sittononthebeach.com

We made it back to White Cay this evening and Rusty immediately got in the water and continued to get Louisiana Bayou off of SYL. We will back off the beach and drop anchor behind one of the island until tomorrow. We will work our way to Nassau because our water pump on SYL that supplies the water to the kitchen and bathroom needs to be replaced. Rusty of course has it fixed temporarily but we will need to go to Nassau to get a new one.

Rusty thoughts:

We had a nice skip thru the skinny water today behind (on the west side of) the Berry Islands. There are miles and miles of sand flats measuring from 5 ft deep to zero (most places are less than 3 ft deep) the charts show a possible shallow draft route that we followed to the letter today. Even being exactly on the charted route, we still touched bottom twice. It was fun.
SYL’s keels are 3′ – 1″ below the surface of the water. Most sailboats are much deeper. It was fun today travelling where very few cruisers can even go.
We are anchored for the night in 9 ft of water, at the exit from the shallow passage in the central Berry Islands. Our plans are like the ocean waves… tomorrow well decide what we feel like doing.
I beached SYL this evening and cleaned much of the bottom. I still have 20 percent left to do, but I got a lot done in the chilly water. A clean hull makes for faster / more economical travel so it’s an important maintenance item. I suspect I gained an extra mile for every 8 travelled by removing the light marine growth from the bottom today.
There are lots of boats anchored here this evening. I can see 3 power boats and 4 other sailboats from where I sit. Sea Yawl Later…. out

The crossing took us about 12 hours to get to the Great Bahama Banks which is about 100 miles of relatively shallow water that is absolutely beautiful. It is the aqua color I first think of when I think of the Bahamas. We had left at about 4:30am but we were not particularly tired. We decided to just motor sail until we were tired then we would just drop anchor. It was so peaceful and uneventful I told Rusty to get some sleep and I would watch radar, etc and just go until we didn’t want to go any more. Next thing we know we are seeing the Berry Islands. White Cay is the island Rusty and I spent our Honeymoon on so it is special to us. We dropped anchor for the first time literally on the beach at White Cay. We both jumped in, well I didn’t exactly “jump” but I did get into the water. One of my major concerns was getting down the front ladder……no problem…..One hurdle overcome. The water was a little on the chilly side, BRRRRRR, and it was a little surge but we played around a little. Ultimately it was decided to find another less lively anchorage for the night. It was 36 hours from Florida to White Cay. As Rusty put on FB White Cay has suffered with age. The barrier island that blocked the deep Atlantic Ocean surge has eroded to the point she is not quite as cozy as she was 20 years ago. We have been back since, but hurricanes and time has taken their toll.

We spent the night at the next Cay over, Huffman. We knew a blow was coming so we decided to go to Great Harbour, get checked in and take a slip for the night. The night turned into 3 days. I got all our laundry caught up, had Pizza, visited with folks and headed back to White Cay today!

It’s time to leave the US…

The weather and the stars have aligned to create a nice 3 day window of useable winds in the right direction and intensity. The sweet combination should provide a fun comfortable passage.

Our first day (early in the morning) we and several other boats staged here in Angelfish Creek will strike out for the 50 mile transit to the first Bahama islands. For the next 80 miles we cross the great Bahama banks. The banks provide a beautiful 10 to 20 ft deep sandy bottom to watch. You can count the starfish as you skim over the baby blue water… tomorrow!

The length of the gulfstream and banks crossing together usually mean a long 24 hour nonstop run, but as calm as it will be tomorrow night we will probably anchor in the middle of nowhere and sleep after 14 to 16 hours. When we wake up we will finish the run to the Southern Berry Islands 45 miles from Nassau.

Our Sunday-Monday run will probably end at Chubb Cay because there is a weather system coming down Tuesday night. IF winds are very light Tuesday morning we might make for Nassau… but prolly not.

Two of our fellow Seawind owners are going to meet us after the crossing. “Morning Glory” based in Stuart Florida is piloted by a lovely couple Ted and Mili. We met them years ago. They have the exact same boat as us. We look forward to being in their presence. Such a sweet couple.

