Sea Cycle on the Rio Manamo

Sea Cycle Log #13 N 10.4 -W61.54 to N9.13 - W62.13

Leaving Ensenada Carriaquita and all the previous day’s excitement, we headed off to the Orinoco River Delta, the great weeping eastern shoulder pad draining Venezuela and Columbia on the map of South America. Heading due south we had a great sail on a beam to close reach and had current with us for the morning. Off the stern we could see the entire Paria peninsula as it ran down from the heights on its eastern end disappearing into the west. Around noon the winds fell off a bit but then piped up as we crossed half way on the gulf and were now getting the sea breeze on to the Venezuelan coast along with current entering from the Serpents Mouth channel and the south Atlantic at the southern end of Trinidad. In the distance scattered off to the south east was the main Trinidad oil field with all its rigs and attendant working vessels. Three o’clock found us rolling up the jib and running along the coast, wind on the nose as we entered the approach to the channels leading to the mouth of the Manamo River. Here the water was muddy brown very reminiscent of Chesapeake Bay and we motored in waypoint to waypoint monitoring the depth meter and trying to ignore our senses which told us to follow the buoys as in red right returning but in this case were supposedly marking a shoal. This is another thing, you cannot fully trust buoys anywhere in the Caribbean. Things move and sometimes local buoy age could be a stick in the mud or whatever the locals have on hand. Most of the time you have to trust your eyes for the depth and reefs but in this case there was no visibility. The charts showed eight foot depths but we never saw less than twelve feet. Finally at the river’s mouth passing an oil derrick on our port and some kind of gas rig throwing a large flame whose reflection had mystified us from miles out, on the starboard, we ran up the river to Perdanales, a village of maybe 400 to report in at the local La Guardia station. At the La Guardia which is not a customs or immigration post, but the police, we showed our passport and then they signed a prepared form which Watermark had given us with time of arrival and such and also officially stamped it. On our way out we did the same procedure and when returning to Trinidad had no trouble checking back in with officials. The Guardia officials were very pleasant and seemed humoured by our attempts at translating. Needing local currency we searched around to try and find a money changer but had no luck, but the next day we found a Senor Joppa who gave us 180,000 Bolivars for 40 US or 4,500 to one. The official rate is 2200, but nobody except banks or credit cards who have no choice, give that. Neriea had reported to us they were getting around 5000 or greater at Puerto La Cruz, so we felt we had done alright. At the local cantina we managed to pick up 24 cold beers (Polar) for 10US or a little over 41 cents per beer, very frosty and with a picture of a bikini girl gracing the can. We did the first night off the La Guardia Post anchored in 32’ and spent the night listening to the chain drag across a rocky bottom of the fast moving Perdanales River. On the way back with two weeks experience we anchored on the other side in 14’ and mud. Live and learn. These rivers carry a heavy load of silt and at most river bends the inside corner runs shallow with the opposite corner running deep. From Perdanales it is roughly eighty miles to the town of Tucapita where the Perdanales and Macareo all converge with the main Orinoco River. Many cruising boats head down to the Macero further to the south and a two day trip, which is reputedly less densely populated than the Manamo with a larger settlement of the Wareo Indians. This tribe speaks their own language but do understand some Spanish. We spent two full weeks on the river transiting as far as we could to about 16 miles south of Tucapita where we came across the power lines which block your way from heading further south to the main Orinoco branch. We did twelve different anchorages on the trip not including the arrival and departure at Perdanales. The first 50 miles of the river was a mangroves wilderness with no real sign of dirt and the Wareo villages all seem to be in this river section below and around the Orinoco Delta Lodge. I counted five villages in this stretch. The villages are built out right over the water and ranged from eight huts to around forty and are struggling with a twenty first century identity crisis. The huts are built on stilts; they have a lashed floor of small trees or saplings, basically a corduroy floor. Roofs are thatched and the sides are opened to the elements. Further up the river past the lodge sides began to appear on some of the houses in the Venezuelan villages. Everybody sleeps in hammocks and there is an afternoon siesta in the heat. The stilt houses are connected by a walkway of the same construction as the floors. The