I left my guns in Cal.

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

"Maxprop" wrote in message
nk.net...

"Capt. JG" wrote in message
...
While in no way similar to this situation (middle of nowhere), I did have
something vaguely simlar happen while in Belize. We pulled into a very
small cove anchorage. After sitting at anchor for 1/2 day or so, a local
fishing boat sailed in and dropped the hook about 100 yard from us. There
must have been at least a dozen young black men on the boat. Almost
immediately, a few of them got into their skiff, fired up a rather large
outboard and slowly motored over to us. I guess my and other's first
reaction was a bit of paranoia, although we had not heard of any problems
with tourists being assaulted. Having lived in a couple of major US
cities, I don't think our thoughts were that strange. However, we just
waited for them to come over. Not much we could do either way, so we
figured that we'd just be polite and go with the flow so to speak.

So, they finally get over to us.. sure did take their time about it.. we
wave, but they don't wave back and they're not smiling. Anyway, as they
pull up next to the cat, I ask them how they're doing, and one of the
younger ones says fine, but can they ask us a favor. I say sure. They
really want to know if we have any spare books and/or cans of soda. Turns
out one of the women has one of those romance bodice-ripper novels. She
hands it over, and we give them a couple of six packs of soda, since
we're fully into drinking only beer at this point (and can feel the urge
for stronger drink overtaking us).

About an hour after they get back to their boat, we can hear one of them
reading the book aloud to the others.
The next day they came back to say thank you. We gave them some candy,
and they offered to take us to watch them pull their traps out of the
ocean. We spent several hours with them, motoring around from fishing
trap to fishing trap, had a nice picnic on a tiny island in the middle of
nowhere, and then we got a tour of their "camp," which had a wall make up
of hundreds of conch shells.

Shoulda shot the *******s when ya had the chance.

Max