The Streets

“Dadadadadaa”, Danny says, as he walks down the dock, his constant easy smile glaring across his face as he moves with a certain step and at 71 the man has swagger. I am sure that in his younger years he was the Latin killer that Julio Iglesias sang about.  As he walks down the dock more friends follow, for a second week in a row he has come to visit Chappy. A sailor from a near port, he sailed in last week for lunch, and once he set eyes on Chappy’s lines I think he found himself swirling in love.  It’s not hard, Chappy’s charm caused me to buy her on the spot and the first time I sailed her up Narragansett Bay I knew it was a fatal attraction that would cause me to do something so very crazy, like run off into the sunset. We sit on the dock talking shop, swapping swashbuckling stories.   It’s evident that these men are not D'Artagnans pretty paraders, but real blood and guts type having been all over, and they tend to only go sailing when everyone else won’t. It’s just who they are. As we sat eating pinchos and talking a jet ski comes up and at slow speed and taps into Chappy, elevating Giberto to his feet as if the man just slapped his wife, and in full bloom his Spanish becomes unclear….for the first few words the man doesn’t care; then sorrow falls across his face, he makes eye contact and suddenly his Spanish becomes very proper, his words start to stutter as if being spoken like the hangman begging for his life. I look at Danny, who is sitting there smiling as if he has never seen the sun, and I ask, “What is he saying”. Danny, looking around the sky, says “You don’t need to know that kind of Spanish James.  I can tell you he has thrown the book at him, you see my friend here is someone, someone that man doesn’t want to mess with.”  No quarter is give and Gustavo continues to go on, his words becoming faster, the man half his age looking to disappear but won’t until Giberto releases him. The man bows in sorrow and slowly retreats.  An hour later it’s settled they will be sailing with me to Boquerón where I am planning on spending Easter week. They have made arrangements for Chappy to have a perfect stay.

In the dark, I rolled down the shore in my new friend Freddie’s Baja style jeep, its tires humming on the road, the wind blowing cooling the hot night, reminding me of my youth riding around with my dad in a doorless jeep in the hot desert night. Reaching Boquerón the main streets were closed to cars and there were a thousand people in the street. A spectacle of food drinks and music it is simple perfection. There are no police and no need, everyone is there to be there and have a good time. As we walked down the street I was surprised to see it was a family affair, young and old; families setting up chairs in the street just hanging out watching it all go by. After dinner we found a table near the center, had a sweaty beer, listening to music while people watching. All of a sudden there was an eruption, people screaming, jumping and running through the streets….Puerto Rico had just beat Venezuela in pelota (baseball) causing a whole new beat on the street, the bands played harder the people talked louder and the salsa on the sidewalk began. It’s not a holiday it just another Saturday night in Boquerón. It’s funny the city isn’t nice, but the vibe has reminded me once again that things don’t have to be perfect to be perfect; the ever constant lesson of this trip. It is addicting to live in a world where stress doesn’t exist. I just need to remember to keep both feet in this one. It’s too easy with technology to keep a foot in two worlds.

The Princess Bride, X marks the spot and Cool Runnings

So a pelican walks in to the restaurant…..no really a pelican just walked in and is standing in the doorway not letting anyone in or anyone out.  The sight is too much for the patrons to handle and has suddenly turned everyone into Facebook Paparazzi’s jumping up out of their chairs and snapping pictures of the larger than life bird. Unfazed by the flying flashes, he turns his head front and back, side to side and as if on the red carpet he gives one last snap signaling “that is enough” and slowly saunters in eyeing every person carefully as if looking for the man who killed his father. Suddenly he stops, puffing his feathers then spreading his massive wings as if impaled on a cross, staring at the man who is eating with his wife. In the silent discomfort the man puts down his fork and gulps what appears to be his last bite, shifting in his chair as if he had been caught in a lie, he reaches up and adjusts his glasses and checks his hair with a sweeping motion over the top. His wife looks at him and the man returns the look as if he has no idea what this is about , he looks down at his plate, then back around the room giving his best “Im innocent… it’s a bird people “ look but no eyes flinch, all eyes are settled on him, the guilty. The Pelicans massive 6ft wing span still blocking the man in and in the silence I swear I heard “My name is Inigo Montoya you killed my father prepare to die.” After a min or two the pelican drops his wings half way and starts to walk to the back door turning every few steps locking eyes with the man. When he gets to the back door he turns and faces the man one last time calling him out, then walks 4 paces from the door and turns staring in, presumably waiting for the marked man. When I leave I will be looking for congregations of pelicans on the roof tops, poles, wires and on the ground. If they are there I am leaving tonight in order to get away from the marked man, this town and the fate to come. Thanks Hitchcock for feeding these birds something more than people food, you have fed them ideas. Apparently I am not the only one who has been to Bodega Bay.

