The Duke

Difficult to believe, that Eugene ‘Duke’ McCarron is no longer with us. For me, it was always just a given that I could go into such-and-such a bar at such-and-such a time and there would be the Duke holding court. In my view, he was as much a part of Toronto as the Royal York Hotel.

Younger days: The Duke, Simon, Paul, Me

I met the Duke some 45 years ago and not once did we exchange an angry word.

Due to my lengthy absences from Toronto, I sometimes wouldn’t see him for a number of years. But when we did meet up, it was as if the two of us had been quaffing ales just the night before.

From what I’ve heard, he went peacefully in his sleep while vacationing in the Philippines. Upon learning this, I remarked to a couple of friends, “I can only hope he snuffed it whilst on the job.”

Well, at his wake I heard a whisper that this may have been the case—well, almost—that a local young damsel may have visited his room earlier on in the evening. All I can say is that I certainly hope so.

I drove down to Toronto for the wake Friday before last. It was a brilliant event. Must have been over two hundred of his friends there!

Some years back, I returned from a voyage and needed a place to stay in Toronto. Dukey had a spare room so I ended up staying at his place for a year or so.

One Friday night, after an obviously trying day at work, my landlord arrived home a little peaked-looking—nothing like his usual self. It must have been terrible day because he’d come straight home rather than stopping at one of his watering holes.

In an attempt to cheer him up, I cracked a bottle of wine. The contents perked him up sufficiently to warrant the uncorking of another. By the time we got through this one, Dukey was back to normal. He went to his grog cupboard and produced a third bottle.

Well, we lied and laughed our way through that one then Dukey remembered he had another in the trunk of his car and went toddling off to retrieve it. He was gone for some time—not long enough for me to go searching for him, but longer than it should have taken him.

When he returned, his whole mood had changed—he seemed preoccupied and had lost his recently regained spark.

Finally I managed to coax it out of him that he’d fallen down the front steps. There were only about four of them, but they were concrete, and on each side was a concrete ledge running down at an angle a little above the steps. Apparently he’d gone plummeting over this ledge—fortunately before he’d retrieved the bottle from the car or we would have lost…errr…or he might have cut himself on broken glass.

Well, I cracked the bottle and the two of us drank, but this time, the wine didn’t shake the Duke out of his funk.

Then I noticed a pool of blood by his left foot. An examination of his leg revealed a twelve inch gash down his shin, opened up to reveal ten inches of bone!

One of the concrete ramps beside the steps had once had an iron handrail set into it. Well, the thing had rusted off and left a few little pointed nubs sticking out a couple of inches. It was one of those that had nailed Dukey’s leg.

We discussed going to the hospital, but of course neither of us was in a fit state to drive. And being Friday night, there were bound to be numerous drink-related mishaps, meaning a lengthy wait in Emergency.

So I was forced to apply a field dressing. And what a beaut it turned out to be! I first gave the wound a liberal splash of vodka (Dukey’s home contained no other medicinal supplies) then tore up an old bed-sheet with which I bound the injured limb. The dressing was then banded with duct tape to secure it in place.

Bye Dukey

Once the problem had been taken care of, the Duke perked up considerably and we carried on as before. As I recall, when that last bottle of wine had been demolished, we toasted the success of the operation with what remained of the antiseptic.

Next day some thirty-five stitches were applied to the wound. I was rather chuffed to hear that the attending doctor had a few good words to say regarding my dressing.

Well, a month or so later, off I went on another voyage.

It was from somewhere in the Caribbean I learned that Dukey had had a leg amputated. Oh, my God, I thought!

But as it turned out, it was not the one I’d attended to.

 When I first arrived in Toronto--back when dinosaurs roamed the planet--the only pub in town, the Bull & Bear, was the watering holefor all the ex-pat Aussies, Brits and South Africans. Whenever new blood, in female form, showed up there, Dukey would be the first to buy her a drink.

Duke, I can only hope that wherever you've gone, some young damsel will buy you a few.

Davina

An Interlude at an Historic Retreat in Gibraltar

The old Kalinka in front of The Rock

Gibraltar was an interesting place when I lived there aboard the old ex-British Navy vessel Kalinka. In those days it was a big smuggling port—cigarettes, hashish and anything else that a devious mind could contrive to sneak past grasping government talons. A not uncommon boatyard sight was some intrepid mariner adjusting the waterline of his vessel upward a notch or two in order to accommodate more weight than the vessel was intended to carry.