houses are separated from the walk with log ramps to act as an entrance walkway. They walk on all this like the flying Wallendas. The walkways have a general littering of pig and dog excrement with everyone is running around barefoot. In the corner of the hut there might be a colour TV and I also saw a couple of cell phones. After dark the generator turns on and the walkway lights up. Then the TV and boom boxes come on to cover the sound of the generator and we spent the evening listening to Celine Dion and Ricky Martin till about ten when everything was shut down. All this under a never ending canopy of stars made for a surrealistic scene. Each village we came to had two or three outboards mounted to their canoes or larger pirogues with twenty gallon drums acting as gas tanks. Everybody else was in a dugout canoe. Bailing was by a flat dish and constant with the odd bail serving as a drink. The saltwater tide is heavier than fresh water and sinks to the bottom. The children were all pros at the handling of these very tippy craft At the first village about twenty miles up we were swarmed by canoes of children as we tried to anchor and further disconcerted with something very white and pinkish which was breaking the surface and feeding to the other side of us. I thought it was a manatee but turned out to be fresh water dolphins. These dolphins do not have a pronounced dorsal fin but have a very big forehead which gives them quite the prehistoric look. They didn’t seem as playful as ocean dolphins, with very short surfacing periods making a camera shot an elusive thing. Meanwhile back at the ranch Deb came up on deck with cookies which she distributed to the kids. The first village had little to trade but one canoe had baskets which after some tough negotiations we settled on in exchange for some tee shirts, girls’ underwear and hair barrettes. . Our bartering goods came from a shopping expedition in Port of Spain where we had loaded up on children’s clothes, barrettes, face clothes and clothes pegs which we wound with fishing lines and hooks. Audrey Paige, possessors of a brand new paint job by Nigel in Trinidad, quickly organized fenders with Dennis playing maestro with his boat hook as baton while Allayne did the trading which was brought to an end with “No Mas Hoy” (no more today).

The children were beautiful and very innocent in manner. The adults all seemed to be short in physical stature. We did notice a lot of eye infection at the first village along with the older adults missing front teeth. As soon as dark arrived we headed below because of the bugs which have ownership of the airways at night. Some nights you were ok for a while and then swarmed instantly with no warning by noseeums or mosquitoes. We paid the price the first time it happened when we didn’t get the nets down quick enough because we were barbequing. The rest of the night became a hunt and destroy mission inside the boat. The rule then became as soon as the parrots starting heading home to roost then it was time to close up shop or become part of the nocturnal feeding ground. The parrots head home in groups of two and occasionally a trio of three. I am not sure whether the third was a junior family member or a little bit of kinkiness in parrotdom but they are quite the cacophony squawking all the way home to the roost. Their night time roost as we noticed in Trinidad is in the same place every night. During the day the major airborne risk was the horse fly coming in at the size of a dollar coin. With great stealth these little nasties land quietly and then proceed to turn you into a quarter pounder stand. Wasps here are the size of small hummingbirds with large thoraxes and long dangling legs. Several times I had to go armed with industrial grade insect killer and evicted them from their building projects in the sail covers and sail saddle bags. The most visible of all the insects though is the dragonfly. I have never seen so many and so big. The water lily fields were full of them. Several times we parked the dingy right into the bora to observe but couldn’t quite make out if they were pollinating the plants or feeding off of something on them. The river with its bora fields which were so large and dense along with all the over sized insects’ freewaying through the air kept me expecting a Brontosaurus to lift its neck up out of the water at anytime. In the end we settled for Lost World on the DVD player. Big beautiful indigo blue butterflies were abundant but very hard to get a photo shot of, because when they land they close their wings and are brown. We wondered if these were the same blue butterflies that Papillion chased for dye when incarcerated on Devils Island a few hundred miles south of us. Recently I met a Canadian couple finishing a circumnavigation who stopped on the S. African to Trinidad leg at Surinam and visited the old Devil Island now a museum and said the museum claims Papillion never existed and the whole