide. So my neighbours seemed to be making a statement as they seriously tractored by; I wonder what they thought of their wild neighbour, who lived on the corner of their grassy street and who now had a yacht, in his front yard? They did not say much to me about it, but they were friendly and courteous and I had the pleasure of an invitation to join them for Christmas Eve drinks on the lawns behind their two-storey beach house. Across the way, to my right, lived an old digger who had served time in Korea. He had an enlarged heart, thrombosis and had a lovely wife who cared so much for him. They would invite me into their house for tea and I would marvel at the out-dated furniture and her kitchen, cluttered with everything that I remember from when I was a boy at my grandmas house. Their house was a redbrick, English design, and the old gent, like all old, Aussies, had a shed out back where he tinkered with this and that. Like most places in this village, their house had no fence and neighbours would just walk through their yard as a short cut to wherever they were going. It was that kind of place; everyone knew each other and they were tolerant of each other. It was normal for someone to wander into their neighbours‟ shed to look for something that they might need, regardless of whether the owner was home or not. They did, indeed, take what they wanted and return or replace it later and there were never any quarrels. At times, the old digger would proudly display some project or device and he offered to help with the little yacht.
At the southern end of the village was another street of grass shaded by huge trees with low branches. On this quiet, grassy street lived an old fisherman and his Torres Straits Islander wife. He looked like an old prize-fighter with huge shoulders and a broken nose; from the look of his bulk, I could see that he would have been a dangerous adversary in his day. He was softly spoken, good hearted and hands as large as I had ever seen. He had a heart of gold and although he was poor, he had a generous nature and cold beer in an old fridge strategically placed on the front veranda. I loved his wife. She was a large woman and her skin was really black. She had gollywog hair, a big smile and a generous heart. I would laze away some tropical evenings, lazing around and chatting on the broken wooden floorboards of their veranda under those big trees, drinking beer, and just feeling that this is how life should be.
I had it in my mind that I wanted to sail the small yacht to Darwin. I mentioned this to my old fisherman friend and his wife and soon my intentions became the gossip topic throughout the village. I would often wonder where this suggestion came from; it was not as if I sat down and weighed up the pros and cons or anything of the like. A decision made somewhere in the realms of fate, or maybe I might have just thought it a decent enough story. Who knows?
Perhaps it was just chance that pushed me, accompanied by my girlfriend and baby daughter, towards Ball Bay six months prior to all these events. We turned up in this lovely place after deciding to escape that scar on the arid semi desert of Western Queensland, called Mt. Isa. I spent a year working there as an earthworks supervisor for a construction company. Mt. Isa is a rough and tumble mining town, more times than not I used my fists to sort out work-related problems. The company decided to cancel my contract prematurely after I punched the workshop superintendent in the face- the stress levels at this time were excessive. We packed up the Ford wagon, hooked up the trailer and headed along that long, narrow strip of bitumen back to the coast. I later joked with my friends the best thing out of Mt. Isa is the road to Townsville. We stayed with my good mate, Mick for a while until a place for us to live was available. However, after a short time, my woman decided that she had had enough of me and left; the relationship had taken a turn for the worse. I was a dreadful father, too selfish and always dreaming of things I wanted to do like sailing around the world. The experience left me with an empty feeling that affected me more than I realized, but one does not die; one just carries on regardless. I needed a project, and I needed to get my girlfriend out of my head. I packed up all her remaining possessions in a box and called a freight company to come and take it. Of course, it did not work and I still felt empty for a long time. I wrote letters to her and asked her to come home, I called her and asked her to come home but, deep down inside, I knew I did not want her to return. Thinking back, I am sure she was aware of my true intentions, I needed my freedom to do what I wanted and now that the hand of fate had me firmly by the heartstrings, there was no turning back.
I was alive again and the creative juices started flowing. I wrote poetry on my front porch whilst sipping my morning coffee, inspired by the beauty of this place and of course, by the task I had undertaken. There was a time when I dreamed of staying here in this beach paradise forever but, in the back of my mind, I knew my restlessness would take me away from this place one day.
Not long after my woman and daughter left, I received a letter from a newly formed government department called The Child Support Agency. They were demanding that I pay them more than $3000 along with a percentage of my salary for the next eighteen years and were threatening all sorts of action if I did not comply. If I had a gun that day and within the range of anyone from this new department, there would have been blood on the street; this feeling has not left me to this day. I realized from that day on, I would become a fugitive and would eventually leave my country. For me, it was the last straw. My ex-girlfriend agreed with me and did not like this bureaucratic interference in her life any more than I did and she did not want me to have to pay maintenance at all. We contacted a politician in Western Australia who was against this new organization and whose office assisted people to fight them. He arranged so-called End Forms for us to fill out and we submitted these to this abominable department. Their reply was Sorry, you will pay
. I wanted to fight them. I thought that surely I would not be the only person against this unflinching new department and, of course, I was right. I soon found a lobby group called Lone Fathers or something to that effect but, after a while, I was far from impressed with this lot of losers. Instead of focusing on putting a stop to this bullshit altogether, they wasted time discussing petty aspects of the legislation. It did not take long at all for me to realize that their cause was lost and I was on my own.
I pressed forward with the boat, set up a wood shop downstairs and proceeded to build the interior. I had heaps of Mackay cedar wood, the interior was taking shape rapidly and it looked fantastic. I lined the outer cabin sides with the cedar and installed the bronze portholes; I built the aft cockpit hatch, companionway-sliding hatch and forward hatch from the cedar and they all looked great with a few coats of carefully applied varnish. I have never felt such a sense of achievement in my life and, at the end of each day I would sit there with a beer in my hand and look at what I had done. It felt very good.