Because of the nature of the place and due to a legal misunderstanding, combined with an obstinate old beak at the bench, I was offered a nine month, fully paid stay in Gibraltar’s historic gated community.

There were not many guests at the time of my visit, so I was given a room to myself in accommodations that had at one time been a military barracks—constructed sometime in the late eighteen-hundred’s. In order to ensure adequate security for the present non-military occupants, the doors had been strengthened and glass windows replaced by reassuring steel bars.

The night watchman was an old geezer who in the past had held the position of Police Chief. I know he’d been unfaithful to his oath of office because one evening, before I went to my room, he was regaling me with tales of the old cigarette smuggling days when supercharged PT boats roared out of Gibraltar with their cargoes, headed for Spain and Italy. At one point he became carried away with his story and said, “The cargo boats would bring the cigarettes in and we’d unload…errr, they’d unload the boxes directly onto…”

Although I’m not overly fond of bent cops (if you’re going to be a crook, be an honest one is my view) what I did later had no personal overtones—it was done simply in the pursuit of amusement:

At around eleven in the evening the old boy would make his rounds, shining his flashlight in through the windows to make sure we were all snugly tucked in. I’d learned—from one of the more frequent visitors to the establishment—that he didn’t hold keys to our rooms. Well, this particular night I decided to relieve him of his boredom.

I collected a bunch of stuff together and made a crude effigy of myself. A ball of clothing served as my head; a crumpled piece of black cloth became my hair and I puffed the covers out with various bits and pieces of clothes and bedding. A blind man could have seen that this was not me. When I heard him coming I slipped under the bed.

First day outside the retreat

The beam of the flashlight swept into the room…lingered…then came a loud gasp. The light went out and I heard the sound of running feet. I would never have thought the old boy capable of the swiftness of movement that the rapidly receding footfalls indicated. Thank God his ticker didn’t give up the ghost.

Quickly disassembling the effigy I put all the pieces back where they belonged, then hopped into bed. Fifteen minutes later, when I again heard running footsteps—this time  approaching—I contrived to snore softly.

The door was thrown open and a light beamed in my face. “Wha…whas happening,” I stammered.

There was a moment of silence then a growled, “Nothing,” from one of the two hard-looking gentlemen at my bedside. I could see in the glow of the flashlight, the old boy just outside the door looking distinctly sheepish.

The door was slammed shut and locked and as the footsteps receded, I heard the words, “…need f-----g glasses,” in a rather unkind tone of voice.

I chuckled myself to sleep.

Lovely to hear that Peter was once welcomed into a stately home. Davina

It's Neutral Territory. Should be Safe

I met Maxie in the port of Vilamoura, Portugal. He was sitting in the cockpit of a fifty-foot wooden ketch, a beer in one hand and a pair of binoculars clamped to his eyes in the other. The glasses were directed aloft to where a young man in a bosun’s chair was applying a coat of varnish to the mast.

As I walked past on the dock, the man with the beer piped up in a broad Australian accent, “Ya missed a bit to yer left.”

I paused and glanced up to observe the young man’s reaction. I can’t be sure, but I believe he rolled his eyes. I dropped mine back to the cockpit. “Don’t go exertin’ yerself,” I said, reviving my own Aussie twang.

The man lowered his binoculars and turned to me. “Maybe you could come aboard and lend a hand,” he replied, opening a cooler and pulling out a frosted beer.

That’s how I came to meet Maxie. I helped him out for several hours that afternoon and we repaid each other in kind on a number of occasions during my stay at Vilamoura. I left the marina before Maxie. I was headed off to somewhere I can’t recall.

A couple of years later I ran into him at the anchorage of Spanse Water in Curacao, down in the Caribbean, where we did a bit of catch-up.

One of Maxie’s adventures involved the evacuation of a wealthy family from Lebanon during one of the spikes in the civil war. He had apparently run into some character in Malta who’d offered him a sizable sum to get these people out of the war-torn country. Obviously, due to the amount of money offered, the venture was not without peril.

