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Pre-History Stories

Pre-History Stories

Our Start to Sailing
Sabi Star
Pirates & Robbers
Oriental Lady
Yacht Delivery
John's Story
Grenada Intervention
The Spanish Main
Stolen Yacht
Latin Milk

This is a series of stories about our life before this website started.  Most of them come from our previous sailing experiences in the 1980s.  I've tried to leave out the mundane, but I'm also not trying to write an action novel.  They're more like vignettes that I thought folks might find interesting, events that shaped our lives and led us to adopt this somewhat unconventional lifestyle.  Choose the different stories from the bar on the right ».

For those who don't know, we skipped much of the Reagan era (1980-88), traveling and living outside of the US, mostly on a wonderful old trimaran in the Caribbean.  We only returned to visit friends and family, and to work and restock the "cruising kitty".  To those who observe that we've also skipped out on much of the Bush era and think they're noticing a pattern, I say, Can you think of a better reason to leave the country?  Somebody had to apologize to the rest of the world. 

Since the more factual parts of this website (where we've gone and what we've done) are considered to have a higher priority than my miscellaneous ramblings, I have to "steal" time when nobody else wants to use the computer to write these.  Therefore, they'll probably come out just a few at a time (usually after a long night of story-telling with friends).

For this incarnation, I've included the following stories:

Our Start to Sailing - How Sue and I found ourselves in South Africa about to embark on a journey that would change our lives.
Sabi Star - A description of the boat and voyage that took us from Capetown, South Africa to the Caribbean.
Pirates and Robbers - A (too) close encounter with the darker side of cruising.
Oriental Lady - How we ended up buying our own trimaran in the Caribbean.
Yacht Delivery - An interesting story about our first return to the Caribbean.
Our friend John Blackman found himself in darkest Africa at precisely the wrong time, but managed to come out of it quite nicely.
Grenada Intervention - Most people have a poor impression of the 1983 U.S. "intervention" in Grenada.
But check it out, because the Public was badly misled by the press, to America's detriment.
The Spanish Main - Describing our welcome to Venezuela in 1984, with our friends on Tawi
When friends Matt & Claire had their yacht stolen, it took a semi-legal "Pirate" radio net to help recover it.
Latin Milk - Sue's story about what happened when a local Venezuelan woman wanted to "borrow" our firstborn son!

Please feel free to email us with questions or comments.

Cheers  --  Jon

Pre‑History Stories: Our Start to Sailing | Sabi Star | Pirates & Robbers | Oriental Lady | Yacht Delivery | John's Story | Grenada Intervention | The Spanish Main | Stolen Yacht | Latin Milk

Jon's Pages: Up | Pre-History Stories | Contact Us | Brewing Beer | FrontPage 101 | FrontPage FAQs | Radio Email | Resume | Web Archives

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