Sv “Kailani” will make the rendezvous as well. Mike and Laurie from Aransas Pass, Texas just took delivery of their brand new Seawind 1160 (a much bigger brother to our boat) in Miami. They will join us on Kailani’s maiden voyage! I can’t wait to drool over all that brand new fiberglass.

Linda and I are sharing a celebratory bottle of wine as the sun gets low here in the upper keys. Sea Yawl Later is in fine form. Fully sorted out and ready for the journey. Ted is bringing us some last minute items and parts we needed after the shakedown run to Florida. His boat will be full of my stuff and his… until he catches up with us.

We look forward to posting some great pictures in the next few months. Stand by!

SYL!!

After two days of travel on SYL Linda insisted on buying new engines. I was having carburetor issues on the port engine. It was stressful but I would have solved it without it becoming a wallet issue, but I didnt get that chance. I had to agree buying new before a big trip makes more sense than buying new after we are done to sell the boat.

As you know if you have been following, we just spent a large sum of money to renovate our house, it was beautiful and perfect — when we sold it. We never enjoyed the fruits of that labor and expense so I agreed with Linda to not do that on the boat. We will cruise for a large portion of the next 3 years on SYL so spendimg that money now to lower the stress level, especially related to propulsion was a no brainer.

We are currently docked next to Shaggys bar / restaurant Pass Christian Mississippi.

I’m sitting here on SYL drinking my coffee in the morning fog…. not me, it’s actually foggy outside on our last day of provisioning / sail prep as we leave for the Bahamas tomorrow (when the morning fog lifts) My senses are actually on a keen edge I have things on land that must be done today!

We are selling out… home – cars etc. That’s big when you do it at our age. All I can say us my wife is unique. This grand adventure was her idea. We have cruised before but not without a substantial land based presence.

Yesterday evening (Sunday March 10. 2019) we made a small test sail to check systems and see how the zinghy rides. All went well but windless conditions on a calm river wasn’t much of a test. Tomorrow we make our first full day of sailing in years. Linda and I will motorsail into moderate winds tomorrow to a staging point beyond Lake Pontchartrain. Rabbit island sits at the mouth of the Riggolets, roughly 40 miles away. There we will prepare for our first big water day as we venture out into the Mississippi sound.

Weather determines everything to a cruiser. A strong frontal passage will cross our path at the end of the week. The sail plan is to be in Destin Florida tucked away nicely inside the harbor for the event. Our weather app “Windy” is representing the best departure weather we have seen since we started making this Easterly trek in 2009.

Time to get up and get busy… coffee is cold, time to roll!

SYL!! Rusty

OK…. so lots to say here!

Linda decided she wanted to go sailing again so we started getting SYL ready for a 2019 Bahama trip. At about the halfway mark on SYLs refit Linda had another thought…. let’s sell out this time! So…. we stopped working on the boat and began house renovations. (That was 2 months ago) We did everything to the house. We added a 4 ft x 7ft shower, new granite, completely painted it inside and out, poured 50 yards of new concrete and a boat ramp, made a big RV pad with 50 amp service in 2 locations etc etc… I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel on that project so I’m back on boat projects… The fun stuff!

Now that we officially moved to the boat, it’s easier to knock out the final refit work.

So far we added a new charger, solar panels, batteries, bow sprit for the 500 sq ft headsail, a roller furler, a nice new bigger inverter, all new 12 volt wiring on the charging side, new sheets for all the headsails, we refurbished the sail bag/lazy jacks, had the main and jib freshened up, now I’m in cleaning mode.

Today I pressure washer 1/2 the boat in the rain, she’s looking spiffy. It’s amazing how bright white she is after a good 4000 psi bath. After that comes a full wax job, then I’ll be smiling! Linda has the inside nice already. After adding a fresh new 3″ Temperpedic bed topper, we have slept onboard 3 nights. Fuel and provisions are topped off so it’s pretty well up to me to finish the pre sail list. Our target is to leave New Orleans by March 13th.

The house should be ready for sale just before we leave. Cross youre fingers, SYL is about to sail again!

Rusty and Linda 2019

Well, I’m on the Bayou but definitely not in Louisiana.