The pick-up point was a run-down wharf somewhere near Tripoli. Maxie had been assured by his contact that it was a neutral place and relatively safe.

As Maxie told it, he tied up at the wharf on time, waited an hour for his passengers to show up, then headed out to sea. He was about a mile offshore when a shell hit the wharf and blew it to smithereens.

Maxie and I might well have been the proverbial two ships passing in the dark, for as it turned out, I happened to be in those very same waters around the same time.

A couple of Dutchmen, an American and yours truly had sailed there from Holland in a sixty-five foot, twin screw ex-Dutch Navy vessel to pick up a quantity of the famed Lebanese tobacco. My friend Rob had flown to Tripoli a month ahead of us in order to get things organized.

At a particular time on a particular evening I was to rendezvous with Rob twenty-five miles due east of Tripoli. If for some reason things didn’t work out the first evening, we would try again, two times more if necessary.

Well, as Murphy would have it, all three nights were washouts. But like diligent boy scouts, we were prepared with a back-up plan. We re-grouped in Heraklion, Crete, and it was there that Rob regaled us with the details of his little adventure.

On the first night, he and a motley crew of locals had set out with the cargo from a small port somewhere south of Tripoli. They were in an open vessel of around thirty-five feet—an old ship’s lifeboat Rob figured.

In the bow, perched on a small triangle of decking was a belt machine gun manned by two men. Behind them, a snaggle-toothed older man brandished a loaded rocket launcher, while at the stern the captain sat by the tiller on a wooden box, flanked by two more men with AK47 rifles. The product was piled high amidships.

According to Rob, the operation was rather haphazard. No one had bothered to secure the machine gun to the deck so the two men in charge of it spent most of their time trying to prevent it from falling overboard as the boat rolled. The captain bantered and laughed with his two companions, occasionally glancing at a compass held between his legs while steering what appeared to be a completely erratic course.

When Rob and his seafaring friends failed to find us on this first night they headed home a bit before daybreak. There was apparently some confusion as to their intentions as they steamed back into port: Their own men opened fire on them from the shore. Fortunately no one was hit before their identity was established.

The next evening, off they went again. I don’t recall the details of how this particular debacle came about, but the morning found them way off course—some fifteen or so miles west of Syria with one of that country’s gunboats in sight.

To Rob’s horror, the captain decided to attack the gunboat and altered course to intercept. The crew were in the process of preparing weapons when a second enemy vessel appeared. Fortunately for all concerned, discretion overcame valour and they scuttled back to Lebanese waters.

The third evening was uneventful but they again failed to reach the rendezvous. On this occasion though, Rob managed to determine one of the reasons why they appeared to be wandering all over the ocean. The box upon which the captain perched was filled with hand grenades. The metal in these weapons obviously rendered the magnetic compass between his legs useless.

Rob flew back to Lebanon and a couple of days later we managed to connect. But it was luck rather than good management. I arrived at the rendezvous a couple of hours early. To kill time, I headed south for an hour then did a one-eighty to retrace my steps.

It was after I’d turned around and was steaming north that I spotted them. They were headed south—away from the meeting place. Where they were off to, I have no idea and I doubt their captain did either!

The swine told me he was doing a charter in the Greek Islands! Davina

A Fouled Propeller, a Dastardly Dutchman and a Chain

I was moored in Chichester Marina, England when I decided to sell my twenty-six foot Westerly Centaur. After a year of living aboard, it felt like she was shrinking around me—I needed something a trifle roomier.

She was in tip-top shape and sold quickly. The new owner, Steve, wanted the boat as a home- away-from-home on the south coast of Portugal but had done little ocean sailing. So he hired me to get her down there. It was mid-October when the two of us set off—not the best time to be sailing these waters as the weather tended to be a little unsettled.

Whenever we encountered contrary winds during our passage along the South Coast of England, we would put in to the closest harbour. Once on dry land, we’d seek out pubs that brewed their own ales. Some marvellous examples of the brewer’s art were quaffed. As might be imagined, it took far less than a gale to send us heading for refuge.

Just east of Plymouth, on a bright sunny day, the wind died to a whisper. We proceeded under power until, with a horrible screeching, wrenching sound, the engine stalled. A glance aft showed a thick piece of yellow rope trailing astern.

