Sunday 30 December 2012

Music to Die for

My friend Bondy is the Englishman who managed to get kicked out of the exclusive Arroyo Hondo Country Club after only one day as a member (see blog of 17-Nov-12).
 
He remembered another bit of foolishness during our early days in the Dominican Republic and wanted to relate it, so I’m giving him the floor.

Bondy’s Tale:
Bondy back then
I had been transferred by Shell Oil—my employer at the time—to the Dominican Republic and this is where I met Peter Lawson in the early seventies. Despite the fact that he was Australian and a bit rough around the edges, we hung out together as there were few expats living there.

Another Brit, Alan Williams, was doing design work for an expanded airport and had rented a magnificent house overlooking the ocean on the south coast. Every weekend became a two-day party at his place.

In aid of these weekly events I flew up to Miami to buy long-playing records of the then current singing stars—the Stones, Neil Young, Van Morrison, etc. We discovered that ‘Astral Weeks’ by Van Morrison was massively popular with the Dominican ladies. Needless to say, it was played frequently.

Some weeks after my return from Miami, one of our bashes was in full swing when in walked a Five Star General who was also high up in the civilian government. He’d heard of us and the parties we threw. He had brought with him his entourage, all wearing pistols on their belts.

Now a couple of days earlier this same general had visited the most fashionable restaurant in Santo Domingo and had shot dead at his table someone he disliked and who had apparently shown a lack of respect. He did it simply because he could—and walked away. No questions asked. Nothing more became of the matter.

So he walks uninvited into our party with his pistol on his belt, helps himself to our rum, chats to some of the girls and listens to our music. He then decides that ‘Astral Weeks’ should end and we would have Dominican music instead. Over he goes to the record player, lifts Van off in mid-song, puts on his own meringue record and returns to his seat. All of us were shocked at his presumption and rudeness.

Lawson, without missing a beat, marches over to the record player, lifts the General’s record from the machine and hurls it—Frisbee-like—across the room and out through the window. He then calmly replaces Van Morrison and walks back to what he was doing, which was enjoying some magnificent Dominican rum.
Me way back then
I thought, Bloody Hell, what’s going to happen now? Will guns be blazing? Are we all about to die? WHAT?

There was a moment of stunned silence then the General, although clearly displeased, managed to force something that might have passed for a smile onto his face. He stayed a little longer then left without a word of thanks to his host.
We all breathed a deep sigh of relief but refrained from any jubilation lest he hear it and return to round off the week with another shooting. He clearly felt, and possibly admired, Lawson’s temerity. I’ll never forget that night.

Bondy lends the story the perspective of a heroic stance of principal faced off against a bullying strongman. But it was not like that at all. So let me set the record straight.

There was nothing noble attached to the incident. It was no more than a dangerous combination
of rum, youth and naiveté.

 

Saturday 22 December 2012

Move over James Bond

A few years ago, I anchored near the mouth of the Rio Douro near the city of Porto in Portugal. At the time, I was single-handing a thirty-nine foot Buchanan which, although built of glass, had the lines of a classic wooden vessel.

No sooner had I got the hook down than an eighteen foot Zodiac came roaring out from the shore and bumped alongside. The man driving the boat handed me a card showing his name and that of the bar he owned. I’ve forgotten both, but I’ll call him Manuel. He spoke perfect English and seemed as if he’d be good company.

That evening I made my way into Manuel’s place. A few other sailors were yapping at the bar and in no time we were swapping beers, jokes and lies. And as I had thought, Manuel proved to be a lively host, joining in with a tale or two, buying the odd round and happily accepting the drinks we returned.

At the far end of the bar was a rather subdued group of four—three of whom appeared to be a trifle envious of our rollicking lot. The fourth was slightly older than the others—a rather severe looking character with a perfectly trimmed blond goatee, hawk-like nose and a humourless slash of a mouth.

Shortly after our group got into full swing, Hawk-nose finished his beer and departed, seemingly none too happy that others might be enjoying themselves. Before leaving, I heard him issue a stern reminder to the other three not to forget that their vessel would be sailing at six sharp the following morning.

