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The time is April 1980, the place Key West Harbor.
Fidel Castro has opened the Port of Mariel for anyone who wants to leave the island nation, and hundreds of Cubans have invaded Key West, waving stacks of hundred-dollar bills, desperate for a boat to retrieve their relatives before the Maximum Leader changes his mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
I'm living with my eleven year old on a houseboat in the Harbor, working two jobs, getting established after falling under the spell of the Conch Republic in 1978 while visiting my classmates from Key West High's 20th reunion.
I'm tangled pretty deep in the briar patch of locals, fixing cars, refrigeration units, stereos, setting up TVs to catch Miami, 120 miles away, repairing boats in the scorpion-infested boatyards, putting around on a junk moped, clad in flipflops, sunburned feet, a raggedy lime-green t-shirt sporting a Green Parrot logo and faded red shorts with dangling white piping, more clean than not. |
| One of my friend/customers is a speedy little balding redhead who goes by "Ikey" (no last name, as is quite common in the land of square grouper and tropical snow. It's bad manners to inquire. People get suspicious. Narcs are everywhere, as they should be.
Local bars like the Red Doors have shot glasses full of sulfur matches and pinners, obese little toothpicks, next to the register. They're a buck apiece, and the bills go in a "tip jar." Matches are included. No one ever gets busted.
The Half Shell Raw Bar is roaring every night, Ron Hatfield and the Big Pine Cowboys blasting out David Allan Coe, whose rickety old sixty footer just broke in half at Cow Key Marina after slipping off the straps. The lift operator was tipping a few with David while waiting for the setup. Who knows?
There is a brisk trade in decrepit yachts, typically sold by trophy widows after sinking at the dock when the retired skipper dies of alcohol and loneliness and boredom. Wifey don't care, just wants the Department of Natural Resources to stop bugging her about pollution visual and chemical.
Ikey has somehow scored a old 63-foot Feadship, a Dutch-built premium yacht with a single Jimmy 6-71 diesel with a 4-1 TwinDisc, throwing a huge screw, underpowered nowadays, but more than adequate for ocean cruising. It's full of bad wood, topsides and below, but it has a wonderful secret: it's clad with welded stainless steel, thin but watertight, rising above the waterline a foot or so, confounding the teredo worms.
The yacht is long and skinny and round-bottomed. She rolls like a sow in Everglades muck when the waves are broadside. The tanks are a bit rusty, the steering whimsical, the smell musty, but the opulence is still there, dark faded mahogany below, sun-frosted teak on deck.
Dreams arise when piloting such a vessel in front of the Sunset Crowd. Wenches may be swayed by such a yacht, when plied with Bacardi's fruit concoctions, engineered by your friendly bartender at the Doors.
The problem is, wharf space for a boat that long runs up a big bill every month, and Ikey is busy with the wenches and the booze. He's gotten behind on dock rent, so he's living at anchor behind Christmas Tree Island, and rowing back and forth is both tiring and limiting his romances. By the time his paramours sit in the dinghy for a half hour, the mood is gone.
So one day, Ikey comes up to me with a Plan. Cubans are clogging the streets and docks, offering insane amounts of money for anything that can float, towing down powerboats from Miami, and sliding trailer, boat and truck into the water on the very steep boat ramp, providing the show I was watching when Ikey found me at the Bight, a little floating cafe next to the boating disaster at the ramp. I was about three beers into the afternoon, the kid was visiting his "mom" on shore, and it seemed like a good idea at the time: ferry some Cubans over to Mariel, load up on relatives, swing back.
"Do it in two days" sez Ikey. "I need an engineer to keep the Jimmy runnin'!"
I nodded, "Where's the money? I want it now, before I run that tub to Cuba. I trust the Coast Guard, but I don't trust you!"
Ikey nodded to the burly guayabera behind him, who reached in his slacks and pulled out a wad of hundreds thick enough to buy Ikey's boat outright. I grew suspicious and cautious. That was drug level coin. I figured I'd back out.
"Three thousand, cash. We might get stuck in the red tape, Ikey. Fidel and Jimmy Carter are dancing around the issue of absorbing a hundred thousand Cubans. Word is that Fidel's emptying the prisons."
I figured that would crash the deal but I was poorly informed about Casablanca fever. Guayabera peeled off thirty bills, and curtly informed Ikey to be at the dock by six, which sounded unlikely, since the Feadship hadn't been run for a couple weeks.
Surprise. Ikey had bought new batteries, always a diesel's weak point, on Guayabera's dime, and he'd better be there. Fortunately, the boat was already at the dock, charging, and the party of three had a van full of Cuban delicacies, including way too much rum.
There was nothing to do but run the play. I grabbed a hundred pounds of chrome, tubing and wire, gave "Mom" the money, snatched my premium life jacket and Emergency Locating Beacon and hit the dock.
The Jimmy sounded good, there were new sleeping bags, lots of fuel and water, and the SSB radio was emitting comforting squawks from dozens of poor lost fools who had no idea how far and how bumpy the route was, and how much fuel a big outboard uses at sea. A Cuban clusterfuck indeed.
So down the dock comes Guayabera, his wife, and their steroidal spoiled rotten quinceanos son, who signaled close-quarters disaster. I figured Ikey could scare him down, since Ikey kept a bit more hardware of the personal persuasion type on board than I was normally comfortable with.
The kid was stoned AND drunk, and belligerent to boot. Ikey y yo were obviously merely servants, to be ordered around, and the kid had NO idea how to work a marine toilet. He jammed it first pass, and disassembly wasn't an option. Out came the bucket, to the ashen-faced dismay of Mamacita, who had more than a touch of assumed Catalan royalty in her manner. Just the type that caused the revolution in '59, Batista's pals. I clammed up. This was going to be rough.
(to be continued)
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