thing was a fabrication. Oh, well that’s entertainment for you. Birds were plentiful with lots of kingfishers, cranes and buzzards along with howler monkeys. Up the Canos we spotted very large kingfishers with a beautiful green bodies and neck colourings. As you go up the river you can leave the big boat and dinghy for miles up these deserted Cano’s. Some are broad and deep enough for the sailboat while others you motor up beneath the canopy. On one quickly narrowing Cano the exhaust and noise from our dinghy motor disturbed a flock of bats leading to a quick retreat. Tide is a factor running over two feet so you have to watch where you are and your depths. There was a strong mud bank smell when the tide was in ebb exposing the banks and the mangrove roots. The other big thing here with the tide is the Bora or water lilies that float up and down the river with the tides like pack-ice. This will mostly affect you in the Cano’s where you would anchor or where you might be dinghying. The first time it happened I thought we had had it, being locked in for the season like a tropical Shackelton but by the next tide flood it had all disappeared except for some which clung to the anchor rode and bow. On one Cano while out dinghying Audrey Page had headed back fifteen minutes earlier and when we headed back we found them throwing the anchor out and kedging through the Bora in a channel that an hour earlier had been clear. This was the one time when having an air floor dinghy paid off as we lifted our motor and kind of dragged ourselves over it with some push and pull. There was very little traffic on the river during the day with just the odd pirogue but the early mornings and late afternoons being the busiest with the two water buses and the ambulance doing their daily trips from Perdanales to Tucapita up river in the morning and down river in the afternoon. Occasionally large thirty to forty foot flat bottomed pirogues powered by seventy five hp Yamahas would be plying the waters carrying fridges and household appliances up or down the river. Having no roads the river truly is their highway. About ten miles up from the lodge the country started to change and become savannah with cattle grazing on the land. Finally about sixteen miles north of Tucapita we arrived at the power lines which were located at a large village where we saw our first car and road. It was some sort of holiday or political celebration with huge speakers being set up in the village square. At the time Chavez’s referendum on the constitution was only a couple of weeks away. The power lines were low slung in the centre but Dennis and I thought with a depth sounder to sound the edges and the sextant for height maybe we could slide under the lines at shore. At this point both crews put their foot down pleading dwindling supplies and plus the chance not to be known as the gringos who knocked out half the Delta’s power grid on a national holiday. Anchoring down from the village a couple of miles we started the way back the next morning. The Canos off the main river can go from the very narrow to the very wide. The Orinoco Delta Lodge sits off the main river on a very wide Cano intersecting with another. Both Cano’s run for miles according to a river expedition leader we chatted to who was leading river trips in kayaks. On arrival we passed the lodge and went further up its main Cano exploring and then the next day returned and to our surprise found two British flagged boats anchored off. Both were beneteaus, Malarkey and Daramy and that evening we all had dinner which was a variation on the day’s lunch of beans, rich and fish with beans, rice and beef. The Orinoco Delta Lodge sits off the main river on a very wide cano intersecting with another. The lodge is a large open structure thatched roof with a bar and restaurant. Young backpackers dominate, with the zoom lens tourist crowd coming next. There are maybe a dozen cabins with shuttered windows, thatch roof and netted for overnight accommodations. Tourists seem to fly in to Ciuad Bolivar or Tuciptia from the Caribbean resorts and are then transported down to the lodge in fast pirogues. Their trips seem to be of two or three day duration. Several times during our trip a boat load of tourists would come around a river bend and when seeing us anchored would start shooting shots of us like we were the local exotica. Most of our Cano exploring was done in the early mornings before the heat came up. Then a little project or reading during siesta time. Dennis would spend late afternoons fishing off the banks in his dinghy hoping to catch a piranha which are not a threat to swimmers here. A local had told us to fillet them and cut those into small strips and barbeque them, supposedly quite tasty. Dennis did manage to land a small fresh water stingray which he released. In the “you can take the boy out of the country but not the country out of the boy category”, Dennis found some coconuts and flourishing his machete proceeded to show us how to score and quarter the nut to get out the juice, jelly and meat. No waste, total usage, but partway through the exercise he stopped and taking a long look at us said you know what today is, it’s the opening of deer season in Michigan. Some old habits die hard even in tropics. The high light of this trip if you are in the right season is the scarlet ibis. We managed this sighting on the way back downstream. Less than twenty miles up from Perdanales lies an island in the middle of the channel. The ibis as we had seen in the Caroni Swamp prefer islands for roosting. Just before dusk they started coming