Donning a mask and fins I reluctantly plunged over the side into the icy water. Despite my wearing of a wetsuit, it was an unpleasant dip—made even more so by the fact that the rope had fused itself so tightly around the propeller-shaft that my knife proved absolutely useless. I swapped it for a hacksaw and managed—after about four dives—to free the propeller.

Ahhh, thinks I, clambering back aboard—takes more than a piece of rope to stop us intrepid mariners. But I was wrong. When I tried to restart the engine, horrible noises issued forth from its compartment. The engine rested on rubber mounts, two of which had torn loose. The shaft coupling was also broken.

During the afternoon, the whisper of a breeze arrived—just enough to ghost us into Plymouth’s outer harbour with the help of an incoming tide. We were within spitting distance of the yacht basin, savouring the imagined taste of the ales in town when the wind died and the wretched tide turned. Slowly at first, but with gathering speed, we were carried back out to sea.

Throughout our watches during that frosty night, Steve and I were able to observe the warm glow of lights on shore and envision happy people sitting in front of crackling fires in cozy pubs downing pints of delicious ales.

The next afternoon we managed to drift into port, assuage our thirsts and begin to repair the damage caused by the rope. Three days later we were on our way again.

It wasn’t until we were well past Lisbon, Portugal with darkness closing in that the barometer began its plunge. I thought of turning around and heading back to Lisbon, but I have this thing about losing ground. I sent out a radio message to any ships in the vicinity and a Dutchman responded. “No storms in the area,” he assured me. Well, thought yours truly, the Dutch are fine mariners so all must be well.

But it wasn’t. Perhaps he’d discovered that his wife had enjoyed a fling with an Australian during one of his voyages and I became the scapegoat. The bastard was probably laughing into his Schnapps or Geneva or whatever he was drinking as the barometer continued its plunge.

The wind came howling in from the north, bringing with it a lashing rain. We were making good time with just the small headsail hoisted, but it was a miserable ride with waves breaking over the stern and sloshing into the cockpit.

A little before dawn, the wind backed to the south-west but by this time we were south of Cabo de São Vicente—the south-west corner of Portugal—so were able to push on toward our destination of Vilamoura.

Cabo de São Vicente and Ponta de Sagres—which is situated a couple of miles to the south east of Cabo—tower almost vertically to heights of over two hundred feet. Huge, confused waves generated by the storm were building upon each other and battering against these fortress-like walls, sending clouds of spray over their tops.

We’d hoisted a reefed mainsail by this time and were trying to claw our way south, away from those towering chunks of rock. But as if in league with the cliffs, the wind continued backing south, pushing us toward them. Once we’d squeaked by Ponta de Sagres though, we had sea room as the land begins to curve inward.

Paul sitting on top of the lighthouse 

By the time we were approaching Marina Vilamoura, the wind had eased considerably and the sea was beginning to smooth out. The entrance to the marina is through two stone breakwaters that face roughly south. As we approached the shore, the sea-bed began to shelve and the waves started building again. I started the engine, lined us up with the port entrance and began to ride the waves in.

But I had an uncomfortable feeling—something more than just surfing a twenty-six foot boat through a rocky entrance, because I had Steve go forward to keep a lookout. We were well inside the two breakwaters, surfing on a wave when he turned to me and yelled, “There’s a chain across the entrance.” I jammed the tiller hard over and gave the engine full throttle. Steve came bounding back to the cockpit and flattened the headsail.

Almost on the beach

If one of the incoming waves caught the bow, the boat would have ended its days on the rocks of the breakwater—but the Gods were merciful and gave us a little calm patch until we were outside the entrance. Then three big waves came rolling in and almost put us on the beach. Somehow we managed to claw our way back into deep water and re-set our course for Cadiz, Spain—a harbour with an easy entrance.

Arriving back in Vilamoura a few days later, the Port Captain denied that there’d ever been a chain across the entrance. But I later ran into Paul, a friend who’d been perched atop one of the lighthouses at the end of the east breakwater and had watched our entire performance. Yes, he told me—there had been a chain.

Why it had been put there I have no idea.

