Chapter 1

Runnin' the Blockade against the Herb

  The Dutch West Indies police boat slid around Pelican Point and steamed directly at us. Did the cops have psychic powers? How could they know we were about to shove off for Jamaica on a Reefer run? Or had they just figured out that we were in these waters illegally, having neglected to check in with customs and immigration as usual? It didn’t really matter what their motivation was, they were still barreling down on us. There was no way we could weigh anchor and outrun them now -- they had a 50-caliber machine gun on the bow.

  We were anchored in Simpson Bay, St. Maarten aboard my 42-foot Newick Racing trimaran sailboat, getting ready for a downwind run to Jamaica. Dr. Hermes and his girlfriend Christina were up on deck getting excited and giving me updates on the police boat’s progress. I was below, rolling joints for the trip and starting to get a little paranoid. I stopped rolling and got ready to toss the Weed. Then Hermes yelled, “They’re passing us and heading straight for the reef in front of Kim Shaw Beach.”

  Seconds later we heard a sickening scream from the 90-foot steel police boat as it crunched into the rock-hard reef. The captain had run his boat up on a reef that’s only fifty feet from the beach! If the rocks weren’t there, he would’ve driven right up on the most popular beach in Simpson Bay. While we stared dumbfounded at this scene, a big sport fisherman motored by and threw a wake under the police boat, freeing her from the reef’s grip. But the stupid captain still had his transmission in forward gear and drove further up on the reef. This happened again when another big power boat cruised by. We yelled at the cops in the cockpit to tell the captain to reverse his gears if he wanted to get off the reef.

  Simpson Bay is a busy anchorage with lots of sport fishing boats and water-taxis coming out of the hotels and marinas along the waterfront. So it wasn’t long before a ski boat came over to help. Hermes and I launched our inflatable dinghy and went to help too. We lashed our lines to the police boat’s transom cleats and  the next time a big yacht powered by and threw a large enough wake to lift the cops’ boat off the reef, we pulled them back into deeper water. The cops now floated freely. Embarrassed, they thanked us a lot and limped back south to Great Bay, the harbor of the Dutch capital of Phillipsburg. The horrendous noises coming from their bent prop shafts and propellers told me that they’d be in dry-dock, making repairs for at least six months.

 I thought this was a good omen; we had done a good deed, didn’t get busted for customs and immigration violations and now could proceed on our down wind excursion to Jamaica.        Dr. Hermes said good-bye to his girlfriend; we hoisted the anchor and set the spinnaker. The boat slipped out of Simpson Bay in a light easterly breeze. In just a few minutes we crossed over the 100-fathom line, where the island shelf dropped off and the ocean fish came to snack on the local reef fish. We hooked into a 40-pound yellow fin tuna, one of my favorite fish. We always trolled a fishing line with a yellow feather lure just in case some fish wanted to feed us. This was a good start to another sailing adventure.

  Jamaica is at the same latitude as St. Maarten so a westerly course was set. The island got smaller as the sun went down. When we were well away from the lee of St. Maarten, the wind freshened up and the boat speed increased to fifteen knots. The Newick trimaran was now doing what it had been built to do -- moving as fast as the wind. The ride was flat and comfortable, like sitting in a favorite chair at home. You could put your beer down anywhere and it wouldn’t spill.

  While the fish cooked, I tuned in the Single Side Band Radio-Transceiver to the BBC World News from London and listened to the headlines, then switched to the U.S. Coast Guard weather station to check the conditions for our cruise. The weather would be fine, no storms predicted. Now it was time to get comfortable, crack open a book stowed aboard, smoke some Reefer, listen to music and let the wind do its work.

  The distance between St Maarten and Jamaica is about nine hundred miles, a five or six day trip with lots of great fishing. Dawn and dusk were the best times to catch some free seafood. During the day, flocks of sea birds tipped us off to fish-feeding-frenzies. The surface of the sea erupted into boiling chaos. Hundreds of small tuna zoomed around chasing thousands of baitfish. The baitfish jumped clear out of the ocean and the tuna leapt right after them. The sky filled with birds diving to catch the baitfish as they jumped out of the water to escape the tuna. Sailing near this multilevel, foaming, feeding zone usually guaranteed lunch for us too.