first in dribs and drabs and then filling the sky like squadrons of flying monkeys all headed to the island. Not wanting to miss our chance for some photo’s we jumped in the dinghy and floated down the river close to the roost. These are nervous birds and there were literally thousands so we didn’t want to disturb or bother them. As we approached the trees each branch packed with these time share occupants would start squawking and move up a few feet to another branch. Still from the photo’s you get the idea. The horizon is outlined by a consistent tree line and topped by an ever changing vista of blue sky, tall thundering cloud formations and full gray cloud banks dropping their rain in vertical slants. Sometimes all three in combination worked the horizon. Here we got caught a couple of times misguessing a squall direction or its intensity and ended lathered up with no rinse, so off to our solar shower. Catching water here was also a must. Just as back up, we have a rain catcher Deb made last summer which is always hoisted and drains to a jerry can which we then filter into our tanks. In the end we caught ten gallons and still had twenty left when we finally pulled back into Chagauramas. We carry 52 gallons in tanks and t
wenty in cans so we probably would have lasted another week. Exiting the river on the ebb we encountered a stiff breeze on the nose which also was kicking up the waves bringing Sea Cycle to a shuddering stop a few times. Finally off the bank and into deeper water we beared off and motor sailed along the edge of the oil fields ducking squalls and pulling back into Chagauramas in the dark around 7pm. To be continued

Getting the boat ready after Hurricaine Season in Trinidad

Sea Cycle Log #12

September to November 2007 10.41-61.40 to 10.40-61.54


There’s an old adage that the cruising life is basically fixing your boat in exotic ports. Whoever thought this one up must have dreamt it up in Trinidad during hurricane season. Having spent our first hurricane season in the water in Trinidad this season we decided to haul out and head back to Toronto for 11 weeks. Coming back to Trinidad we spent three weeks on the hard and one month at the dock doing projects, ranging from hull strengthening to new boom gallows and adding a whisker pole with a mast storage track. We could have kept going but would have gone bankrupt in the process. So the decision was made to get the season underway. In the mean time we did manage to get a few more trips in around Trinidad. I managed to go on a gorge trip where we climbed to a high spot up the river and then floated
down through the gorge and rainforest. We also managed to visit the Asa Wright bird sanctuary up in the northern range up in the rainforest looking out over a valley
and into the waters of the Gulf of Paria. The sanctuary was a donation to the nation by a Scandinavian family and has guest rooms and a lovely dining room. We also managed a trip up the Caroni Swamp in a flat bottom boat checking out the flora and fauna. Last season we missed going up the Orinoco River Delta in Venezuela because we couldn’t get the boat ready. We were determined to try this year and when fellow cruising vessel Audrey Paige expressed a desire the plans were firmed up. The Orinoco is one of the largest Deltas in the world. We were going to do the Manamo River branch a sparsely populated area with Wareo Indians. We would cross the Gulf
of Paria from Chagauramas Trinidad and enter the river at the town of Perdenales. The branch is navigable up to the main river but power lines rumoured at the 60 mile mark prevent sailboats from going any higher on this branch. We layed in supplies including mosquito nets, trading goods and bug spray and moved out from Chaguaramas to Scotland Bay to finish staging for the trip. Scotland Bay is the western most bay on the island, very lush with steep cliffs, no roads and well protected laying on the first Boca sheltered by the Mono’s Island. Old masonry ruins from WWII of
the American Officer recreational quarters line the shore with strange like lion roars providing a soundtrack. The lion roars are Howler monkeys which you would never associate with their body size. You can only imagine what the first explorers must have imagined when listening. No wonder old charts are maked “There Be Dragons”.

