Though I don't have a clue as to where it will go, or to how much time I'll have to finish it, I begin this year's Advent note with a certain confidence that it, like us, will end up right if we persevere. You will recall the rapture with which I described the amazing grace which began my last year, aboard the S/V Fantome of the Windjammer fleet. Well, that was but one week and I a neophyte in the Windjammer culture. 1988's end found me flying off on Christmass day (following the most glorious Midnight Mass in my memory at the Parish of the Advent (which has turned out to be one of my strongest mainstays in the travails of my legal battles) to a full Windjammer vacation, starting in Tortola, where I boarded the S/V Flying Cloud for a week of wandering through the British Virgin Islands.
A sign of how carefree and effortless Windjamming is: my checked luggage decided not to join me for 6 days; its lack was without effect! Sure, you need a tie for the weekly Captain's dinner aboard, but that's it. Also. I'm thinking of negotiating a special "locker only" rate with them: found that my ideal place for sleeping was on the poop deck, with the stars winking me to sleep, the sea rocking me, the sails and rigging conversing with me, an occasional squall forcing me under a tarpaulin, and the few nights of heavy seas causing me to wonder why the line didn't charge a surtax for the roller coaster ride as the ship pitched and yawed, its prow frequently under the swells. Lest I appear foolhardy, I did take the precaution of lashing a leg to the ship, so as not to be surprised into an overly intimate experience of the sea.
About the S/V Flying Cloud: formerly a French cadet ship, built in the traditional style of the Privateer, she boasts a clipper bow, gold leaf scroll work and the charm of yesteryear, fitted since with air conditioning below decks. This lovely lady hosted 64 passengers and 25 crew, the latter seemingly working nonstop 24 hours a day to pamper and regale us. I did initiate a new tradition, however, which will apparently accompany me throughout my Windjammer trips: at first light, about 6:00 a.m., the ships in the fleet serve freshly cooked donuts and coffee, with juice and Bloody Marys. The steward not particularly relishing that early duty noting that I was always on deck at sunup (my bedroom. after all), agreed that I would host this early event. So it was, throughout the three weeks.
Though it was a cliffhanger getting to Tortola (only 10 minutes to make the connection at Miami), the steel band which was revving up as I boarded kept us going till the wee hours. Then, next day, on to the daily ritual: arrival in a new port (in this case Cooper Island) and the hauling of the sails being accompanied by the playing of Amazing Grace (each ship in the fleet, by the way, has different versions of the tune: I've begun a sub-collection of them). Then comes the Captain's "Story Time" at which the enthusiasm with which we greet hi, "Good morning, Captains sir!," determines the amount of rum put into the grog at swizzle time in the afternoon. Here, he briefs us on the features of the day and location. Then, on to exploration of the new turf, in many cases the arrival of our ship boosting the population of the island one-hundred-fold, a barbecue luncheon at the beach (as well as on the ship, if you got the timing of the shuttles right), back to the ship for swizzles and snacks. dressing -- or, rather, undressing -- for dinner, back up on deck for hoisting of the sails as the sun sets and we take off for our overnight trip to the next island. Such a life!
At Cooper Island, grappled my way to the top of the highest peak, there to have a panorama of all the islands the Flying Cloud would be visiting during the week. We did have our daily ten-minute rain squall (liquid sunshine). The big event that night on board was a crab race, with people going nuts over the course of their particular sand crab. The next day, Virgin Gorda was our host -where the Baths, an immense rock formation along the beach, provided a super venue for exploration and photographs. I did begin to note that, for all of its indolence, Windjamming is busy: there seems not to be a moment in the day when something isn't popping.
So it went through the Week: on to Joost van Dyke (where a trip to Foxy's led me to recording the local troubadour improvising a song about me - with my tape recorder and cameras - being a CIA agent actually doing undercover work for God!). From Great Harbour to Beef Island (can't forget the short rib barbecue). My first light duties the next day had me getting up earlier than going to bed after the farewell party, as some of the people had to debark at 05:30 for their flight. I was off to Saint Thomas ( where I found what has to be this photo addict's greatest buy ever: a 28-200 mm lens, so compact and flexible!). Not having been in St. Thomas for 20 years, where these Winter odysseys had begun, I was glad to be aboard a ship rather than inundated with pink flamingo tourism. My year ended with a flight over to Antigua, there connecting for Barbados and on to Grenada, reaching the S/V Mandalay in time to join their New Year festivities.