  Frigate bird activity is another good sign for the Caribbean fisherman. Also known as Pirate birds or Man of War birds, they’re related to pelicans. You can see them from miles away because they’re huge black birds that glide high up in the sky on thermal winds. The male’s wingspan can reach seven and a half feet. If you spot one of these majestic flyers out at sea, chances are he’s shadowing a large pelagic fish, just waiting for it to scare some smaller baitfish out of the water. When that happens, the frigate goes into a steep dive. With his angular wings and forked tail, he looks like a dive-bomber. He needs to catch the baitfish in the air. Frigates don’t land in the water because it’s almost impossible for them to get airborne again.   The odds of hooking up a big game fish are good when you see a frigate bird diving straight down towards the sea. But a big game fish wasn’t what we were looking for now, so we didn’t stray too far from our course when one of these magnificent birds was sighted.      

  At night, flying fish landed on deck, sometimes even hitting us. In the morning I collected them for trolling bait or, if they were big enough, we ate them for breakfast. Flying fish are rich in oil and delicious. They leapt out of the sea in schools of twenty-five to fifty and glide just above the waves for about a hundred yards.

  The sea was kind to us on this trip, both in the speedy, gentle ride and the good fishing. By dawn of the fifth day, the misty deep green mountains of the Island of Hispaniola appeared to the northwest. That meant our rendezvous destination was close.

  Just before dusk we sighted Portland Rock, a tiny barren island ninety-five miles southwest of Kingston, Jamaica. Portland Rock was the size of a two-story house. We sailed around the reef that protruded from its south side and slid in as close to the island as possible for protection from the easterly swell before dropping anchor. This was where we were supposed to meet the pirate, Wild Bill. He had flown to Jamaica two weeks earlier to make all the arrangements for the load of Reefer that we came to pick up. We didn’t expect him until the next day anyway, so we relaxed, had dinner, smoked some Pot and went to sleep. 

  Portland Rock is at the southeastern end of Pedro Bank. (Pronounced PEE-dro by the Jamaicans) Pedro Bank is a large shallow water basin that extends about a hundred miles from east to west, is forty miles wide and starts fifty miles south of Jamaica. It’s a major fishing area for the islanders who venture out in colorful twenty-foot wooden boats.   A red and yellow wooden fishing boat was tied up between two pointy rocks in front of us when we woke up next morning. They were so close to the island that they could just step out of their boat onto it.  The fishermen didn’t stay tied up too long. They came to fish. After eating breakfast on the rocky island they shoved off. We waved as they went by and I wondered if they thought it was unusual to see our trimaran anchored behind their tiny island.

  Dr. Hermes and I spent the morning straightening up the boat, stowing gear and washing clothes, getting ready for the next leg of our journey. My friend Hermes was an emergency room medical doctor from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was also a fifth degree black belt in karate, a handy guy to have on any trip. His father was an admiral in the Navy in the ‘70s during Argentina’s dirty war. Hermes told me that his father was ambushed and killed while driving in his car. He suspected the right wing generals killed him because he wouldn’t allow them to use his naval bases to torture and kill the leftist protestors. Hermes was upset because his father forgot to bring his .38 revolver with him that day, he always begged his dad to carry a reliable revolver. Instead, he was found clutching his military-issue 9 millimeter auto, which had jammed.  Hermes was part Indian, very dark with Rasputin hair and a pronounced Incan nose. He was built strong and ready for anything. In an emergency, Hermes would fly out of his bunk and land on deck in seconds -- with or without clothes. He was trying to teach me Spanish but spoke way too fast and had a Castilian lisp, so I could never tell what he was saying.

  We waited by the Rock all day but Bill didn’t show. The fishermen came back right after sunset and made a fire on the island. Hermes paddled over on his surfboard to see if they had any Weed, since we ran out, and came back with some good, fresh Jamaican Herb. We smoked the stuff and went to sleep, hoping to see Bill the next day. 