For the last few weeks and for at least the next month I will be in Puerto Real PR situated on a small bay  almost lagoon on the south western coast of the island. With mangroves, manatees and the biggest tarpon you have ever seen it’s a cool place. Poor in appearance and wealth but loaded with character and good people, this is a perfect hamlet to try to learn Spanish as very few people speak any English here.  If you were walking along the main street on your left you will come to the Pescaderia Carro Valle (Carro Valle fish market), a bright yellow building with red fish painted on it, it’s clean on the inside and full of beautiful seafood. Usually at the front counter you will find Carro’s wife Mildred, about the same age as my mother she has taken it upon herself to be my Puerto Rican mother and helping me a great deal with my Spanish. Her younger years were spent in Brooklyn and she still speaks perfect English but won’t EVER since I told her I wanted to learn Spanish; maybe she just likes to watch me struggle.  When you get to the back of the market you will find an old man with a wooden leg waddling around snapping it forward to walk, usually with a knife in his hand, he’s the fish butcher. Meticulous in his fish cutting, he is serious, always eyes me with a deep stare (like the pelican) mouth closed, he just keeps looking at me, breathing heavy over his white moustache as if the verdict is still out on me (sound familiar), swirling his knife high in the air and slamming it down on the board he will slowly look back up at me. Little happens around here and little will happen fast, always echoing the words of Earl in my head as I deal around town, “don’t expect things will get faster, count on them to get slower” The nameless butcher returning my hellos may take a while. If you walked out the back door, down the dock you will find Chappy on the right passing her and moving to the end you will find a crossing dock which is a large seating area, built with thick wood planks spaced about one inch apart the green water peering through, once painted red, long ago it has lost its luster taking on a charming patina after years of rain and sun.  The benches all around built in the same fashion; they are comfortable for any length of deliberation and my new office. The rusty tin roof above shields me from the sun and rain surprisingly well having been riddled with rust in a pattern of machine gun fire. Maybe Che hung out here on a sabbatical from freedom fighting and after a few rums in a fit of passion shot up the place. I would like to think that; it’s the romantic in me.  

During the days Chappy is getting sanded down, new paint, varnish and rebedded. Around here good skilled boat maintenance labor runs around $7.25 an hour and at that price, have at it boys. Of course nothing is perfect and the slower rule does apply here. The guys working on the boat bust their humps but the min they work enough to cover their beer or who knows what money for the night they are done, will leave and when the money is gone they come back. I am glad I am planning on spending over a month here or I would be banging my head against the wall.  Good thing is the boat looks great.  Recently I posted a video of me ridding to the bank with one of the boat workers  in a cab. There was no gas tank left on the car just a jerry jug stuffed in the engine compartment with a hose going into it, capped with a rag and a spare gas can in the back seat next to me. The driver couldn’t understand my protest as he lit up a cigarette but soon understood my phobia of being burned alive in a Buick 98 and tossed it out the window. Rolling down the street like 3 G’s we blared Reggaetone but as we approached the town a more crooner style music was played. The driver looking back at me and in broken English/Spanish said “this one is for the ladies.”

To stay fit I have been running in the mornings. At day break I head up the road finding many sprints in me to avoid the millions of loose dogs and of course the cars give me an agility workout since they don’t know what to do with a runner. As they pass they will slow down and swerve at me inorder to get a better look, usually as they past every head is turned and looking at me as if I were “Cool Runnings”

Outbound in an inbound kind of life.

In a future blog that I will title: Bow ties and those chasing the debutant dream, I will explore Charleston in more depth. A fantastic city and my Santa Barbara of the East, which was tough for me to leave but I knew I had to before the mayor resigned and handed me his keys to the “holy city”. With keys to those gates I would have been stuck there forever. First off the combined good bye lunches, dinners and parties seemed to be a week long thanks to my new BFF and fellow Charleston transient Amanda who sailed in from Bar Harbor Maine, had spent a few weeks and was jumping on a plane to Bangkok sometime in the same week. The city rolled it all out for us in ways I have never seen. Everyone said it was southern hospitality…well ok then, you talked me into it, I will come back again someday and stay forever. The reality is I have to coe back since I don’t have my Bill Murray story yet. What? Yep I spent a month and don’t have a Bill story. All self-respecting Charlestonians have a Bill Murray story. Apparently he lives south of Broad, can be found most days standing in his drive way smoking cigarettes while on the phone or as the maniac parent at any of his kids soccer games. (He surprisingly seems to hold even more status with the locals than Steven Colbert. I met a college professor who just moved to the neighborhood, was having a bad morning, got pissed at a clueless driver and when the car pulled into a nearby drive way he stopped rolled down his window gave the driver a “few pointers”. To his surprise Bill Murray got out of the car and has been trying to get my friend to go to anger management classes ever since. Its been two years the professor says,  “even if I run into Bill while walking my dog, Bill will remind me of my hidden anger issues while crossing the street to get away.” Or there was the story of the guy who came out of a restaurant to find that his brand new Mercedes had been involved in a hit and run, standing in despair the man heard a voice from behind say “I just witnessed a bus hit your car”. The man turned around to find Bill Murray standing there. I won’t get into the whole story but they ended up on a wild goose chase down town in order to track down the bus that hit the guys car. When they finally caught up to the bus the driver who was unaware that he hit the car hesitant to stop because he thought it was a joke that Bill Murray jumped in front of oncoming traffic in  Market Street to try to stop his bus.