Had a weekend to explore Grenada, there to find that the natives (whatever our leftist compatriots might say negatively about our assisting in the aborting of the Communist rebellion) grateful that President Reagan had intervened, there to see how a British/ French/ Caribbean history had percolated into an uniquely charming culture.
About the S/V Mandalay: She is a 236' barquentine built in Copenhagen in 1923 for E.F. Hutton as the most luxurious personal yacht in the world, has more than 22,000 feet of sail. During WWII, she was a training ship for the U.S. Merchant Marines. Later she was overhauled as a research vessel and sailed more than 1.5 million miles as Columbia University's center of oceanography. We are so fortunate to have the Windjammer Fleet keeping her and her sisters alive, rather than being destined as the raw material for razor blades in Japan!
Being a "stowaway," coming on from another ship, I had the luxury of being the only passenger aboard for the weekend. When the other 70 pax arrived, I greeted them as my guests on my ship. So, in fact, the two weeks up the Grenadines went. Leaving St. John's Harbour under full sail, with Amazing Grace piping, I viewed the myriad small vessels about us as our vassals. Further. the immense steam monsters of the cruise lines had rails lined with passengers looking wistfully towards our sail craft., truly the pride of the ocean.
First stop was Carriacou, where I found three independent societies - English. French, and Spanish - each with their own quarters, shops, architecture, world. Leaving Carriacou that night, felt under the weather, retreated for the one night of the trip to my cabin, where I nursed a bout of the Flu. Next day, when I asked the captain if such was possible in this tropic clime, he responded that he was suffering from the same. So, God's medicine: slept on the beach all day, early to bed, flu gone when we reached l'Ile des Palmiers the next day. Should note that even ill, I had gotten second prize at the costume/ skit party, playing a prison warder for whom all the passengers were my prisoners (where did I ever get that idea?!).
We reached Mayreau the next morning, a neat little private island not blessed with harbor or airport: total indolence that day. Then arriving at Mustique, hiked across the island to the airport where I hoped finally to locate postage stamps, as I had become rather loaded down with my normal pouch of postcards, had till then not found a post office in the Grenadines.
At Bequia, our ship took over a local nightspot for our entertainment. Upon returning to the ship, one of the crew having become too spirited, he got into an argument with the First Mate. Only I and another passenger witnessed their altercation, which was climaxed with the sailor pulling a belaying pin from behind him and whacking the Mate over the head with it. The other passenger saying he didn't want to get involved, ran to his cabin. I roused he Captain and the two passengers whom I knew to be nurses. The Mate was taken off to find a local doctor; police were summoned, took my report, arrested the sailor. When we subsequently reached an island with proper Medical facilities, the Mate was examined, by the end of the cruise was ship-shape.
The next morning being Sunday, was able to get the local Anglican church for Mass; happily, had taken along my tape recorder, was able to tape the result of stirring traditional Anglican piety with native Caribbean exuberance - quite a treat. Had Mass not sufficiently brought to mind man's frailty, our crossing of the Bequia Channel to Saint Vincent that afternoon did. Like the passage between Tahiti and Morea in the Pacific, this channel is apparently the major conduit for this part of the Atlantic's North-South flow: so placid looking from a distance, but so violent once in it. On this calm and sunny day, swells of 15-20 feet resulted in much of the luncheon buffet and many of the passengers being decked. Safely harbored, we were again entertained with a steel band aboard. In retrospect, my decision to stay topside that night with rather heavy seas running (though all others had retreated to their cabins) was wise - the next morning a number of passengers reported that the violent sea had hurtled them from their bunks.
From St. Vincent, a calm overnight trip to St. Lucia I had remarked last year on how variegated the cultures of the Caribbean islands are; confirmation of that came on this trip. Of the fifteen islands we visited no two were similar in culture or custom. Whether these differences are contrived or accidental, they demonstrate that there is relatively little moving from island to island. On some this causes an unique handicap: when the population is less than 1,000 and generations come and go, the resultant inbreeding produces disproportionate birth defects.