Well as usual a problem arose a few days before with Trinidad customs officers clamping down on departures and kicking boats out of Trinidad that had already checked out. Normally you have 24 hours to leave but a number of boats had been flaunting the law and hanging around for days. In the end on the Friday night before our departure several boats got the boot from Scotland Bay. They were given one hour to leave and did leaving a wake of radio comments about never coming back with their dollars and a lot of how this was aimed at Americans only. Unfortunate, but I doubt the Trini’s cared. The simple skinny was that it was American boats breaking the rules and expecting special treatment. Basically a few boats ruined it for everyone else since the rule was now that you had to leave one hour after Customs check out. This made it very difficult for late night or early departures. Our problem was a 48 mile journey south across the Gulf of Paria with variable currents from the Delta’s watershed and a tide entering both from the Caribbean through the Bocas on the north along with a different one from the south Atlantic entering the Serpents Mouth at the southern tip. Entry into the river is at Perdenales through a turning channel sided by shoals all in muddy water not something you want to do in the dark. We were also told to ignore all buoyage as it marked shoal edges and didn’t sign the normal channel route. We were using waypoints from our fellow Canadian cruisers Watermark’s trip the year before. We also figured even with an early morning departure we would be coming in late afternoon with the usual piping afternoon shore breeze. Normally we would have checked out in the late afternoon, staged at Scotland or Chacachacare Island and left at first light. We didn’t want to risk having the Custom cutter visiting at dusk and giving us the boot or worse, so we had to come up with a plan B.

If you look at the charts you will see Venezuela is only 7 miles from the west tip of Chacachacare Island the former leper colony. This stretch is known as the Paria Peninsula. The Boca channels were a strategic waypoint during WWII, in fact so much allied shipping was sunk by Nazi U boats here that the Yanks finally drew a sub net across attempting to stop the carnage. Local folklore has a story here how some German submariners wrote a letter to the local Trinidad paper during the war bragging about which movies they enjoyed while visiting Port of Spain under the allied noses. We considered the pros and cons of crossing to Paria Peninsula. The pros were a more direct crossing cutting the trip to 37 miles and some big beautiful empty bays unpopulated by other yachts. The cons, well, this Peninsula is the most pirated coast in south America, indeed maybe the entire western hemisphere. Mostly boardings by armed fishing pirogues and the usual rumour that the coast guard were just as bad with night boardings and demands for cash payments. We know of one Canadian shot in the throat here several years back but along the north shore not the Gulf side. Some boats heading for Los Testigos the intermediate stop on the way to Venezuela will actually make it look like they are heading for Grenada till well off and then switch course. This is one of the things about cruising; you just don’t know what to believe. Most information comes filtered or magnified third or fourth hand with the slightest problems turning into a nautical version of an urban myth. If we listened to everything we heard I doubt we would have cast off from Toronto. Researching recent reports on the Caribbean Safety Net page we couldn’t find any reports on the southern Paria Gulf side. Also according to Doyle’s guide he claimed the south side was good to the Port of Guiria an oil rig town. Also recent articles in Compass newspaper highlighted a boats recent safe voyage along this shore. This and the fact that we haven’t heard any first hand reports from any of the cruisers we know kind of made us want to have a look. We talked it over with our buddy boat
Audrey Paige and decided to risk it with a late morning checkout and an afternoon run to Ensenada Carriaquita. Where hopefully nobody would notice us slip into the bay which was supposedly deserted except for two weekend fishing camps. This is the first big deep open bay offering protection from the easterly swells. We hoped to arrive late afternoon with a first light departure. Should be safe, right?
