Is this the same book as "Island Boys"......Oliver James?
Is this the same book as "Island Boys"......Oliver James?
Yes - I had to change the name because of another book had the same title - Oliver James is the main character in the book, Francis Oliver Lynn is the author.
Thank You......am reading it as we spend our precious time in Negril, now.
Kimbobwee,
Thank you ... I do think you will find it fascinating as it will take you on a journey back in time to Negril 70s style!
Francis Oliver Lynn
Does anyone know of Roy of Tear Drops Tours MoBay, in the early to mid 70's. He and his American wife Pat were friends of my parents. They brought us to Negril in 1973 and 1974. Spent lots of time with them at their home and his parents home in the mountains. Would love to reconnect if anyone remembers them or where they might be now?
Jamaica Forever,
Sorry, but I do not know Roy. On one of my recent trips to Negril I spent time searching for the people I had made friends with during the 70s, I found a few, but most had died; this is because the people I got to know the best were older and the younger ones are old like me and their lives had changed dramatically, a few still in Negril, and some had to move on to areas where tourism was not the economy base, having sold their land to developers and moved to the hills. Good luck with your search. I assume you asked your parents - if you were able to.
Irie! Fren-mon (Francis Oliver Lynn)
Yep!Originally Posted by bigga
I read the entire thing in one sitting and I must say that the book really captures the essence of the times.
Cap'n, thanks for the pictures. They bring back memories.
Not of a Hobe Cat, but my first time out on a little catamaran. I was hanging out on the beach one day, as was my wont, when I spotted three new girls setting up on some beach chairs. One of them in particular was quite cute, so naturally I lavished most of my attention on her. I came to find out that they were Canadians and had only been on the Island for a day or two. I chatted them up and eventually made a date to pick them up that evening to go out drinking and dancing to some reggae.
I took them up to the little club that was open in the shopping center near the roundabout. At that time, almost all of the people who frequented that club were native Jamaicans, which I loved, because the music and dancing were so real and sensual. I had spent a lot of time on the Island and it seemed like how to me, but the girls were put off by the admittedly rather strong body odor emanating from the crowd and all the black faces in a dark club, so I had to leave and take them to Hedonism instead.
We had some fun but I didn’t make much progress on the scoring front and in fact, despite a lot of trying, I never did make it with the girl who I was working on, although she kept me thinking I might at any minute, so I did not shift my attention to either of her two friends who were both more than willing to get up close and personal with me. Sort of like a cock blocker, only different. I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind. You could have done better but I don’t mind. You just kinda wasted my precious time. But don’t think twice, it’s all right.
In any case, after that first night of dancing, I went around the next day to see what I could see and the girls were again hanging out at the beach getting some sun. I noticed that up the beach a way there were some little catamarans for rent. I think there were called Sunfish, or something like that. So I asked the cutie if she wanted to go for a ride on the Sunfish with me and it turned out she did.
I had never done any sailing at all, but the fellow who rented the boat gave me some tips and it did not take long to get the feel for the use of the rudder and trimming the sail to get the little boat moving along at a pretty good clip in more or less the direction that I wanted it to go in.
We had a fine time, with the sun shining, the salty tang in the air, and the fresh breeze in our hair. She sure looked fine smiling and laughing as we kept getting further and further out to sea. The further out we got, the bigger the waves we encountered but the cat was steady and stable and we were in seemingly in no danger of capsizing.
What did happen, however, was that a large wave hit the rudder and knocked it out from its attachment points. The rudder was attached to the back of the boat by having two pins in the rudder being inserted through two metal hoops on back of the boat. When we rented the boat the boat guy had inserted the rudder pins into the hoops while standing a couple feet of water. The pins were retained in the hoops by two spring loaded balls that one compressed in order to insert or remove the rudder. I think that the Sunfish was designed to be used on lakes, not out in the open ocean, because it did not take that much force for a wave to knock the pins right out of the hoops, since the spring loaded locking device was not very strong.
Somehow in the process of getting knocked out of the pins, perhaps it happened while we were shifting our positions while tacking, and ducking under the swinging boom, the rudder ended up floating in the water a few feet from the boat. I dove in and swam to it and retrieved it. But when I turned around and started swimming back to the boat, I was horrified to see that with the rudder out and the sail still up, the girl and the boat were drifting away from me at about the same rate at which I could swim, but I was going to get tired of swimming before the boat stopped drifting out into the open ocean.
Terrified that the babe and boat were going to be carried out to sea, never to be seen again, I put my head down and swam as fast as I could, shoving the rudder ahead of me while doing so because I did not want to be on the boat without the rudder to steer it. I knew that even though we were several miles off shore that I would be able to swim back with little trouble, but I knew that I was responsible for the situation she was in and I needed to fix it.
Once I managed to get myself and the rudder to the boat, things were still hairy. Due to what I considered a design failure while I struggled trying to get the rudder back into place, it was almost impossible to put the rudder back into the hoops while in the water. I needed one hand to hang onto the boat, so I needed to put the rudder in place with only one hand. It could not be done from the boat itself, but had to be done while in the water. The major problem was that both pins were the same length, so both the top and bottom pin had to be inserted into each hoop at exactly the same time. This proved to be very difficult using only one hand in a rough sea. I could get one or the other pins in, but I could never get both in at the same time. The longer I worked on the problem, the more tired I became. The boat also kept drifting further out into the ocean. Finally, just when I was at the point of exhaustion and ready to wish Sweetie good luck and strike out towards the shore on my own, the pins shot home and the rudder was secured.
With the rudder in and care being taken to not submit it to any sudden forces that could potentially dislodge it again, we steadily made our way back to the beach and returned the catamaran. I told the rental man what happened and suggested that instead of just having the spring loaded balls to hold the pins in place that they should drill the pin and use cotter pins. Also, that one pin needed to be longer than the other so that one could get one pin started and then line up the second one. By his reaction I don’t think he paid any attention to my hard won advice.
A friend recently sent me a picture of me holding Steve and Erica's son, Jason. I have been told that while Steve and Erica have gone on, Jason is still around.
This picture is one of me standing in the doorway of the little shack that Bobby and I paid to be built behind Miss Ruby's Tip Top Cottages while it was still under construction.
Looking back on it, I cannot believe I was not concerned about secondhand smoke, but I guess few people were back then.
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