After a few minutes, the three joined us and we began to hear tales of misery and deprivation that made Captain Bligh appear as a Saint. There were no floggings as I recall, but the mood of the crew seemed to suggest they might commence at any time.

I don’t know quite what it was that convinced Manuel and I to take up the cause of the ill-treated crew, and I don’t remember which one of us instigated the plan, but not long after, we found ourselves purring quietly out to the anchorage in Manuel’s Zodiac.
 
We stopped off at my vessel to pick up a bucket then Manuel eased over to the bow of Hawk-nose’s boat and I climbed stealthily aboard. The vessel was about forty feet long with an aft cabin. According to the crew, this was where their commander slept.

At the shrouds, I paused to fill the bucket—it was late October so the water was a mite chilly. I then padded aft, banged on his cabin door and stepped back with the bucket at the ready.

Well, the door burst open and Hawk-nose came charging out like an enraged bull. I had a brief second to notice that he was stark naked and his sparse hair was sticking out in tufts before I nailed him with the contents of the bucket.

There was murder in his eyes...can't say I blame him
The force of the icy water stopped his forward momentum briefly—just long enough for me to catch the murder in his eyes.

I went racing up the deck laughing like a hyena, knowing however that if he got his claws on me it would be a close-fought struggle.

Grabbing the forward shroud I leapt into the air. My grip on the wire spun me over the rail and out. I was prepared to swim for it, but Manuel had been keeping pace with me alongside the boat and I landed on my feet in the dinghy. Manuel hit the throttle and we zoomed off into the night, the two of us roaring with laughter.

It was something out of a James Bond movie and to Hawk-nose it must have seemed as if we’d rehearsed the move a hundred times—but in fact we hadn’t even planned my escape. It was just one of those things that came together perfectly.

Back at the bar, the crew were in stitches when we recounted the details of our little jape.

I have a strong suspicion though, that the remainder of their voyage was not destined to be a happy one.

 

 

 

Saturday 15 December 2012

The Sharks went Hungry



Peter, Esther, Katheryn in DR
In the early ‘90’s I was living in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic with my second wife and two small children. My parents flew out from Australia for a visit and decided to stay for a while. This was fine with me as I always had a good time with them.
One afternoon, Dad and I were sitting on our balcony looking out over the ocean yapping about our lives. After a few too many beers, the old man decided to get all serious on me. “I’m getting on a bit Peter,” he said in his most sombre and earnest voice. “When I go son, I don’t want you making a fuss about it. Just stick me in a box and shove me into the ground.”

Dad always managed to give me an opening for what some people claim to be my rather warped sense of humour. “I’ve got a better idea,” I beamed. “The farmers sometimes butcher cattle out on a point near Sosua and the offal brings in the big hammerheads—they tend to hang around there at night. What I’m thinking is that I could hire a boat, fill it with tourists and they could pay to watch a human being devoured by sharks.”
Dad and Mum
The look of horror on Dad’s face was priceless. “I don’t want the sharks to get me,” he blurted, his voice edged with fear.

“But you’ll be dead,” I assured him. “I wouldn’t throw you in until you were dead.”

“Ooooo, I still don’t want the Noah’s* to get me,” he implored me bleakly.

As it turned out, he was back in Australia when he went, some ten years later. We scattered his ashes at a place where he liked to fish. It was a freshwater river so there were no sharks to get him.

*A common term for shark in Australia. It’s rhyming slang—Noah’s arc = shark.

Saturday 8 December 2012

You can always count on your Friends


My friend Rob and I were living aboard a 26 ft. Westerly sailboat in Puerto Banús, a marina situated near Marbella, on the south coast of Spain. It’s rather an up-market place and our vessel must have been about the smallest there.
The Westerly Centaur
One evening, we were sitting in the saloon having a quiet couple of beers when the vessel gave a sudden lurch, the bow dipping down and the stern thrusting skyward.