Well the day before was the usual hurry up and wait. Buy, store, check, buy more, re store, check again over and over. Finally a quick dip and rinse off. We usually raise our dinghy at night with the main halyard and then the mizzen halyard to take up some of the weight of the dinghy motor. Cruisers motto, lock it or lose it. Doesn’t happen too often but I got lazy that night and did not use the mizzen halyard allowing the motor shaft to drag in the water. Oh yeah, also forgot to lift the swim ladder. Sun went down; howlers stopped, watched a DVD and read ourselves to sleep all by the late hour for us of 9pm. Woke up in the morning took the weather at 6:30 on the little Grundig SSB in the cockpit while having breakfast. Nothing unusual spent two hours on this while sitting on one of our big cushion chairs which lean up against the cabin one of each side of the companionway. Dropped the dinghy, went to port. Checked out, telling the Custom officer when questioned I was lifting the hook and departing within the hour after a quick top off at the duty free. This and a last minute grocery run back to the boat load the goods and prepare to sail. Now Deb as is her habit after packing the last of the groceries reached out and dragged the two folding cushion chairs in to store while sailing. She then reached out and put a spray can of BOT (industrial grade insect killer) where the port side cushion sits for me to store. I was loading the stern lazerattes, turned around facing forward, saw the BOT to put away and said to Deb “Where did you get the plastic snake?” thinking it was something she had bought. Of course the reply was “What plastic snake?” then very emphatically “I didn’t buy any plastic snake.” Well it was very shiny and all coiled up in a very snake like coil. Still in my usual state of denial I pondered now how I had disturbed some Trini’s karma and this was a joke but deep down I just knew this mother was the real McCoy and a little too big and of unknown species to be picked up like a common garter snake. De
b not daring to stick her head out the companion way and not having a mechanics extendable mirror to safely observe from a distance was going from the my oh my stage on hearing my brief description and when finally venturing a peek warp speeded to the “Oh my god” stage. Realizing as Captain that I had to maintain a measure of calm on board amongst the crew I issued an order to block the companionway with the biggest cushion available in case our stowaway decided to head into the boat and down to the bilges. With all the noise of the call to arms Kaa (newly named snake) had not shown the slightest movement or interest. Not knowing what kind of snake Kaa was I had Deb call over to Audrey Paige to confer with Dennis who on top of formerly being one of Detroit’s finest was also bent to the outdoorsman type a little more than myself. Also I knew he had done two gorge trips and had exhibited
an interest in these things, so the call was placed to see if he could identify Kaa as viper or constrictor. At this point I am arming myself for buddies eviction but am also in touch with my inner cowardly side like in it may be a Viper and capable of springing twenty feet on a beam reach jaws open on a nano seconds notice. Dennis tells us to see if 1) it has a diamond shape head 2) are its nostrils on top of its snout. All this was great except Kaa had not decided to show his face let alone his head which were buried inside his coil. Deciding to put an end to the drama I puffed up my chest before my knees totally gave way, and armed myself with boat hook in one hand and beach towel in the other and approached the beast like a net and trident gladiator. I gave it a slight prod with the boat hook which started the slinky coil movement and the opening of the reptile’s eye looking at me with disgust for disturbing his sleep. At this point I am thinking well definitely triangle but whats the definition of diamond and for head nostrils on top, I can’t tell, but I don’t hear any rattle and he looks slower than a shift worker on a Sunday night, so in I go supported by Deb’s Greek chorus in the back ground. Well contrary to public myth snakes don’t naturally wrap themselves around sticks. Several deft twists of the wrist like wrapping spaghetti on a fork and Kaa was on the hook but then didn’t want to let go till getting several good shakes. I might add this was one time having a yawl with all the extra rigging was not a benefit not allowing a good shovel like heave. At this point Deb came running up to see the snake in the water. As quick as she came up she went right back down because Kaa was trying to get back on board. We have low free board and I swear without any turbaned piper he was three quarters of the way back up with no grab. It took three or four attempts with me flinging him away before he or she decided enough and slithered off to shore. In the end we were not sure how he got on board. Could have been the dinghy motor which was hanging into the water, the swim ladder which was left down or even the anchor rode, who knows. Same with when he got on. Could have been while we were checking out but more likely was during the night which meant while I was eating cheerio’s he was comfortably coiled next to me under the back of the chair. If you zoom the picture in you will see a definite lump in its length against the hull so I figure he was well fed and probably sleeping it off when we discovered him.