I would occasionally leave the little boat standing in her cradle in the front yard, lock the house and go off working construction; I needed to pick up the funds.
My best mate Mick became confused; he could see strange, changes in his Gypsie mate and was more than a little worried. Used to be a time when I would come to your place
Mick said on more than one occasion, and there would be old Triumphs and Harleys in pieces, now it is all wood
. He was right of course; I was going through a life shift and had changed from a wild partying biker to a strange but still violent person who wrote poetry in the mornings and was building a boat in his front yard.
Mick worked with a pipeline company that was busy connecting water to the houses of the beach communities along the coast; he started pestering me to come and drive a small excavator for the company, but I just wanted to build my boat.
One day he turned up with the boss of this outfit. They both climbed the ladder at the transom and sat themselves in my newly constructed cockpit. Then, to my horror, my old mate Mick fired up a joint, so I had no choice but to stop the work I was doing below and join them. So there we were, sitting in the cockpit, passing a joint around whilst Mick told his boss that I was going to work for them and so sure enough I found myself operating a small excavator, digging up the yards of the neighbours houses. We had a motley crew and we had some terrific times, drank a lot of beer, but I kept up with the boat. The people would come around on the weekend and sit around drinking beer while I worked. Micks little son Jack was always playing with my tools. He loved to play with my planer machine; he would stick a few bits of wood into it and make planning noises. Neeeeoooooowww
he would go; I had to make sure the thing was unplugged, a bit of a worry, but looking back it was a splendid time indeed. Like most boat construction jobs, the progress is not too visible to ordinary folks until the last few weeks. This stage of the build is a tremendously exciting time when one can bolt on all the shiny bits. I finally painted the hull, painted the decks with non-skid, and installed the engine, stanchions, pulpit, push pit (lifelines) and all the deck hardware. I would sit there at days end and just look at this project, revelling in what I had achieved and I am sure many folks around that small coastal village were doing the same. It was getting close to launching time, so I arranged a trailer to take my vessel to the water; I advertised free beer and a barbeque for all helpers. Christ, one young fellow turned up at eight in the morning, still drunk from the night before and wanting more beer; I whacked him in the mouth and told him to fuck off until later.
Eventually, they all arrived, my biker friends and the local hillbillies and what a motley crew they were. At the end of the day, they managed to drink every bit of alcohol in my place, ate all the food, left an absolute mess, and blew up my stereo. We dug the trailer into the ground and winched the newly painted yacht onto it with a Come-along (endless chain block). Then we hooked up a borrowed tractor and towed the whole shebang down to the large grassy area next to the beach where I spent the next week stepping the mast, installing the jib furler, anchor and chain and a multitude of other tasks. I worked tirelessly well into each night. I knew, deep down, that this latest achievement was the biggest ever in my life.
I towed the rigged yacht on the trailer out to the low tide watermark, unhooked the trailer, returned the front-end loader to the shore and waited for the flood. The excitement boiled inside me as I watched her float; I started the engine and was amazed to see the water exhaust actually working. I motored away from the sunken trailer and headed out to deeper water, put up the mainsail, unfurled the jib and turned off the engine. I put the helm over, and she was soon bubbling along as I brought her hard up into the light south Easter. My actions were automatic, handling the sheets and tiller as I checked out the slight luff of the mainsail that told me my shiny new yacht was sailing as high into the wind as she would go. I glanced around at my little yacht and the feeling of achievement, the exhilaration, and the sheer joy of the experience was incredible. I did this; I built this; it works!
, I said to myself over and over again as I tacked out to sea to clear the point, before easing the main and jib sheets to run downwind towards Seaforth Creek where a mooring lay waiting. I saw a few people watching from the point and I was a proud man indeed, very proud.
Before finally sailing away forever, I packed up all my tools into my trailer, hooked it up to my car and left the lot on a farm for safekeeping. Meanwhile, things had deteriorated with my friend Mick; he had his own problems and so I saw less of him. I gave my dog to some folks to keep, let the house go, rowed my dinghy out to my little yacht with my stores, slipped the mooring and got underway.
I was cruising; yes, I was cruising. I was sailing my own yacht, now low in the water with my own stores, independent of the land and I was a happy boy. I sat on the push pit seat, guitar in hand, foot on the tiller and played and sang with tears in my eyes, while my little sloop danced along on her maiden voyage towards those islands that had been out of my reach for so long.
Just on dusk I anchored in a small bay and the air was thick with thousands of butterflies; I launched the dinghy and rowed ashore to my first landfall. The emotion inside me, the happiness, the joy, was indescribable. Later that night, after sipping on some wine and admiring the scene from my cockpit, I went below to cook myself a meal on my little meth stove, in my little galley, whilst looking out at the light shining on the water from the starboard porthole. I was a sailor, self-sufficient and free.
Little did I realise at that most prominent time in my life I was by no means prepared for this lifestyle, not mentally at least? Deep down, I was a terribly lonely man. I should have kept my old dog and brought him along as a sailing companion. Perhaps if I did, I would not have fallen into a future turn of events that provided both adventure and tragedy, but is this not what life is about? Life is what happens when the plan does not work, I have heard it said.
I launched my yacht during the cyclone season in February ‟92, and sure enough there was a big blow heading down the coast. I decided to hide away in a protected waterway between two islands close to the coast, not far from the place I had toiled to build my beautiful little sloop that would carry me on to bigger things. I had been to this island many times before with my small catamarans and was happy to know that there was a bar ashore.
I whiled away the days catching baitfish with my cast net and also spent a lot of time
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