After my Diamond Green Diesel job finished, a good friend wanted me come to Texas and do a job with him.  This chemical plant makes chicken feed and the base ingredient for carpet (AcryloNitrile)   It doesn’t smell as bad as a crude oil refinery but the chicken feed is made with arsenic, and carpet fibers are made with cyanide so you better hope you don’t smell it.  Like the Democrats; they come up with wonderful sounding names for poisonous adventures.  This plant is on Chocolate Bayou!  doesn’t that sound yummy!  I didn’t start this post as a rant, but I feel one coming on so buckle up, or check out… your choice.

Planned Parenthood:  Sounds like a good thing right?  Doesn’t Planned Genocide more accurately describe it?  If you ever want to know what Liberals are guilty of, just take note of what they currently blame others for.  Brett Cavanaugh “bless his heart” is a saint compared to those slimy Senators, but somehow half of our senators can’t stomach Brett Cavanaugh!  Moral outrage…. feigned integrity… the very stuff of American politicians makes me sick.  Trey Gowdy said it best:  The reason he’s leaving congress is there are no laws or procedures to follow during congressional proceedings, it’s all about the win!  In congress the truth is always debatable, evidence is inconsequential, resume’s and personal “heritage” are fabricated, all activity is 100% aimed at gaining more power…… period at anyone’s expense, especially the “enemy” those pesky fact driven Republicans.  HOW, on earth can congress (our law makers) not respect the basic tenant of Innocent until proven guilty?  I submit that the Cavanaugh hearings are showing America what vultures these people really are.  Sitting up there all in a row ready to pounce on any carcass that looks tasty.  Congress doesn’t have to live like the rest of us deplorables.  They count themselves above the law, heck even above simple facts!  Laws and reality mean nothing to those political animals that rip and tear at each other… or anybody else for power….. Do you as an American give them that privilege or do they just take it?

I have never voted straight party because I am discerning, I look at both sides.  I consider the opinions of those I don’t agree with first, over my own.  I give them merit, then work through the facts to prove or disprove my own beliefs.  Fact finders like me seem to be rare, especially in Washington but I do see a few of them on the Republican side.  I fear most American voters pay just enough attention to politics to be 1″ deep and a mile wide.   What I mean by that is, they believe the junk politicians and fake news puts out without research, and form a nuclear defended mile wide belief that is only 1″ deep…..  Sounds reasonable, except that you can’t….. you can’t trust these lawyers that made it to Washington, so now finally they can live above the law!  Lawyers and movie stars Lie for a living, it’s their job.  Don’t put your faith in any of them, listen to both sides and form your own opinions.  Rule of thumb….. if the media says it, be very suspect… its their job is to sell newspapers, not to tell the truth.  Social media has proven to the major news agencies that America no longer cares about truth, we only care if it stirs emotion enough to get a “hit” …click bait for TV…  Newspaper owners have always thirsted for power, now they can make news up like we do on Facebook!  cool huh?  They spread their agendas with smooth creamy “lawyer facts” or feigned outrage in order to assemble the greatest sheepdom available.  Like vultures on the fence.. feeding on the deplorables.

I told you I was going off the deep end….. the older I get the more opinionated I am I guess.  If there was ever a single lever to pull, I think the proof is right there on TV.  Look at these heartless bottom feeders that play God’s very angels, and make up your own mind.  Cory Booker, where is his contingent, Maxine Waters, how can we hit that delete button, Feinstein… nope.  Pelosi big nope!  All agenda driven lawer-slick vultures that care nothing about you and me.

Chocolate Bayou!  Two more weeks and I’m off!  These 100 hour weeks are productive but Linda and I look forward to some “me time” at least for the next year.  Not sorry about the rant… 🙂  I always try to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem so I don’t apologize about actually making people think.  The silent majority is America.. not these guys…..

Sea Yawl Later !!  Rusty

Excitedly bobbing toward that first sandy beach of the trip in your dinghy…. super excited as you leave the mother ship for the first time (this trip) to walk the “remote beaches of the world”…  You can see it with your own eyeballs!  That special place you dreamed of, where it’s easy to imagine being the first human to ever set foot on this particular patch of sand!  The anticipation of pure unspoiled remoteness is tweaking your senses.  Your mind is thick with anticipation and the achievement of it all… and then it comes to you “This is why we spend Hundreds of thousands of dollars on a boat, and put up with wind and waves, the boat brokers and the nay-saying relatives.. all of it to get RIGHT here…. and it’s about to pay off!  We are here!

