I can now say I have been in jail...

Now I can add going to jail in another country to my lengthy resume of insane situations that I have been a part of. Here's what happened. Sunday afternoons, a lot of people gather at a small beach bar on Hog Island called simply Roger Bar. At Roger, beers are 5 EC and for 20 EC you get a big plate of food. So this last Sunday I had told some new friends of mine that we should go hang for the afternoon in Roger. As is customary there on Sundays, the afternoon quickly turns to evening and the beers keep flowing. When we finally decided to pack up and go, I was heading back to Prickly Bay to the West and they were headed East to where their boat was moored. I sped around in my dinghy to another spot to say hi to some friends there and ended up drinking some wine with them until about 11. I said goodbye there and hopped back in the dinghy, at this point, I'm feeling pretty good and hadn't reached that retard drunk stage, so I decided just to head back to the boat and get some sleep. I was cruising through a cut in some reefs headed out to go around the point to Prickly when the motor of the dinghy died. This outboard motor has been a champ and run strong the whole time. I checked the fuel, good to go, fuel line was attached, nothing on the prop, pulled and pulled but it would not start. Now the weather here for the past week has been pretty shitty and we have had lots of wind and rain. Basically, I was screwed if I couldn't get the motor started because there was no way I could paddle around the point and all the way to the boat in the sea conditions. So after 20 minutes or so I was starting to drift onto the reef near a small beach. I pulled the motor up so it wouldn't hit and rowed the dinghy to the sand. After pulling the dinghy up the sand a bit I tried to monkey with the motor a bit more but in the dark and having no tools I didn't think I would make much progress. So I decided to tie the rope to a tree and just crash out on the beach.



It started getting cold and with the drizzle I was getting soaked so I walked up a hill a bit until I found a small villa. I found a nice little corner under an eave to keep me out of the rain and I crashed there for a bit. I was woken up at 1 in the morning to a flashlight and several voices. I stood up thinking I might be in for a fight when I heard them say "Police!" After shaking the cobwebs from my head I asked what the problem was and apparently, the bitch who runs the property wasn't happy about some random dude sleeping on the beach so she called the popos. I apologized, tried to explain about the boat being broken down and blah blah blah. They asked if I had any weapons or drugs and of course I said no. They asked me to empty my pockets which was no problem. I reached into my right pocket and pulled out the EC money I was carrying. Out of my left pocket I pulled out a small piece of foil. I was confused for a moment because I didn't remember having this in my pocket but it only took one of the cops a second to snatch it out of my hand and open it. When he asked me what it was I had to look to remember. So here is the fun part. It was weed. A friend of mine had been given this small amount of marijuana from another person while we were out drinking that afternoon. As she had no pockets and we were all drinking, she asked if I could hang on to it until we got back to their boat. I said sure and pretty much forgot about it. So now I'm standing on the beach trying to explain this to cops at 1 in the morning. Not only that, but I'm not carrying any ID on me. Time to go to the station house. I get escorted to an SUV and sit in the far back. They wouldn't even let me grab my sandals out of the dinghy. We get to the police station sometime after 2 AM and the interrogation starts. Do I sell drugs, where do I buy my drugs, blah blah. Let me say for the record that I have never smoked weed in my life. Not because I have some moral stance against it, I am too scared that like most things I do, if I start smoking I would take it to excess. Just simple self awareness keeps me too scared to smoke. At 2 AM when you are buzzing from a day of drinking, standing in a police station trying to explain this to cops just doesn't really sound convincing. I swear though, it is the truth. So after being questioned for an hour, I'm told I have to spend the night there because they need to confirm my story the next morning. The only place I can lie down to sleep is in a holding cell so they take me down to a cell, barefoot and all and show me my accomodations. I did my best to get some rest on a narrow wooden bench in a cell that reeked of urine and was infested with mosquitoes. At 7 AM, one of my cellmates woke me up because our ration of food was being given. A cold sandwich and a small cup of tea. No thanks, I gave it to another guy in the cell. At 9 AM, the "Detective" assigned to my "case" arrived to escort me to the Coast Guard so he could confirm my story of living on the boat and that I had nothing on board to hide short of my speargun. For his "protection" he needed to cuff me (this is the first time I was in cuffs) for the ride to the Coast Guard. He spent an hour bullshitting with some of them while I sat barefoot and cuffed in the SUV in the parking lot. He finally came to get me, took the cuffs off and we were off in the Coast Guard boat with 4 members, 3 of which were holding automatic machine guns as if I were a threat. This whole situation was so fucking surreal that I couldn't help but keep laughing at them. We got on the boat and he "confirmed" that I was in fact telling the truth, no drugs or weapons on the boat and he saw a photo hanging in my cabin of me with my old truck crew from Station 3. He asked if I was a firefighter and I said yeah. This seemed to make him relax a lot and I was glad for that. I asked if I could rinse off and change and he was generous enough to give me 90 seconds to do so. I got some shoes, a red bull, a breakfast bar and some water and after that we were dropped at a dock near the beach I slept on and were picked up by the SUV to go "investigate" the area I tied the dinghy at. After searching around for a bit and listening to the lady that ran the place act like I ruined her life, the cop was finally satisfied that I had been telling the truth the whole time, I drank, the boat broke down, I was gonna wait until morning to figure out where I was and get a bus in to figure out what to do, blah blah. From this point, apparently I was now a friend and the cop asked me if he could come out sometime and hang out on the boat with his family. I couldn't believe it. I asked if he could leave me there so I could work on the dinghy and he said they would wait because I needed to go back to the station to be cleared of any charges and given my property back (the money in my pocket). I messed with the dinghy for a bit and figured out the problem. Somehow the vent on top of the fuel can worked it's way shut, just enough to choke out the motor and cause it not to start. Being fairly deep in the beer and wine I guess it never occured to me to check that. I laughed hysterically because I could've avoided the whole mess if I had simply unscrewed the vent a bit. I told the cop and he laughed to. I was really tired and hungry at this point and just wanted to take a long swim followed by a shower to rid myself of my jail cell funk but instead of going straight away to the station to clear me out, I got to go along with the cops as they ran their own personal errands. We stopped by the grocery store to buy milk, sugar and bread followed by a stop in at the laundry. Then we stopped by another crime scene where someone had broken into some building. After we finally reached the station, I spent another hour waiting for the jackass guy at the desk to write a few lines in a book and ask me four times my name and age. I got my money and after the guys finished their lunches (that they bought at the grocery store), they were gracious enough to give me a ride back to my dinghy. After dropping me off, we said our goodbyes, one gave me his card and told me to call him if I ever have any problems down here. I thanked him and headed to the beach.