 Somewhere between King st and East Bay I caught that nasty east coast flu epidemic which forced me for days to stay in bed, only getting up once a night to go to Salty Mikes for my “last cheeseburger and tots” before I left because I was bound and determined to leave the next day….in the morning I would awake cough up a lung and go back to sleep. As Sunday approached I knew that I would be in spirits to leave, the weather was looking right and said my final, final, final good byes. That morning I woke to a thick fog, rolled my eyes and went back to bed, waking 3 hours later to find that it had not lifted and fell again back to sleep…suddenly I heard a banging on the hull “ James get up the fog has lifted you need to go before you miss the tide” Thanks Ted (another Torontonian whom I have mutual friends with…such a small world) I fired up the motor, Ted helped me with the lines and I headed down the river to exit the harbor only to find the harbor entrance fogged in by a wall of smoke. As I drew near a Coast Guard turned and stared coming at me at ramming speed, lights blaring…”Jeeezzz what is with this town, first they weren’t going to let me in and now they are not going to let me out.” Nearly T-bone-ing me the cutter made a hard stop, the deck officer stepped out looked down at me and sternly asked me to wait before I squeezed through the narrow channel as there were 4 1000ft ships blindly coming in back to back. A man standing behind a 50 cal machine gun can be very persuasive as well as my AIS alarm was going off like a midnight slot in the middle of some cheap lonely casino in Pahrump Nevada. It was really cool waiting in the clear sunshine watching the wall of fog then suddenly seeing the bow of a freighter break through like an angry bird into the clear, patches of cloud still stuck to its face, like mustaches and eye brows. Finally as the last ship rolled in, the fog was lifting slightly and I could see why the coast guard was so uptight. A cargo ship had run aground on the other side of the channel. Sailing out was a deeply sweet feeling as I was ready for the voyage, which is important, sailing 1600 miles alone is not something to be taken lightly and something that was thoroughly tested 2 days later when a front rolled through bringing in a rough 24 hrs. I was cooking lunch when I got the initial report, 40 kts of wind which I was ok with, 20 ft seas not my fav but ok.  Then NOAA followed up stating  that 20 ft was the average and that some waves would be 2x that size, 40 ft…now that’s a game changer. I spent about an hour or so thinking about my storm tactic made all my prep and moves early and when it came impossible out, I sat in the cockpit feeling  like I was sitting in the back of a truck going through a Buffalo car wash, waves breaking over the bow, lashed in, wearing only my swim trunks and harness. Slowly I counted to 3 and coolly brought the boat up into the wind to face the monsters in front of me, jumped on deck and back filled the jib, set the main( I actually had to shake out a reef to get the sail area to hold the boat) and laid hard on the tiller. Like Jesus raising his hands to the sea, Chappy went to a dead stop, perfectly cradled up to the waves (Sailor note: about a .4 nmile drift)(Non-sailor note: laying a hull is kind of like putting a boat into whats called irons. In this case, by conflicting the wind direction with the forward sail and the main sail in combination with the tiller to offset to the wave direction, the opposing forces counter act each other stopping the boat. This action DRAMATICLY calms the boat down and is very safe) . After laying a hull I sipped tea from my bunk, played mindless games on my Ipad and listened to the boat get hammered by the surf like a kid stuffed in a metal trash can by bullies, rolled down a rocky hill, while they run along smashing the shit out of it with baseball bats. The boat shook so hard after being hit by two conflicting waves that it knocked my bow lights out of the socket. But all night Chappy held fast and strong. Although small and lacking in some creature comforts there is one thing I can count on…Chappy is one of the toughest boats out here, whom, theoretically I knew could take it with no issues but doing it is another thing.Like most of life peace of mind at sea is way more important than the novelties, besides the boat wasn’t the issue and maybe I should rewrite and say, I was concerned whether or not I could take it? Could I stay awake, clear in whit and have the burst of energy to handle whatever when it all goes wrong? Because there is always a time when it does and it takes everything you got. Anyone who has been here knows that the trash can is a really good analogy, you can’t sleep, you can’t stop the noise, the feeling of the boat falling off the waves all in the darkness, water finding its way into every corner (even opening the hatch, which you have to do, for just long enough to step out coats everything in salt). Around 3 am the AIS alarm went off due to an approaching ship on a collision course, calling him up I let him know that I was not underway and wanted to know what the current wind speed was as I had no way of knowing; everything and I mean everything on top of the mast blew or shook off ,lights, windex, antenas…etc (which doubly sucks because I just replaced it after Hurricane Sandy). I am glad I installed a second antenna for the AIS/VHF. The wind was now sustained over 50mph with gusts. As official and captain-ish as I tried to sound over the radio I know the captain knew I was a bit freaked out. When the front passed a day later there was some damage, some things missing, but all really small stuff, I got the boat fixed up and sailed on in the most brilliant weather you will ever find. Sometime in the following night I woke and went on deck seeing something I have never seen before; Stars thickly sprinkled from the edge of the water to the other edge of the water, true horizon to horizon. I was suddenly standing in space. With a rebel yell I pulled her in close to the wind, grabbed the jack lines like reigns, bounding over the water I rode the boat into the nights sky like Alan Sheppard on Apollo 14.