After years of beachcombing, after exploring wildly remote sandy shores from our Seawind catamaran SYL, I have found one absolute certainty.  You WILL find shoes.  There are always shoes, the more remote the beach…. the more shoes you find scattered along the high wash line.  Now, I’m not talking about the simple “out of the way” beach here… I’m talking ocean side / rugged remote shores of uninhabited islands.  A place where you can easily imagine stumbling across shipwreck remains and cannon balls half buried in the sand…. that illusive “message in a bottle”…. or glittering ghost ship gold strewn out in the rippling sand….  The beaches even the majority of cruisers don’t go to…  Why are there are always shoes!?!

I’m not sharing this shoe story to throw cold water on the perfect dream… far from it!  Seeing a half buried shoe next to an amazing artifact that has spent hundreds of years bobbing on the open ocean, then untold years baking in the sun doesn’t degrade the euphoria one little bit for a hard core beach comber, it’s just puzzling to me… but why shoes?

I cultivated that “walking the beaches of the world” dream with several good friends of mine (you know who you are) and it kinda stuck.  Fortunately I married a wonderful woman that had the same dream later in life when we could afford it, and we made it happen.  When our last kid graduated college, we left on an extended cruise that very week!  For several years we enjoyed the lee side – picture post card beaches that everyone else (that has a blue water capable boat) enjoys.  But after 15 years of so of lazy beachcombing… I had a desire to find the remotest of the remote, especially when my son Jono was on the boat.  We didn’t just “walk on the beach” we worked hard at finding the hard ones.  I always heard the more effort you put into something, the better the reward.  Linda and I found bliss pulling up to and enjoying beautiful the beaches on the easy side of the island, but Jono and I went on the wild side, the ocean side, where most never dream of going.  We did what I call “Man Stuff” both efforts, front side and back side beaches have their unique reward.  But the “wild side” of beachcombing is where you find the cool stuff .  

Have you ever taken a big cruise ship and paid extra for the “excursion” where they take you off the ship that has 1500 tourists on it and go to a neat place with only 100 or so other people?  Yea what we did is like that except where we went the only people you met had their own boat.  A self guided “excursion” every day that lasted for 6 months.  The food wasn’t as plentiful on our little catamaran… but the word “excursion” truly isn’t the right word to use, it was living a life apart from all that luxury and the “herds”.

Few have ever felt the placid calm of a beach so remote that it even becomes a little scary.  By scary I mean so disconnected from humanity it challenges your previous mental paradigm of living on a populated planet.  I have felt that excitement several times.  I am sure with all my adventures, I have put my foot where no other human has ever tread… on purpose.

Shoes:  I can easily imagine flip flops blowing off the deck of a cruise ship, I’ve even found ping pong balls with cruise liner logos on them, so I get that scenario… wind blown lost articles will wash up from the open ocean and some of them off big ships.  But most of the shoes I saw are full leather, or tennis shoes.  It’s a mystery to me but I guarantee you every Bahamas beach combing cruiser knows that what I’m saying is true.

I’d love to know why there are always.. shoes …..   Rusty & Linda    sv “Sea Yawl Later !!”

My past two posts represent only a factual summary of recent life events.  Sometimes when things come at you quickly… facts are all you can share.  The further you get from the situation, the easier it becomes to share the emotions of it.  I’d like to take a moment to add some color commentary if you will….  do some word painting in an effort to provide a better feel for what really took place.  As Paul Harvey would call it “the rest… of the story”.

I have a tale to tell about my personal life experiences during hurricane Maria’s attack on Puerto Rico.  This story is what most would call “A God Thing”.  I’ll let you be the judge.

My nerves were still a wreck, I was outside of my own skin worrying about my son who was going through hell and I couldn’t help.  Hurricane Maria had just hit Puerto Rico in full force… and my boy was at ground zero on his 33 foot sailboat.  He was prepared wonderfully, but mother nature decidedly won the battle and wrecked his whole world.  Winds blew over 180 miles per hour across the water… and lasted through the night for 12 straight hours.  I have seen video from his phone and heard his recorded logs during the worst of it.  The word spectacular comes to mind, but not in a good way.  He witnessed a spectacle of destruction that had his father worried silent… beyond words.