Running on adrenaline now we hoisted the hook and started the run to Ensenada Carriaquita. Our hopes of an unnoticed arrival were dashed as soon as we entered the bay with several fishing pirogues entering the supposedly empty fishing camp on the western side. Audrey Paige having arrived first anchored well in tucked up off the fishing camp on the eastern shore to avoid any swell. We tucked up in between Audrey Paige and shore still running high on the day’s earlier adventure and looking forward to dinner, books and a quiet evening. On shore things looked good as I could see the camp was in fact not empty but seemed to have a family of father, mother, daughter and son. This was augmented by a pig and goats, quite pastoral and positively a South American gothic. Around dusk the tranquility was broken with the arrival of two fishing pirogues, one with four and one with two men who motored up to the fishing camp on our side. Beyond being aware of our surroundings I didn’t give it much thought as I was busy with the boat. As with most local conversations this one was loud and I did notice the fisherman did not leave their boats. I figured it was a negotiation but since my small understanding of Spanish had been inactive the last year having slid from Spanish for Dummies to Spanish for Idiots I could not form the basic understanding of what they were negotiating. One thing for certain though that universal one word that forms noun, adjective, verb and adverb was being interjected with alarming frequency and volume and being picked up by my ever extending antenna. All of a sudden the Doyle guide’s description of the bay feeling like “Heart of Darkness” was getting a little two vivid. Things came to a head with three gunshots in the sequence of what was that, was that a shot, one boat taking off, then the other boat taking off and finally god dam it’s a boat chase shoot-out. Well what’s a law abiding citizen who usually gets his gun battles at a safe distance on the screen suppose to do. I immediately told Deb to go below and assumed my best defensive position of garden gnome in the cockpit thinking I should have bagged the damn snake, for a surprise weapon. Well the two boats disappeared around the eastern point and the darkness filled in. Audrey Paige called over and said “Welcome to New Years Eve in Detroit” and Dennis said he wasn’t sure what they were shooting with because he didn’t see any muzzle fire. By now somebody on shore was searching the water’s edge with a flashlight. Supper was quick, and then I decided to get out the flare gun with a pack of cartridges and actually looked at how it works for the first time in years and being the closest thing to a weapon besides my slingshot and rusty bolt collection that we carry on board. Meanwhile Deb dug out her mace that I had bought in St. Marten two years earlier (where I narrowly avoided arrest by the local gendarme for asking for directions to the local gun shop) not being sure if it was still good or going to go impotent when needed.
Just when everything looked like it had settled one of the boats came back with one person who slowly motored up to the shore. Next thing they start arguing again and then boom, boom two more shots. This time the boat roars out but in turning comes straight for us turning within a few boat lengths rocking Seacycle with its wake. Off again he goes around the eastern point. In the end that turned out to be his exit for the night. I have to add at no time were we personally threatened or even gestured at. I debated about sleeping in the cockpit that night but the Doyle’s guide warned of bat bites with the nasties performing incisions between your toes, and to put up netting as a safety precaution. Our netting will only cover our dodger s
o rather than risk it I went below locking us in for the night. I found out the next day that Dennis had slept in his cockpit, so I kept one eye cocked on him for the next few days making sure he didn’t turn into a B movie Bella Lugosi. Up at the crack of dawn we headed out pretty well due south for Perdnales and the entrance to the Manamo River home of the Wareo Indians.
To be continued