Its approaching noon, the sun is windlessly hot.  Not like the warming South Carolina sun, its piercing like the tropics. Apparently I have crossed a line somewhere. I toss a canvas bucket over the side into the azul-ish~blanca water, the kind you only find in the middle of an ocean. It looks so nice that I have to fight a deep urge to not climb onto the cabin top to do a back flip in…..3-2-1 and I see myself now in the water, the boat drifting away from me faster than I can swim….1-2-3. We will put that one on top of my dumbest ideas list, although still not topping my decision to ride my bike down Suicide Hill when I was 7 with no brakes. That one still tops the list because I actually did it, still have the bump in my bone where it broke and a few scars for road stories.  Instead I settle for the bucket, dumping it over my head, the 79*f  water is amazing, dumping bucket after bucket, over and over again finding myself yelling with happiness every time the water hits me, like a kid playing in sprinklers. Grabbing some soap I start to scrub myself clean staring out into the vast blueness. I have the best shower in the world, the purest water and a warm sky. When I am done I dry my face, put on only my sunglasses and stand on the foredeck sipping the first coffee I have had in over 2 weeks letting myself dry in the sun. I feel really, really good. Suddenly something startles my brain and I turn around to see if a cruise ship has snuck up on me in the last 5 min., envisioning its passengers standing on the side watching me hang out, waving “”C’est bon” voyage” for sure, throwing streamers at me like if they were on some sort of liberty ship home from Europe. Don’t get me wrong if a ship got the drop on me it wasn’t like I would go run and hide. I just wanted to make sure that if it did happen I was showing my best side. This is a great example of how this much solitude can make ones brain go sideways; knowingly aware that this would happen and amused in how it has happened. Some days I just have to laugh at my thoughts and the words that come out of my mouth wondering where the root of it all is coming from. The cool thing is that with all this time you are also able look at all your sane thoughts and previous actions the same way……alone with no distractions the ocean pushes you to your roots. These miles have become very much a personal journey with so much time to read, reflect, think forward, and think backward. There are no distractions or competing priorities. My mornings are not crammed with a quick coffee and maybe some toast. I get to cook my breakfast, sip my tea, listen to music, lay my day out in my head, close out the day before. Afternoons I stand on deck for hours looking into the vastness, the cloud filled sky. There are no birds out here, I am way to far from land. Usually in the morning hours while lying in the cockpit, looking out, one foot hung dangerously lazy close to the edge of the water, I will see hundreds of flying fish emerge from a wave and fly across the water a good distance and as fast as they came they are gone into another wave. Last night I woke at 3am for no reason got up and sat in the cockpit, watching the boat rip through the water, the moon noon high and stacks of clouds lining the distance. Breaking off a piece of dark chocolate I sat there, thought about my family and made faces out of the clouds. But again your brain goes both ways out here. Most nights I wake talking to someone who I believe is on board (strangely most of the time I feel its my brother Dan who is here with me), tending to the ship as I sleep, then reality hits me and I sternly say to myself, “its just you Munsey, you are the one that tends to the ship” and I get up. Even 2 nights ago I thought Dan was sleeping in the bunk next to me and for most of the night every time I got up to take care of the ship I was as quiet as possible as to let him sleep….at about 4 a.m. I realized once again I was alone. Hallucination at sea especially for a single handers and even crewed boat sailors (although less frequent) is a very real and documented thing, even the great Josh Slocum believed at times that the Captain of the Pinta from the Columbus fleet tended to and even drove the Spray as he slept, Vito Dumas had ghosts as well, and no one can forget the voices that drove Donald Crowhearst to go mad and eventually throw his life into the sea. I am very sensitive to this as I have a history of hallucinations at sea. In 2009 while sailing double handed somewhere off the Turks and Caicos I had a full conversation (I remember it very well) with 5 people who vividly sat in the salon talking to me as real as day, then I apparently tried to get off the boat with them. If Earl wasn’t there, who knows what would have happened. At a certain point I did realize that I was asleep or something and insisted that we tack the boat back and forth over and over again until I woke up. It must have been really bad because no one wants to tack a boat over and over in the middle of the ocean in the black rough night, but Earl did with me. Hallucinations are mainly brought on by becoming over tired day after day until your body shuts down or mythically you could say that souls in waiting are temporarily buried in the deep, I am after all in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. I had a friend tell me just before leaving that he was doing this same trip a few years back, the voices in his head kept getting louder, stranger and he knew he end up doing something stupid and hurt himself (like a back flip of the cabin top) so he set the boat a drift and took his chances floating like a cork in order to sleep it off; which worked. I have gone to great lengths to make sure that I am eating well, perfect at that and sleeping as often as possible to avoid this. Single handed sailing is without a doubt an extreme sport. Jumping off a cliff with a parachute is an amazing 60 seconds and yes extreme also, but blue water open ocean sailing  and in this case 20 days alone at sea with your thoughts, prayers, wind, waves, the rain, the sun and the torrent the accelerates when it all come together is something altogether different.This is where real extremes begin to be pushed.