Jono wisely took refuge ashore in a two story cinder block building.  He and his cat “Fishbait” spent 12 hours with a local man named Pepe’ watching the door of his refuge bulging in and out… their clothes pulsing against and away from their bodies with the abrupt changes in air pressure.  It was like being inside a drum, but in this case the drum was solid brick.  His small dinghy was lifted by the water making circles in the wind outside the window (it was on dry land before the storm) nothing to do now but watch, as it eventually ruined itself thrashing against a metal fence and sunk.

“Miss Adventure” Jono’s boat had three large anchors set hard to the bottom.  The rain obstructed his view as she slowly… eventually.. lost her battle to the onslaught of 180 MPH wind driven waves.  It wasn’t until the next day that Jono knew the fate of MA.  He found her careened into the mangroves on the East end of the bay.  What the wind left, looters quickly stripped from her bones.  Alone now without a home, sacred dirty and tired Jono spent the next few days trading his labor to help the marina owner recover from the storm, in trade for a place to stay.  We had no direct contact but knew Miss Adventure was lost.  I could only imagine what my boy was going through and as it turned out I was spot on with my fears.

During the day Jono worked on the docks with 2 new friends as he traded labor for shelter.  They slept in 3 to 4 hour shifts, one always standing guard outside with a flashlight and machete warning off looters.  I can’t imagine what it was like crouched down in a swarm of mosquitoes, always mosquitoes waiting for daylight to break.  Day after day a strong sailors fortitude was whittled away piece by piece.  Ingeniously Jono rigged the solar panels he removed before the storm to some old batteries to charge his and others cell phones, hoping one day soon service would return.  Food and water were scarce, Jono made trips to his disabled boat and ferried fresh water from her tanks back to land.  When I finally heard every third word of his voice on a passerby’s cell phone that happened to work, he was spent.  Out of ideas and out of gas mentally.  His crying words “I don’t know what to do dad” crushed my heart… and I couldn’t get to him.  I couldn’t touch him.  It was hard.

I said all that to set the stage, give you an insight into my mental state.  Here at home I was going to work, but not working…. fretting and looking for a way to help, panicking every time my phone made a sound.  Linda beat the bushes, trying to find him a way home.  Emailing senators, looking into every resource to get that boy home.  Nothing was working.  I knew he survived the storm but he was far from safe.  Bad people were doing bad things and he was right in the middle of it.

Linda said we needed to get that boy another boat.  As a distraction I spent my time searching the internet for his next home.  That boy finally found his groove in life and at no fault of his own, lost it to a storm.  Jono removed a lot of his big money items from MA before the storm.  New sails, boom and stack pack etc.  In my search I hoped to find a boat his stuff would work on.  As luck would have it, I found a boat exactly like his for sale cheap in my home town!  I wanted a bigger boat for him but I had to call and see about this boat.

It was Thursday just after lunch when I called the owner of the boat like Jono’s.  Oddly enough she told me yes, it is for sale but she really couldn’t talk to me right now because she was on the boat, moving it from one marina to another in New Orleans and was broke down in the middle of Lake Pontchartrain.

After discussing the problem (having 50k miles of sailing experience) I tried to diagnose the problem for her but she was too concerned about hurting the boat to run it any further.  There was no wind on the lake so she couldn’t sail in.  On the phone she told me she had tried to contact someone to tow her in but it was going to be horribly expensive and almost dark before they could come so I told her I’d be there in two hours.

My plan was to get on my sailboat and pull her in.  The boatyard she wanted to go to is just past my boat anyway so that worked out.  I left work early and talked to her again on the drive to the marina, no wind so she was still stuck.  When I got to my boat the shore power cord was disconnected so my batteries were very dead.  As I worked a man walked up, I assumed from the boat ahead of mine at the marina.  The boat had been for sale for years, it is a huge 100’+ dinner cruise boat that was converted for private use.  This gentleman had bought it and wondered who owned the catamaran behind him.  Normally I love to talk boats but I was visibly in a hurry and I apologized about it, telling him about my urgent business to go pull another boat in.  Graciously he understood and walked back to his boat.  I had my flame retardant suit on from work, it was blazing hot and here he comes back with a pair of shorts (that fit me fine) and a bottle of cold water.