The property owners had managed to drag the dinghy quite a ways up the beach so I spent about 20 minutes wrestling the damn thing down to the waters edge. I finally got it in the water and spent another 15 or so minutes rowing out to deeper water so I could drop the outboard and motor along. I fired up the motor and headed over to my friends boat to tell them the story and explain why I hadn't showed up in the morning as we had previously planned. I had offered to drive them around the island if they wanted to rent a car for the day and they said yes. We planned to leave yesterday morning but due to my incarceration, that just didn't work out. We all got a good laugh after I told them the story and showed why I am Captain Chaos. I sped back to the boat and after a good swim, a long shower and some chow, I fell into a deep sleep for the rest of the afternoon. This morning I got up and went to rent the car. After I rented it I realized I needed to update my temporary driving license from here so I had to return to the police station. When I walked in, the guys just started laughing and after messing with me for about 45 minutes I got my license updated. So the irony here is that I can probably say that I am the only person in the Caribbean who doesn't smoke weed but I have been detained (since the detective informed me that I was never under arrest) for possession. Only me man, only me.



On another note, I spent all of last week in the lagoon tied up at Port Louis Marina. I was getting the bottom scrubbed, the boat washed and polished, the interior cleaned up, batteries charged, oil changed, generator serviced, etc. It worked out good and it was nice to have unlimited water and power for a few days. The part that really hurt was getting fuel. I wanted to sail to Trinidad to get fuel because last time I was there it was less than a dollar a gallon. My buddy told me that he just came from there and there had been some problem so they are now charging foreign flagged vessels the same rate that you pay in your native country. So F that. So I was forced to buy fuel here at 16.45 EC a gallon. After filling up both tanks, the dinghy and the reserve gas cans I got to pay 700 U.S. dollars. Yippee. Needless to say I wasn't in the same chipper mood I was in back in June when I sailed to Venezuela with Jaymie and bought the same amount of fuel for less than 7 U.S. dollars. So I'll close for now by saying to my good buddy Dan Lopez that I have joined your club of having spent half a day in a jail cell in a foreign country, although your Mexico jail story is probably still funnier than mine.