It’s been 12 days since I left Charleston, I am at least 500 miles from anything we would call land and haven’t spoken to anyone except myself, the boat and an occasional freighter captain in almost 2 weeks. Those conversation, which usually seem to take place in the middle of the night, are odd at best but much appreciated.  There was the European captain who was into “yachting” who wanted to know exactly everything about what I was doing, when he asked me the size of my vessel he started screaming “that’s fantastic” Europeans especially the French go to sea in small boats, anywhere in the world when you see a big ocean going sailing yacht its American. Also in Europe mini transat racing is huge….lets just say the race is one guy/girl, a 20 ft boat, from France to Brazil, sailing nonstop, on the brink of destruction (it is really crazy). There was also the Indian captain who was blown away “man” that anyone would be out here in anything less than a ship, asked me a million questions and as he became more comfortable his Hollywood slang transformed to Bollywood, if you took a scene from the Darjeeling Limit, Harold and Kumar go to White Castle and mixed it with Life Aquatic you have the setting, “he was a funny guy” who I think in his midnight watch just wanted to talk. I like cool people like that; so entertaining. Best was the Arab who seemed to have been on a very long cruise and wanted to know if I knew if there were any good looking women in his next port of call… Montreal? Had I ever been there, was it really that cold and where was a good place to go to eat? Funny he should ask as I am an expert in that field and can answer all those questions with great accuracy: Yes sir the finest, so many times that facebook keeps asking me if I live there since my current city is blank (it won’t let me put Atlantic Ocean as a town), nothings colder than a Quebec winter and Montreal is hands down my all-time favorite city to eat and drink in (even in the winter). Matt, if a group of Arab merchant marines come in adorned with harems and blankets to stay warm….in that pause when you wonder how they ever stumbled in to eat at Cartel…I told them.  My only advice to them in Montreal was to watch out for the one’s who have Bette Davis eyes, Leonard Cohen would tell you that himself. I don’t think the captain understood what I was saying, but he will….c’est la vie…we seldom truly understand advice until after the fact.

This was written at sea and computer issues are forcing me to stop here. But will continue and add pics via my ipad soon.

