Jah is my copilot

 Jah is God, to Rastafarians. One of the more amusing things we've seen here in the Eastern Caribbean are the ubiquitous bumper stickers on locally owned boats........"Jah is my copilot". From my vantage point, I doubt he'd ride with these guys for long before bailing out.

Caribbean guys have a curious way they operate anything with an internal combustion engine. For them, there appears to be only two throttle settings........."Off" and "Full". You see it on the roads- with cars, trucks, motorcycles, scooters, and even mopeds moving at breathtaking pace over even the most treacherous, pockmarked roads. On the sea, the same applies. Even the humble Caribbean fisherman in his wooden longboat frequently has a 150 hp outboard roaring full out..............all the way up to the dock, when a sudden shift into reverse (at full throttle) stops the boat just before it takes out the pier. Oh, and they also frequently STAND UP in these boats while traveling at 30 knots.

The Caribbean is sparsely populated. Montserrat has 4,800 inhabitants. St. Lucia (our current location and a much larger island) has only 174,000. Not sure if there's any correlation between the culture of "Max Power" and the lack of living citizens, but perhaps the solution to the world's population explosion  is less agro-education and more Yamaha-powered (kidding).