  The morning sun was halfway out of the sea when I came up on deck and scanned the horizon for any sign of our friend Bill. I didn’t see any boats approaching so I decided not to waste a beautiful day just sitting there behind a rock. We were on some of the Caribbean’s best fishing grounds with free time on our hands. Up went the anchor and out came the fishing rods. Soon we were circling Portland Rock, trolling our deadly yellow feathers and keeping an eye out for the pirate, Wild Bill.       

  We hoisted a small spinnaker up the mast for a downwind tack that would take us west to some of the other small islands on the southern end of Pedro Bank. As our speed increased Hermes spotted a fishing boat heading out from the island of Jamaica. It was coming in our direction so I grabbed the binoculars and took a look. Someone on board was waving an oar with a brightly colored shirt attached to it. They were still about five miles away but it looked like Bill had decided to interrupt our fishing vacation just when we were getting into a flock of working birds. Since we were running downwind, the spinnaker had to come down and the main and the staysail were hauled up for the windward tack. We spun around and headed straight toward the fishing boat. In a few minutes, I could clearly see Bill standing on a mound of burlap covered bales.

   We met out in open sea where it was a little rough for the transfer. The captain of the fishing boat had requested that we bring him a new 40-hp outboard engine, which was strapped to the deck of my trimaran. First the Reefer came aboard my boat and then he got his new outboard. After the work was done, we talked to the captain and crew a little. I’d never met them before but I always admired brave fishermen who ventured out so far in little wooden boats to feed their families.  

  These were some tough, fearless guys. I was happy to work with them and glad to help them make some real money since their Jamaican dollars were so worthless. The IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank had destroyed their economy as punishment for their Socialist experiment under Prime Minister Michael Manly. So I felt good about our humanitarian mission to help strengthen the underground economy of this wonderful country.

  Bill jumped aboard the trimaran with his duffle bag; he was joining us for the rest of the trip. Bill was a tall, smooth talking, land-locked, West Texan. A novice at sea, he was a lady’s man; a player who thought he could charm the clothes off any girl. He had a string of ex-wives and girlfriends chasing him. Now he was using his talents in the Reefer business.

  The bales of Reefer were still piled on deck when we slipped off the lines holding our two boats together. We said our good-byes and hauled up the mainsail and jib for the long windward tack to the southeast. We were headed in the direction of the Grenadines, the islands of the southeastern Caribbean.

  Sailing north through the Windward Passage or the Mona Passage would have been shorter, but the U.S. Coast Guard was guarding those seaways. I didn’t want to make their job easy and my crew loved to sail, so we took the long way around. It was thousands of miles longer but hundreds of times safer.     The boat was about a half a mile off Pedro Bank when one of the fishing rods started screaming. Line was peeling off the reel at supersonic speed, the boat jerked and seemed to be pulled backward. Two hundred yards behind us, a giant marlin leapt into the air and did a tail-walk with the island of Jamaica in the background. The yellow trolling feathers had been left out during all the excitement and now we were being dragged back to Jamaica by an angry blue marlin that looked as though it weighed over six hundred pounds.

  Bill dove for the fishing rod. He had never caught a marlin before and always wanted one. He braced himself on the fishing deck and cranked on the reel until the line smoked. Bill’s biceps bulged as the marlin fought like a wild bull. I told Bill that we didn’t need that fish anywhere near the boat. It could do some serious damage and we couldn’t even eat it. Marlin needs to be smoked because it’s so tough. I climbed out on the aft deck with a knife to cut the line but Bill got pissed and told me he’d throw me in the water if I did. 

  This was my boat and I was the captain. But when you’re dealing with a crazy fisherman who also happens to be a pirate, sometimes you have to explain things so that everyone understands the dangers involved.

  I’d caught a few marlin on this boat and told him how dangerous it was to bring a fish of that size and strength onboard. It could wreck the ship, rip up the sails and injure or even kill us. It was also slowing down our real mission. I slid the knife across the deck to him and hoped he’d do the right thing. He fought the fish another minute or two, cursed and then cut the line.

  We laughed about the whole thing as we went to work stowing the bales below. When we finished with the bales, beers came out of the cooler, joints were rolled from the new stash, and we settled in for a long 1200-mile tack to the southeast.