Marooned in Charleston

Charleston Battery

Jimmy Buffet’s “A pirate looks at 40” is becoming my all to cliché theme song ever since I left Black Beards old stomping ground of Cape Fear NC and landed in Charleston.  Yes I am a pirate, 200 years too late, the cannons don’t thunder there is nothing to plunder…..arriving too late, arriving too late and the feeling I felt when entering Charleston on my bucket list quest to do the “Charleston in Charleston”. Only off by 80 years, its long been forgotten. When mentioned on the street people look at you with blank faces as if they have no idea what you are talking about. I guess that’s the natural progression of things, out with the old and in with the new. Although I don’t think that Boston will ever forget the Boston Massacre and to add a parallel to dancing the Charleston in many areas of Boston you will get the same look if you mention the Great Molasses Flood that killed 4 times more people and injured 25 times more than the Massacre did. Great Molasses what? No biggie if you are not that polished on your history all you need to know is that in 1915 a massive molasses tank exploded in the North End causing a tsunami size wave to rip down the streets at 35 mph taking out everything in its path. It was one stickie mess to clean up, taking 87,000 man hours and leaving Boston Harbor brown for 6 months.  If you ever are in the North End on a hot summer’s day, the smell you smell isn’t some old Italian women baking cookies, its 100 year old embedded molasses. Moving back to dancing in Charleston, one old man said it best when he looked at me and said “At my age doing the Charleston consists of me going down town once a week with my lady, walking through the shops, the market and grabbing a bite at one of the cities restaurants”. Normally I would be disappointed but it’s kind of hard to hate the city for modernizing its cultural trends all the while maintaining its architectural history. If you are a shopper or a foodie this should be on your destination list. As always I hit Charleston in my own Anthony Bourdain-ian style of approaching everyplace I visit looking for those cultural food and drinks that are regionally based and although found globally their true essence is authentically found in one spot. Here its shrimp and grits a dish that goes to the top of my favorite list and have also found some other smaller “you can only get it around here” hits like the boiled peanut (said byl peanit), fried pickle (better than what you get at the fair once a year) and sampling a little moon shine.  Southern Sam I am becoming but no fear no matter how much time I spend in the south I will never become a NASCAR fan, like Duke Basketball or get a confederate flag tattoo. Really I am ready to move on but am stuck waiting on engine parts…If you are ever stuck, Charleston is a good place to be marooned.

I am hoping to explore a lot more of Charleston before I go in a week or so.

Boston Below

Taking the 1920's by storm, Rhett rolls into town, Real Rednecks and Holding Fast.

Do they dance the Charleston in Charleston anymore? A question I am planning on answering tonight. Starting my quest with pre-prohibition era hand crafted cocktails at Sips, a small plate comparison between two supper clubs and rounding out the night with Jazz at High Cotton. After a long few days getting here I stepped onto the dock and was greeted by an ebony colored standard poodle. A good omen that once again proves I am in the right place at the right time. I booked a week here but can see why one would fall in love here, stay in love here, buy a house, have children and stay forever. Yesterday afternoon I rode my bike down and got a haircut and a straight razor shave from a real barber, bringing civilization back to my savage styled last 4 days, followed by a strong Irish whisky at the oldest bar in town. I wonder if Rhett Butler would have had a drink here, wiping his mouth on the curtains when he was done, punching a man or two to defend his honor from shifty glances and taking at least 3 ladies home after setting fire to the place. After all there is only one Ms. Scarlett….and no one puts baby in the corner. You have to love his Southern style, Rebel spirit and zeal for life. It’s not like I haven’t had a run in with the local Sheriff already, who after spotting my Northern ways stopped me as I was pulling in.  Ever see the beginning of First Blood. Opening fire on my northern ship like Citadel cadets opening fire on the Union ship “Star of the west” in an act of the Civil war, I was boarded. Found free and clear of any contra band and once again making new friends I moved on into the City Marina. I can’t blame them for stopping me, having run the boat high and hard the day before and tired to the bone, I and the boat looked like we had been flipped upside down, which we were.

    I want to thank everyone who takes the time to read this and support me. I am sorry if I have been slow with updates which are not due to a lack of material but more do to so much going on. Life on the water is completely unpredictable and new every day. Every morning when I wake up I get sucked right into the current that moves these waters and now my life. 

When I got to Wrightsville beach a week ago a friend said to me “be careful these docks have Velcro, we stopped for 2 nights and 21 days later we are leaving”.  I said “one night and I am on the road” 5 days later I left. On Saturday I caught up with an old friend Chris, his family and my old Admin in Wilmington (the town next door), having fun dinners, telling old stories, getting caught up on the new and exploring the town, working hard to check off a list of “must see” given to me by another buddy Brandon who use to live there and true to his word steered us through the Barbary course of fun times and cool places. Although the most adventure we had was a new Trader Joes that just opened in town (there aren’t any in the south) and its reputation preceded it with traffic, manned by police, stretching  around 6 blocks. After Chris dropped us off and headed to Rite Aid to get a new Taylor Swift poster for his office ;) we walked through the hostile parking lot of people who were taking getting their holiday case of Two Buck Chuck as a life quest. (**side note, people south of Maryland don’t care if you are a pedestrian or on a bike. If you are in a cross walk and on foot it’s not their problem silly; get a car**) Once inside it was fun showing Anne all the cool stuff that they have and stocking up on my favorite dark chocolate bars which is the only sweet I carry on board. $150 bucks later I walked out with enough food for, once again, a mission to mars, posing a new problem. How do I get this back to the car. Thank You to the TJ associate who walked us out to the car that was 2 streets over. Cool thing about TJ’s associates, you don’t need to tip them, just spend a min talking about how cool their 300 tats and 12 piercings are. If you don’t know what I am talking about….you have never been to TJ’s.