Maybe the Dutchman got it right - Davina

Warriors, Wannabes & the Perils of Practicing Law

I grew up in Australia during an age when war tended to be glorified. Our teachers taught us that our young nation came of age through the heroism of our fighting men at Gallipoli during the First World War. There were pictures of that fine fiasco all over the school walls.

I call it a fiasco because management landed the troops in the wrong place—a narrow beach backed by an impossibly steep cliff—topped by a bunch of Turks with machine guns. Needless to say, casualties were high.

But the men continued to climb into the Turkish bullets. To the glory of Australia.

Perhaps that’s why, in 1965, when the draft lottery for Vietnam was introduced for all twenty-year-old's, I looked forward to being picked. An adventure, I thought at the time. At twenty, you believe you’re invincible.

Much to my parents delight—and my chagrin—I was not one of the chosen. 

Many years later, I met Wayne King in the Dominican Republic. He was born in Canada where there was no Vietnam draft. But at age twenty—obviously equipped with around the same mental capacity as me at that age—he decided to volunteer. His plans were thwarted by an older brother who put him in hospital over his stupidity.

A dog of war

By the time I got to know Wayne, he was a lawyer practicing in Kingston, Ontario. I had lunch with him twice in that city and both times he insisted on sitting with his back to the wall facing the restaurant entrance. I never discovered whether this precaution was to prevent a disgruntled client or an outraged prosecutor from sneaking up behind him and slipping a steak knife into his back.

Although I never witnessed Wayne in court, he was reputed to be a flamboyant advocate. An acquaintance who was defended by him described him as ‘red-faced and passionate, his black robe billowing out like a crusader’s cape as he strode back and forth before the jury’.

As fate would have it, his dramatic approach to the defense of a particular villain resulted in his undoing; at the age of fifty-something, cape billowing impressively as he swept around a crowded courtroom, his ticker gave up the ghost and he crashed to the floor, never to rise again.

Then there was Trenton. Crazy Trenton, trying to outrun his Vietnam demons on his motorcycle. He arrived in the Dominican Republic a couple of years after me. I only rode with him once—that was enough.

He’d been a helicopter pilot over in Vietnam and been shot down in hostile territory. Apparently his best buddy had been injured too badly in the crash to walk away so Trenton, rather than allow him to fall into the hands of the Viet Cong, shot him at his friend's request. Hardly surprising that the memory would chase him.

Returning from a bar one night on his motorcycle, Trenton hit three cows that had wandered onto the highway and cut two of them in half. The police figured he was doing over a hundred miles per hour when he finally escaped his demons.

In the 80's and 90's, the Dominican Republic was a kind of dumping ground for the wanted, the unwanted, the damaged and the different.

It's also where I met Larry, an aggressive five-foot-six martial arts expert who was reputed to have beaten Chuck Norris in one bout.

Larry became addicted to warfare. He did three tours in Vietnam and volunteered for a fourth. He was sent for psychiatric evaluation and turned down. It seemed that the army wanted fighters, but not overly eager ones.

He became a mercenary in Angola where a twelve-year-old kid blew off his leg with a shotgun.

Despite losing his leg, being bayoneted in the butt and shot a couple more times, I believe that if the military had put out a request for one-legged soldiers, Larry would have been first in line to volunteer.

And thus is the nature of Man: Davina

       

Almost Pirate Gold

I think you could count winning the lottery as luck. There are other times that might appear to be simple luck, but I think there’s more to it than that—I think it’s the brain doing a computer-like calculation and telling you to take a certain course of action.

One of those times occurred to me in the 1980’s when I was between sea voyages and living in Toronto. My friend Jan Creba bought me a book written by Morton Shulman—How to Invest your Money and Profit from Inflation. Why she bought me the book, I have no idea. I had no knowledge of—or interest in—investing at the time.

But I’d always been fascinated by gold (the pirate treasure kind), so it was Mort’s section on the magical yellow metal that caught my attention. He made three basic suggestions as I recall, ranging from the conservative to the rather bold. I opted for the latter which, if memory serves, went something like this: If you have $10,000 that you can afford to lose, buy gold futures.

What possessed me to follow the advice of this writer I’d never heard of before? Who knows…that little computer brain thing perhaps. Anyway, I began my investment career with two futures contracts. Whenever gold went up a dollar, I made $200. I bought the contracts when it was just over $400 an ounce and it began shooting up.