We talked a bit as I gave up on getting my big boat charged and running in time.  Had a short but friendly conversation and I ended up dropping my 10 foot rubber dinghy in the water to serve as a tow boat.  It has a 20 Horse four stroke on it so it had plenty of power.  To make a long story short I pulled the 33′ Irwin past my boat (and the big 100’er) a few hours later on the way to the boat yard and that was that… or so I thought.

Sunday I went back to my boat to get things up and running like they should.  I hung the shorts on his boat at the doorway and proceeded to work on “Sea Yawl Later !!”  Shortly Ken walks back over and made me keep the shorts… he said he saw me come by pulling the Irwin and wondered how that worked out.  I told him I had always wanted to look inside that big old boat in front of me at the dock and he immediately said “come on”.  My new buddy Ken and I had a great conversation onboard his ship.  I enjoy talking boats and shared ideas about his 3 story cruiser, we talked about family and of course I told him about Jono.  I mentioned that we were trying hard to find him a way out of Puerto Rico but hadn’t found a way yet.  He immediately said “I’ve got a Learjet lets go get him”

My jaw might have dropped, I’m not sure but after a second I told Ken “wow, that’s too much to ask” I won’t turn you down but if all else fails we will talk.  I had several avenues working at the time.  We talked some more and as I walked out I told him that he runs in different circles than I do and if one of his buddies was making a relief flight over there I’d like to find Jono a jump seat back home.  He told me sit back down a second and walked away, I thought he may have a name for me or something.  Ken came back after about 5 minutes and said “I can’t find my checkbook but I want to help that boy get a new boat”  call my secretary tomorrow and I’ll have her make you a check out for $10,000 dollars to help that boy.  I must have looked pretty strange, I didn’t know what to say…. right?  who does that!?

Sure enough the check came in the mail!  What if I hadn’t chosen to go pull that disabled boat in that day…. I’d have never met Mr. Ken.  He said he donates large amounts to many charities each year and this sounded like something he wanted to help with.  Later he told me as we exchanged texts that his dad told him the more you give, the more you get and he believed that.  There’s my “God Thing”  I told Ken he didn’t have to do that….. and his reply was grand.  He said “I haven’t done anything I had to do in a very long time”  It’s something I want to do.  How do you act, what emotions could I feel in a moment like that.  My nerves were shot, my boy was out of reach and then this happened.  Suffice it to say I was still a man, but my eyes leaked.

This has been a very active hurricane season on the Texas gulf coast.  As many of you know my son Jonathon lives on a boat and was currently in Puerto Rico when Maria came through!  Long story short Jono lost his home / boat to the 180 mph winds.  She was blown sideways into the mangroves dragging all three anchors with her.  He did a very good job of storm preparation, but mother nature just…. won.

Jono rented a second story room on shore to ride out Maria off the boat, which was basically a 12 hour tornado.  “Miss Adventure” his 33′ Irwin sailboat didn’t stand a chance… but endured better than some that went to the bottom sometime during the night.  Jono had taken as much gear off the boat as possible before the it got bad, but looters got to her before he could get her re-floated.  They tore off the hatches and stole everything they could carry or unplug.  The batteries, the anchors that were still tied to the bow, radios, etc.  Hurricane Maria was utter chaos for Jono and vile uncertainty for me, not being able to contact my boy for over a week.

Jono carries a satellite locator device on his boat called “spot” that is capable of transmitting his location every 10 minutes.  The “ping” or location is available for viewing online, it shows where he is, as well as the date and time of the mark.  Wisely we devised a plan of “communication” before we lost all contact.  Knowing all services would be down, Jono was going to physically turn spot on and off during the storm so we would know he’s OK and capable of manipulating the switch.  The day after it passed he was to turn it on before lunch if his boat made it, or after lunch only if she didn’t.  As you know she didn’t so we were able to understand he was OK, but his home was destroyed on that second day after the storm.