“Someone’s come aboard,” I announced, somewhat superfluously.

“I think they’ve broken the bow off,” says Rob.

“Oh my God. Must be the Scottish girl,” I said.

The ‘Scottish Girl’ was someone I’d chatted to a couple of times at one of the local bars. She was a lovely girl with a good sense of humour. Unfortunately, she must have also had a raging appetite for food because her figure was one that might charitably be termed generous.
Being male and what some females might term ‘shallow’, my taste in women tended toward the slim-ish. But I had the impression that the ‘Scottish Girl’ had developed a not so platonic interest in me—hence my decision to stay clear of the bar that night.

I quickly slipped into the quarter berth thinking, ‘If she gets her claws on me I’m finished.’

My supposed friend Rob with dinner
(For those not-so-nautical readers, a quarter berth on a small boat is usually a single bunk situated beneath the cockpit, enclosed on the sides by the hull of the vessel and the engine bulkhead. It’s a small space about the size of a coffin. When sleeping there, one’s head is the only part sticking out into the saloon).

I’d no sooner crammed myself into the end of the quarter berth and pulled in a couple of bagged sails to stopper the entrance when I heard a Scottish voice asking Rob where I was.

“He’s just stepped out to get milk,” the bastard replied. “He’ll be back any minute. Come on down and have a cup of tea.”

I was squished into the tiniest space and extremely uncomfortable, but I couldn’t move a muscle.

The tea took fifteen minutes to prepare and drink, and when the girl expressed a desire to leave, my friend Rob talked her out of it with the offer of a beer.

I ended up being kept prisoner for half an hour. When I finally emerged, Rob had a grin from ear to ear.

Saturday 1 December 2012

Willy's Unfortunate Condition


Another Kalinka* story.

Willy and I had just returned to Gibraltar from a voyage along the coast of Spain. No need for details here—suffice to say that the trip had not gone well.

Kalinka in front of The Rock
By the time we dropped the hook in the anchorage, Willy and I had ceased to be on speaking terms due to some disagreement we’d had along the way. I was, however, civil enough to serve him a plate of the stew I’d prepared that evening.

Three things must be explained at this point:

1) The toilet on the Kalinka was situated in a corner of the saloon. It had its own enclosure, but it was right there—the door opening directly into what was basically our living room.
I had plans to move it and I think the previous owner of the vessel had the same idea because, attached to the outlet valve was a rather long length of flexible tubing. This was not marine grade reinforced rubber but more like the suction tube you’d find on a household vacuum cleaner.

2) During our little jaunt, Willy had managed to pick up some kind of stomach bug that had cleaned him out completely and left him thin as a pencil.

3) At sea, I always turn off all outlet valves.

So, Willy and I sat across the table from each other eating our meal in silence. Shortly afterwards however, that silence was broken by the gurgle and rumble of Willy’s tortured stomach.

A couple of minutes later, he made a desperate dash for the toilet.

After a rather protracted session on the throne, I heard him begin to operate the pump—a long lever situated beside the toilet bowl. It made a kind of vwooping sound. But as Willy pumped, the vwooping got higher and higher in pitch.

You stupid bastard, I thought. You’ve forgotten to open the sea cock.

I was tempted to tell him, but resisted the urge.
Willy and me in a more amicable moment

Instead, I allowed the vwooping to build to an impossible high.

Then there was a bang, like the crash of a drum at the finale of a symphony.

I pictured the scene. The hose coming off the seacock and thrashing around the small enclosure like a demented snake. As it turned out, that is exactly what happened.

A moment of silence, then the door slowly opened.

Willy looked like he’d been plucked from the Okefenokee Swamp.

Without a word he strode across the salon, climbed the companionway and I heard the splash as he went over the side.

He’d left the door to the toilet open though. And there on the back of it was a perfect silhouette of Willy.

My punishment for my lack of sympathy was that I had to do the cleaning myself as Willy’s delicate constitution was not up to the task.

*See blog dated 3-11-‘12