The whole thing worked out rather well for me—over the course of around three months I made about $140,000. At one time I held six contracts. I remember the time as a wild, roller-coaster ride.

Another benefit of my little foray into the investment world was the free food and grog. Friends and acquaintances were desperate to discover the secret of my success so there was rarely a day went by that I didn’t have an invitation to lunch or dinner. I started off by telling the truth—that I’d been given a book and I was simply following its advice—but no one wanted to believe it was that simple and after forking out for the food and booze, they’d leave disappointed.

So I began to make stuff up. I’d draw meaningless graphs on napkins and fire off a bunch of statistics—the kind of stuff stock brokers waffle on about to convince you to buy. Stuff that kind of validates what’s already happened but has no bearing whatsoever on the future.

But the bulls--t appeared to be more palatable to my hosts. At the end of the meal, they’d tuck their napkin graphs carefully into pockets and smilingly pay the bill, as if they’d absorbed some great wisdom.

Toward the end of the ride, when gold was up over $800 per ounce, it began to waver. But good old Mort had left instructions for such a circumstance. Buy short, he advised, at the first signs of weakness. And so I did. I was now making money as it began to go down.

Funny though—people don’t always appreciate success when it’s you who’s enjoying it rather than them. I was walking into my local bar one night when someone I vaguely knew was leaving. “How’s your gold doing now?” he pipes up with a gleeful smirk on his face.

“Fine thanks,” I replied politely. “I bought short.” The grin dropped from his face like a rock.

How come I wasn’t invited to help spend the loot? Davina

Amsterdam

Amsterdam. My favourite city of all those I’ve visited.

When you mention Amsterdam, most people think in terms of puffing pot in cafés and window shopping in the Red Light District. But these unique aspects of the place are simply the result of what I like about the city—its tolerance and quirkiness.

A couple of examples:

I was staying with Derek, an old friend from my Gibraltar days. His apartment was above a bar called Babbles in an area known as ‘The Pipe’—right near the Heineken brewery (a rather unfortunate location for a sober lad like myself).

A couple of 'Babbles' regulars

Around two o’clock one morning, after the bar closed, Cappy the manager decided it would be a good time to have a barbecue on the patio. There were about five of us as I recall. Obviously, after a night at the trough, all of us had consumed quite a few ales—and we weren’t about to slow down while we waited for the charcoal to get the right glow.

So I guess our voices were a little loud. They had to be in order for us to converse above the music. Needless to say it wasn’t too long before a police car arrived.

The two officers—a man and a woman—did not act at all aggressively. But Cappy took exception to their mere presence. “Fook off you Gestapo bastards,” he yelled, before either of them had even said a word. (Cappy was Dutch but spoke English for our benefit I guess). He then proceeded to throw a couple of raw steaks at them, which they managed to dodge.

In parts of North America you could be shot for something like this. In Amsterdam, one of the cops yelled out for us to keep the noise down then the two of them got back in their car and drove off – taking their steaks with them!

Another time, shortly after I arrived there, a few of us were sitting out on the patio on a sunny spring day having a late morning beer as we watched the goings-on in the street.

Derek suddenly sat up in his chair, focussed his gaze on a far corner and said, “This should be interesting lads. The Colombians are setting up a deal.” He nodded toward the corner. “There’s the point man. In a couple of minutes one of them will walk by here to the other corner…”

Spider, Cappy, Derek

Derek had seen it all before and rattled off the moves as if he’d choreographed the whole thing himself. There was quite a bustle of activity involving the comings and goings of swarthy gentlemen and cars driving past. We had a ringside seat.

When the whole business was over and we’re settling back in our seats, an old lady pipes up from the street, “Did any of you boys drop this?” She’s holding up a Beretta 9mm by the trigger guard. We were all obviously a little taken aback. Not so much that the Colombians might be carrying pistols and one of them dropped the thing, but that this sweet-looking lady wasn’t shrieking in alarm.

Spider was the first to recover. “Oh, thank you,” he says, getting to his feet. “Yes, that’s mine.”

Sounds like I’m making this stuff up but I’m not. Amsterdam is truly a one-off. I spent six months there and there was always something interesting going on.

Oh yes, right—tolerance and quirkiness. Try hookers and pot!

Davina