Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Suddenly right next to the boat's side a huge animal literally flew out of the water and
smashed down next to us, covering us with salt water and rocking the boat most violently!
I yelled out in alarm. It looked like a jet taking off out of the water. After a while, it became
obvious that it was a giant manta ray with a wing span of some thirty feet, shooting out of
the sea only to return upside down and belly flop, for want of a better word, to remove the
irritating barnacles from its back (so we were later informed by the amused locals). It was
fantastic to watch these huge, graceful rays gliding through the clear water like futuristic
crafts from a science fiction movie. They moved with such speed and would swoop down
to the sea bed and in a flash would cover themselves in sand, instantly invisible. We had
occasion to dive in the Galapagos and were at first terrified when one of these gentle mon-
sters came flapping over to investigate, but it soon lost interest and glided off unperturbed,
leaving us wide eyed in fright. (Their tails are lethal weapons to predators and are full of
vicious, needle like barbs.)
We had, at this stage of our sail, run out of cigarettes. Days before, I had smoked my last
one and decided now was a good time to quit again. Not so Gavin. The lad was an addict,
and he had studiously and surreptitiously saved all the butt ends or “stompies” as we called
them. For days he would rip them apart and make a cigarette out of several of these ends.
He would smoke them in front of me with the weasel face in defiant exuberance.
All too soon these “stompies” ran out, but that did not deter him. I found that he had been
collecting all the used tea bags and was drying them out on deck in the sun. He now lit
the dried leaves in a pipe we had aboard and the smell of burning tea leaves was alarming;
surely he had to quit sooner or later? What next would he smoke when our tea bags ran
out? I hadn't long to wait.
I noticed him slyly scraping the varnish off the handrails and other bright work. I finally
had to step in and pull rank, “No bloody way are you smoking the varnish off my boat!”
“Rubbish! I'm not!” he vehemently denied, slipping the pipe out of sight under the cockpit
cushion.
“Well, what's this?” I asked, pointing to a freshly scraped bare patch on my teak grab rail,
“Looks suspiciously like someone has been scraping!”
“Gaatst!” was his only comment. I left it at that. Landfall was in sight, and while it wasn't
the “official” landfall to visiting sailors, we felt that it was an emergency.
We sailed into a little bay on the north side of Santa Cruz, Cerro Dragon. This was also a
little-known military installation which we were blissfully unaware of. As we were about
to tie up to a small old concrete jetty, a uniformed and highly agitated figure came rushing
out with his arms waving and yelling something in Spanish. Memories of the Caribbean is-