In the days that followed I met so many new friends in Wrightsville. On Tuesday I went out onto the water for a perfect day. Fishing over a wreck where we could see the bottom and the fish, we caught everything from a puffer to sharks and a prize porgy. When we caught our fill headed to Carolina Beach for a late lunch among the million dollar boats and 2 dollar rednecks, catching my first up close  glimpse of the real thing. And this is where I call people out. Tim Lind, Alicia, Sarah, Cheryl, JD and Dad….you are not real rednecks. (Even you Dan D ….Rednecks don’t fly around in Gulf Streams and deal with misbehaved third world politicians, you may have an accent and can skin a buck in 20 min flat…but) For a while I was convinced that you were, but now realizing that you embody the American spirit and action but no matter how much you go to stage coach, country thunder or how big your boots are, you have no idea what a true southern redneck is until you see one in the wild. That and you are all to pretty. I love the North Carolina accent, its smooth, rolls and not snotty like South Carolina’s, but found out that you can’t understand real rednecks!  Coming in off the water in their boats covered in branches and grass so thick that it really looks like a piece of land, rifles a shot gun and a forty five sticking out from the side, usually with some sort of kill under tarp, they are friendly, talkative, laugh a lot and you have no idea what the heck they are saying. I just do what I always do with any indigenous people: smile shaking my head up and down and follow Earnest Hemmingway’s advice on dealing with Latin culture from For Whom the Bell Tolls : Offering the men Tobacco and leave the women alone. While heading down the ICW I was startled by guns being shot on shore 100 yards from me, with 3 gun men and dogs chasing a dear, all along I was thinking “hey guys…ummm I am here, right friggin next to you”, half ducking half wanting to see.

Damn Yankees….no wonder it took you 4 of the 5 years of the Civil War to take Charleston leaving it to men like Rhett to take. The waterways are like a maze with beauty that lulls you into a false since of surreal living. If the gators don’t get you, know that the tides rip stronger than anything I have ever seen , and if all that doesn’t get you the sand bars will. Now back to my grounding. After a night of sitting on anchor in a small creek among miles of golden grass where once dark I screamed with excitement and a spot light as gators jumped and made crazy sounds in a feeding frenzy all around, I got up early to make my final 30 mile march on Charleston. In a misty morning I snapped a few pics fired the engine and headed into the ICW. Within a mile I was cruising mid channel and hit an unmarked shoal, unable to back off with the tide dropping quickly, I knew I was stuck. Quickly I called back to Venture who was just about to leave anchor and draws more water than me to stay put. After sitting there for 45 min the boat was laying enough on its side that I could start cleaning it form the dink and at a certain point I wanted to get into the now one foot of water in order to do a better job. As I stepped on the rail of the dink I noticed that I cut my foot somewhere in the chaos and watched the blood run into the water, my survival skills kicking in as visions of gators from a mile around hitting the water upon smelling my blood caused me to jump back into the dink (And I never thought I learned anything from watching Croc Dundee.) after an hour Vic and Susie showed up in there dink to help. We spend the next 5 hours stringing lines to keep the boat from being pushed further into shore in the heavy winds and current potentially making it impossible to get off. It was  a hard day and I want to thank them for all their help…looking back we actually had a lot of fun. That night I went down for the count by sundown.

I love living a life that you can’t buy. And I only told you ¼ of the story.  

Hernan the Conquistador, foul play in the Canadian Monarchy and a friend of Sean Penn's

One afternoon I stopped by an expedition styled motorsailer in my dinghy to find out the story of this interesting looking boat. Standing on the transom steps stood Robert. In his early 50’s, hair dyed to its original black, fit, with an ex-military feel, he was friendly and invited me aboard.  Sitting on the back deck he told me a wild story of mystery and foul play surrounding the boats original Canadian owner and “Heir to the Seagram’s fortune”, how he acquired her in Monaco in 1982 and his expeditions since. You don’t have to know every line in the God Father to know that anyone who is given something because someone owned them money, it wasn’t a good thing. The inside of the boat was dark and creepy. Strange tribal masks and odds from around the world hung with no pattern on the walls. With authority he talked more about his experiences, his trials at sea, diving for treasure, fighting pirates….. and……and …..his eyes blinking rapidly as if trying to remember where he was, who I was….. his mind started to skip…..his stories…. started,started,started getting stranger. Clearly he was only playing with half a deck, but when he told me he knew where Cortez’s lost fleet was, his master plan to secretly excavate its treasure and smuggle it out of South America, I knew he was only a quarter there.  My guess is that somewhere in his life he probably knew Pablo Escobar and broke the cardinal rule of trafficking; sampling his cargo along the way.