Never having been to Martinique. I was struck by how totally French (rather than Caribbean) it was. Shut your eyes and the sounds convey you to Paris. Even the structures, the shops, and the frenzied traffic patterns emulate the motherland. Rather disconcerting was that I had to stand in line for 1.5 hours in order to purchase four stamps, but such is the price of my collection of postcards from everywhere I've visited in the past thirty years.
Good to get away from that frenzy to the sweet languor of Dominica - such smiles, such warm people! That the photographers among us might profit from calm seas and blue sky dappled with fleecy clouds, the Captain had every inch of sail hoisted; we were then ferried around the ship in the launch for a photo opportunity.
After a stop in Deshais, a bucolic village in the northeast Of Guadeloupe, we reached our home island of Antigua, where we berthed in Nelson's Dockyard. Our farewell dinner gave final proof (had it not been amply demonstrated before) that the Fantome always gets the highest marks in the fleet for the products of its galley. Under sail that night for St. John's Harbour, a number of the passengers and crew stayed up till the wee hours of the morning in a marathon joke-telling session.
Of course, we were greeted in the morning with the most beautiful sunrise of the trip, sort of a final salute as we prepared to return to reality. I had the good fortune to be able to delay my return for a few days' visit with friends in Miami.
Back to temporary work in the orthopaedics department at New England Medical Center - that two-week assignment ended up lasting a year, till July, after which I was with a CPA firm, a charitable foundation, Harvard's school of public health, and for the past three months at MIT, where I'm assisting in the office handling the search for a successor to its president. Such a complex and convoluted process, it seems the quest for the presidency of the U.S.A. is simple by comparison. In the 2.5 years I've been doing temp. work, I've had only one day without an assignment: the diversity of cultures and activities has been stimulating. As I intend to get back to the Jail whenever my present court matters resolve (have you ever been in the standby line at an airport, wondering whether you'll make the flight? That's how this year since I was forced out of the jail has felt!), I'm not contemplating permanent employment elsewhere.
Though there have been agonizing periods approaching despair, cosmic anger, and nervous anticipation since the matter began, I've somehow gotten used to the waiting being my present vocation. One of the greatest aids to the process has been the permanent loan to me by Claudine and Dawson of a personal computer. Nightly, I spend hours, my current project being to learn to master R-Base, a relational data base comparable to D-Base (and. depending on whom you listen to, with perhaps more attractive features than the latter ).
I've also had more time to visit with friends, one of those little pleasures I had almost forgotten in twenty years of double jobbing. Further, as others who have been trough similar travails probably know, the present difficulties have brought out support and friendship from surprising quarters. Several at the jail from both sides of the bars have contacted me. awaiting my return; the clergy of my parish have given me greater opportunity to exercise my ministry there than I had had time for; and concrete support has come from people I would not have imagined. Conversely, the severing of friendship by some former colleagues has been the most bitter part of this experience. But, as I've so often counseled others, crisis will be a disaster or an opportunity, depending on what we choose to make of it.
Further, had I not had a similar experience with the jail 12 years ago, winning my battle to stay with my vocation there, I would not have been given the suicide work. So, I believe that out of this difficulty will come some blessing that cannot be anticipated: I only wish the wait weren't so long.
Extreme frugality throughout the year, coupled with almost adequate cash now from my temporary work, as well as incredible support from a few angels (you blessed ones know who you are) make possible what I had thought would be the second great loss of my difficulty: my annual yearend trip. So, off I go again. As the S/V Polynesia sails out of Phillipsburg in St. Maarten on Christmass morning, my only chance to get to her will be to depart on Christmass Eve afternoon and thus miss Midnight Mass at the Advent.
Present plans call for a week down the Leeward islands, then back up the Windwards, over to Antigua to board the S/V Yankee Clipper for a week, again a few days with friends in Miami, and back to Boston for only God knows what 1990 has in store for me.
Please, a special prayer for me and for the people of the jail, that we might get this horrible time behind us. Also, please pray that I'll have the insight to know where I'm headed. In turn, I try constantly to thank God for your good will, and to ask Him that you be blessed in your journey Homewards!
I send much love to you at your home.
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