I put the kitchen knife in my pocket and jumped back on deck. The captain of the vessel had cornered himself in the cockpit, desperatly klinging onto the tiller with his left hand, and gripping the navagation divider as a weapon with his right! It was two thirty in the morning. This was when I thought back three days earlier and realized that there was probably a good reason that the previous 4 crew members of the westsail 32 had abandoned ship on the morn of our departure from San Diego to the tip of the Baja peninsula.
But that was irellivant now. What mattered was getting to the next port alive. Maybe it was sleep deprivation, or just the fact that the Captain Rick Myerhoff was a complete idiot, but we were about to run aground a reef 60 miles north of our landfall. The captain was convinced that Cedros, an offshore Island was Bahia Tortola. He was so convinced that he had refused to look at the charts, compass, or GPS for over two hours and was running us on a 30degree NE coarse straight towards a major reef when we should have been heading SW. This was the closest moment in my life I have ever considered hitting a man in the head with a giant oar. With my life jacket on and ready to swim, I thru my negotiating skills out there one last time. A few minutes later he plotted our course, yelling, " holy shit, we're right over a shallow reef!" He gave me a heading of 210 degrees and disapeered below until we made our landfall 13 hours later.
I jumped ship right after we anchored and found another boat that needed crew. Since then the sailing has been great and I will fill you in on all the details when it doesnt cost so much. I am in Cabo San Lucas and fly ou of San Jose del Cabo tommorrow, I think.
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