4.1  LEGAL ROBBERY: GOODBYE JANUS

In the movies you see the hero and heroine sailing off into the sunset.

The stained world of  Samsara is not quite like that.

After sailing constantly when in open waters and about eight hours a day on the Waterway, where land and water met together and melded with little interference from man, who simply built the canals and bridges, we had completed the first part of our experience.

Colombia and the Galapagos were still far away. The dream however continued, though they were both farther away than we thought.

We moored in Boot Key Harbor, swimming distance from the shore. There was a small set of slips which served small Cuban refugee fishing boats.

It didn't take long before we were friends and Ninette learned that real people were made of more than sows' ears and silk purses. The Cubans were real and simple people with heart and a certain inner spirit that was open to others.

She had learned that one can't make silk purses from a sow's ear, but now she learned that one didn't really need silk purses.

Marathon in the Florida Keys

The water of the Keys is incredibly pure and you can see around the moored Janus shoals of parrot fish and occasionally large manta ray. We fished for blue crab and were successful enough to make them a frequent delicacy along with lobster and fresh gifts from the Cubans, who called me affectionately Castro.

We settled in, interacting with them every day without making hurried plans and Ninette worked part time in a Cocktail bar while I sat and played Scrabble with two girlfriends of a barman that worked there. I became so good that I could beat Ninette frequently, which vexed her at times.

I taught her to play chess and life was quite easy, for we were "boat people" and that is quite different from "owning and sailing a boat".

I think Ninette's changed life came home to her one day when a large old wide-beamed converted sailing ship came into Marathon and anchored offshore. Aboard were several young families. They acted and lived together with a special harmony rather like a "sea-rooted hippie colony". 

Ninette was now unattached to external support and could meet the external world with a confidence that did not require a setting of education, culture and social masks.

The internal struggles were still ahead.

Ninette made enough for us to pay for a trip and we decided to go to Plymouth to meet my mother.

A boat yard close by was run by a friendly pair and we were well-known, for Marathon was not a huge place. So we put our boat in storage and they told us we could pay them when we returned.

We stayed with my Mother and my Sister, living in a tent we set up in their backyard. My father had died and we remained in Devon enjoying the places of my childhood for a while and then returned to Marathon and picked up our old style. We paid for the storage and they were greeted by our friends. When we climbed up the ladder to look how things were on Janus, we met havoc and when we looked into the forward hatch we recoiled. It was full of rats who had made a large nest there.

We got rid of them. I don't remember how, and luckily they had destroyed only a few sail bags. They had also stripped the boat of everything they could use as a nest. They were ingenious enough to have pulled out all the tape from all our cassettes to use and many of our navigation charts were shredded.

Rats they were, but forgivable. All her learning came like lightning flashes. This was a lesson that she had learned that was useful later. No animal is alien. Each has its own beautiful nature.

With Janus now in the water we started to get ready for the Galapagos voyage. We sailed in the Gulf of Mexico below the Florida Everglades and then after many months decided to make a farewell trip to my mother, for we had no idea what lay ahead.

We made that second trip with the same promise from the friendly storage yard.

This time human rats got in on the act... The owners of the yard while we were in Devon sold it to new owners with a Dutch name which I now forget. They sent us a letter from a lawyer in Marathon which we receive too late to do anything.

Our bill was worth about 200 dollars. They, the new owners, without scruples, seized the opportunity for a legal theft. They sold our boat, for we had no written contract with the old owners. The legal time limit had expired. We believe that they sold Janus for the 200 dollar debt, we believe to an associate for that sum and we got nothing... We had lost our Janus worth thousands and all our equipment for a pittance and we were in Plymouth, England.

We never returned to the Keys or to America.