SALTY TALE 1. ONCE I OWNED A FISHING BOAT.
In our seaside village, everyone is a fisherman. There is a lot of water and a lot of fish. The first thing I did when I moved here was to buy a skiff, a 27-foot fishing boat with a ‘Yamaha’ two-stroke engine, 40 hp. It was an ordinary boat, very popular with the local fraternity.
I paid a good commission to the man who recommended it to me. His name was Mark and the next day he came to me with an offer, saying he could use my boat to take the tourists fishing. Mark promised to split the money from the trip with me, fifty-fifty. He also promised to look after the boat. Mark knew all the cayes and shallows, and he had the license and permit to guide tourists. So I thought why not?
A few days later Mark asked to use the boat for a test run and personal fishing. He returned my boat with a broken seat and apologized for the accident, saying that the seat had been broken by the butt of his fat friend who was with him. I forgave him and the local specialist fixed the broken seat for my money.
After a while, Mark asked for a boat again on the pretext of gifting his fiancée a nice trip. He brought this girl with him and she stood next to him with a smile on her face. So I said OK.
In short, he returned the boat with another broken seat. It finally dawned on me that he was fooling me, taking tourists fishing, and not sharing the money with me.
He refused to pay for the repair of the second broken seat and it took me a lot of effort to squeeze half the money out of him.
Petrol is expensive here. After several fishing trips, I realized that a couple of fish tales cost me a hundred dollars I paid in fuel. With my retirement budget, I cannot afford that kind of expense. When I lived in LA I had a sport fisher yacht and now I have forgotten that I need an income to maintain a boat. Or, to solve this problem, I should take tourists fishing like the locals do. But to be successful I need to know all the shoals, islets, and fishing spots. Otherwise, I cannot build up a reputation as a fisherman.
In short, I docked my boat. Even without fishing trips, she needed maintenance, to buy things, to do this and that. In the tropics, the hull is overgrown every two or three months and needs cleaning. Then there were the frequent torrential rains, and at night, with the sound of another downpour, I was sleepless and worried whether the pump in the boat was working, whether the battery was still charged, whether the engine was still there or had been stolen. All in all, I bought myself insomnia, not pleasure.
It is much cheaper to rent a fishing or sailing boat once or twice a month, enjoy a few days of fishing, and forget about all the above problems.
One day Mark appeared to me with another proposal. He offered me a few days of overnight fishing on one of the small islands near the reef, 15 miles off the coast.
I accepted the adventure, dreaming of good fishing. We quickly packed our bags, sharing the cost of petrol, and left the bay. Once out to sea, Mark was pushing the engine so hard I thought the boat would fall apart. It was then that I understood why the boat seats were broken. Mark was just not familiar with the dynamics of the sea.
We returned home a few days later and the next morning I could not start the engine. It turned out that Mark had overheated it. The engine overhaul cost me a couple of thousand dollars.
My patience ran out and I put an ad in the paper to sell my boat.
One person turned up immediately. He assured me that he could sell my boat quickly and asked me to raise the price. I understood that he wanted to get more commission, but our village is small and rumors spread here faster than news on the internet.
Everyone here knew how much I paid for the boat, and now they will point the finger at me and accuse me of profiting from the poor. Well, how can I explain to them that my price includes the cost of repairing the boat and the engine?
In short, I have sent the middleman back to where he came from.
MY REFLECTIONS.
So I sold the boat at a loss and, for the umpteenth time in my life, discouraged myself from owning anything. Before that, in Europe, I’d lost flats, houses, and cars to insatiable women, my wives. In America I became successful and rich, only to lose my business to a tricky partner. I lost my beautiful yacht, which I had traded in for a house at my last wife’s request. I was bankrupt and now I have no house, no wife, and no business. But I have no regrets about those things. Maybe the yacht was the biggest loss of my life.
Probably, for a person like me, having private property and remaining naïve towards others means guaranteeing pain not only in the head but also in the lower parts of the body. Probably a snake lives in the soul of every property owner, gnawing away at everything human in him, leaving behind envy, greed, and a passion for profit. I sold my jeep here and bought a motorbike instead for the same reason, the cost of petrol. It saves a lot of fuel and is much more fun to ride.
But after the first 2 years, I put the bike under a canopy and I was busy lubricating and cleaning the bike from rust because with 100% humidity the metal parts and the electronics go to corrosion quickly to turn the toy into a rusty something. So I sold it for nothing and lost money again.
I calmed down with my bike. This unpretentious ‘donkey’ needs no petrol and takes me everywhere I need to go. And I don’t have to go far. I have been everywhere and seen a lot. I don’t like to travel far from the sea, because I get depressed when it disappears on the horizon.
Having escaped from the crowded cities, I was happy, hoping in my soul that living among several hundred people, inexperienced in urban vices, even if some of them would be lazy and drunkards, I would find peace and there would be no one to deceive me. I dreamed of a life without swindlers, crooks, or liars.
God, I was so wrong! Life has proven that these sneaky bastards are everywhere. So why am I, who is a man physically and mentally strong, able to survive where others have perished… why am I so helpless in the face of one who is limited in everything I have, but who is a vile and cunning crook, for whom it shouldn’t take too long to deceive an honest person…?
Insightful piece