For days Jono kept us semi sane by cycling spot on and off.  It also showed us his movement from the marina to a home several blocks from shore, back to the marina etc. so that was encouraging.  It was almost a week before Jono was able to get us a text from someone who had a cell phone signal.  Nobody had a signal on the coast where Jono was, but a new friend let my boy type me a text… then went back home so the message could transmit.  Poor communication but at least SOMETHING…  While it was great to see text evidence in his own words that he was mostly OK, a daddy needs more than that.

Jono had taken the solar panels off his boat so he set them up onshore and found some old batteries that worked well enough to charge cell phones.  He was the only resource for electricity for days, he had the only way to have 12 volt lighting or charge anything in the little torn up fishing village near Salinas.  Soon his food got low, but luckily he had stored fresh water in the tanks of his sailboat.  He could fill jugs and bring them ashore for drinking water.  We knew none of this when it was going on.. my fears of how hard his life were during that time were pretty much spot on.

The “marina” owner allowed him and two others to stay free in the room he rode the storm out in, they traded their labor rebuilding the docks for the room.  By day they worked hard outside, at night they took 3 hour shifts sitting out in the night heat among the swarms of the relentless mosquitoes with a flashlight and machete running off looters.  After days on end of that routine Jono was mentally and physically drained, now with no home, no contact with the outside world, no way to get money to buy food or travel.. he was just stuck.  Strong resolve slowly dissolved into despair.  When we finally got to talk over a sketchy cell connection where I could hear every third work, he was totally wiped out.  He didn’t know what to do, and for a competent sailor that’s saying a lot…

Over the next few days I got him a message via text to salvage all he could off MA and that we would see to it that he got another boat.  I’m sure that raised his hopes again.  He finally got a ride to San Juan where we could text him directly for short bursts.  Linda kept calling the airlines trying to arrange a flight out but everything was booked or cancelled for weeks.  We were working all avenues trying to get him out of there with no joy, finally Linda lucked out and got a flight confirmation for this past Friday 10/6/17 to Atlanta Georgia.  I was waiting at the airport in my car when he landed.

Jono severely injured his back during the event in Puerto Rico.  I’m glad we didn’t know that until I could physically touch him in person.  The injury was caused by heavy lifting, and exacerbated by the constant stress he was living under.  With no meds to fight the inflammation he was a ball of pain when he walked out to the car in Atlanta.  Jono literally fell into my arms… he was home.

There are many side stories to tell regarding our efforts to get him home that I’ll post at some point.  We drove through the night… straight home from Atlanta only stopping for gas.  I was a tired puppy by daylight Saturday morning but that was just fine by me.  He slept some and we talked some on the way.. it was worse than we knew.  But finally I was able to feed my boy real food, clean and comfort him at my home.  Unless you have been denied that possibility like I was.. you don’t know how good that felt to dear old dad to have Jono back.

Karen, Jono’s sister put up a paypal link because some of his sailing buddies wanted to throw something in the hat to help get him a new boat, so that’s going on.  Jono had finally found his groove in life with the sail boat, and through no fault of his own lost that dream… but we are going to fix it.  Boat shopping has had it’s highs and lows the past two days.  So far we have looked at two boats and ruled them out… too much work to be done before heading back out to PR.  We have some possibilities working but it will seemingly take everything we have allotted to make it work, leaving no buffer for the unexpected… so we are working that out.

I’m “back in my own skin” with my arms and heart around my prodigal son… Daddy is adding plus’s to his days now rather than dreading the unknown minus’s.  Not all parents got that lucky, I’m thankful.

Jono has witnessed true desperation.  Political correctness means ZIP to the boy, it’s all about “actual correctness” these days.  Jono was never political but he was distracted by now trivial thoughts and events that steered his life.  He is different now… It is my belief that you’re not truly grounded in life, until you embark on an adventure that carries at least a slight risk of unintended bloodshed.  What we deem important (that seems all encompassing in the moment) often turns out to be something really silly doesn’t it?  When the worst thing in your life is getting the wrong color nail polish at the manicurist…. that just wrecks your day.  uhhh, yeah…..? no..  not even close.