Starting up the dinghy he untied my lines and said “you should come back later and have a drink”.  "No, I dont think so. I already have my story", I thought. But apparently "Sean Penn" has already bought the movie rights.

USCG photo take while rescuing Robert off Cape Hatteras.  

 

 

 

 

In a world of Dragons

Through a series of storms and gales, waterways and gators I find myself in the shrimping town of Oriental and deeply in love with North Carolina. I understand now why James Taylor sang “In my mind I’m going to Carolina, can you see the sunshine, can’t you just feel the moonshine…” A song written about a mental escape he took while signing his largest record deal in London, when the pressure caused him to hit his boiling point he went to his childhood home in his mind. I get it, seeing more changing beauty in the last week than some see in a life time. Its hard to write about what I have seen or done, I simply don’t have the capacity or ability to translate it to paper. Same with taking pictures, which I love to do but most of the time I don’t since the only way to capture this or share it with you would cause you to have to stand next to me. If you did, you would never regret it. Words and books can expand your world, take you places, make you feel, but remember no matter how good the picture or how powerful the words, all those thoughts are synthesized.
 

Sitting in the corner of the local coffee house, ordained with oriental dragons and standing room only I feel lucky to have a seat. Across the street the shrimp fleet sits proud on inky black water, birds sit lazily on the pilings, three dogs sit on the porch waiting for their owners to drink up and get going. Every ten minutes or so one in particular climbs up on the table at the window and knocks on the glass, gives her master a look then climbs down. I guess he isn’t moving fast enough for her this morning. The “bean” is the crossroads where cruising sailors, watermen and locals collide. A bumper sticker on the register reads, I (heart) my Barista. My guess is it was stuck there by a Seattle sailor as some sort of homage, I am sure a barista somewhere in Pikes is feeling the love but not here, barista is a foreign word. Behind the counter stands pure southern charm and humor. A man walks in an says to the girl, “darling do you have a potty mouth?”. “Sometimes” she says and smiles, “when I drink too much coffee, but I guess you’re lucky since I am the nice one”. “Well then I will have a coffee since you are being so nice” I am more than sure they know each other, heck I have been here two days and already know everyone (Proven!! As I was writing this a woman walks in and says “I have a question for everyone. Does anyone have Jessie Edwards phone number?” She had it two seconds later)  I am quickly finding that there is only 2 degrees of separation between everyone. It is a bit surprising that I was almost kidnapped last night. That story I will save for a book.

In many ways I don’t want to leave. There is a smooth pace here that is tranquil. I have been offered a free dock but don’t want to take it. Anchored up a creek that is so still you can see a leaf drop by the shore and watch the water ripples run to the bay, where my morning views are heart stopping and the night so still it takes me to the deepest parts of sleep. When I got here, I carefully made my way up the creek and picked a suitable spot in front of a nice house and dropped anchor. After getting settled I called a long time friend and Oriental resident RC Clements. “Where are you” he asked……..”oh your anchored in front of my house” . I couldn’t have picked a better spot if I tried.

No editing was done to this image. This is what I say when I woke up this morning.

For those of you who do not know, I am on the ICW (intercostal water way). Think of it as a water highway that runs inland through bays, rivers, creeks, swamps, lakes and canals, stretching and winding from New Jersey to Key West. As soon as you set adrift on the ICW you become a part of a family of transient boaters from all over the world that are there to help you in every way. Usually you meet these people in a said town or anchorage, having dinner together, coffee, cocktails or just talking. Most have no idea where they are going, some Columbia, others Australia, Panama, Key West and some have to go home soon. You make connections exchange info.  In the morning you will leave and head here or there and they go their own way, sometimes you go together. Usually you run into each other days later and get together again. In just a few weeks I have met everyone from bikers to Brits, adventurers to 20 something’s escaping corporate life and yes a ton of Canadians. It’s really cool and the stories you hear make it even more worthwhile.  From here, there are a few must see’s en route, but most of us are gunning for Charleston SC, A: because its charming as hell B: its warm. The 27*f/-3*c  nights are rough.

 

 

For additional photos please view my facebook http://www.facebook.com/james.munsey.5 

 

 

I recently read on a fellow travelers FB a post that said. Our time on this planet is limited, yet most of us live like we will be here forever. Better get cracking.