Tom and Kirstin to the rescue !!!!!!

We were lounging in the cockpit (telling knock-knock jokes or something) when we noticed a fellow yachtie driving his Amel 54 at breakneck speed up and down the mooring field. This is a big, expensive boat (the ugly sister of our Super Maramu 2000 if you asked me, but I digress). The Amel 54 was dragging his rear fenders, his ladder was down, and conspicuously, there was no dinghy. For those of you who don't sail a lot, a dinghy (or tender) is the small inflatable that you use to go from your boat to land. It's kind of important if you don't want to swim to shore. Dinghies are quite expensive (around $3500 to start) and then you need the obligatory $2000 outboard, oars, gas can, dinghy anchor.........all in this can run about $6000. In the Caribbean, they get stolen a lot. (Imagine that.........people living on $5 a day, constantly subjected to watching rich folks parade their million dollar barges around the islands sometimes do the unthinkable !!!)

Anyway, I was hungry........it was well past cocktail hour, and Kirstin and I were about to go to our favorite Nevis hangout, Sunshine's Bar and Grill. We were going to eat conch and deliver a largely favorable review of our new Rasta friend Watusi's CD which we purchased a few days before (not going double platinum any time in this century so Marley's legacy is safe). Anyway, the good angel on our shoulders started convincing us to go over to the Amel 54 and find out if all was OK. We did, and it was not. Philip and Jean-Claude were having a bad day. Philip didn't tie the dinghy securely, it floated off.........a fisherman found it and drove with it right past the Amel 54 (finders-keepers, I guess) and then disappeared.

The enraged Frenchmen looked all over the shore for this "scoundrel" without result. As we pulled up to their boat, we offered them a ride to shore (although not a seat at Sunshine's). Philip accepted, as Jean-Claude (the boat and missing dinghy's owner) was barely speaking to him anyway.........all because of a silly little thing like throwing away $6000.

We were entertained at dinner by front-row seats to Philip's police report to officer Charleton, who tried his best to look concerned and outraged. Our server, Elizabeth (also a Rastafari) was intensely spiritual thoughout, making the tenuous connection between the amount of love in Philip's  heart and his chances of recovering the dinghy. Anyway, as of this writing, the dinghy is still missing (where's the love, Phil ?). But we did feel good about our intervention, even after discovering that Philip can afford the $6000. He's a surgeon with a patent for some kind of mesh for hernias, lectures internationally, and has a plane he admitted to and 20 mistresses he denied. We even bought him a Caribe beer to soften the blow.

Anyway, we're soon off to Guadeloupe !!!