In the evening a guy came over from a steel sailing yacht anchored a few hundred meters away from us. He asked for permission to come aboard. A bit skinny, maybe a bit younger than me, difficult to tell, a weathered face.
He wanted to talk to the captain. „You have problems with the Genua? What else? Problems with your anchor?“
„Genua yes, Anchor No.“ „Did you check this? Did you check that? Did you ….“
Evening. So everybody had a drink already. He got one too and started telling me his life story. Born in Madagascar. Worked all sorts of jobs across Africa, for NGOs, mostly on organizing fallouts of diseases ( e.g Ebola in Liberia after the civil war). We chatted a bit about Liberia which he referred to as the shittiest country of the planet, and I had experienced as the least developed I had been to. So we had something in common to talk about for a while. He had worked at doctors without boarders, later as dive instructor and on several other jobs.
He had „done his share“ for serving humanity, bought his current steel boat two years ago and learned to use it the first year. Now he is occasionally taking divers on board, only charging for food and consumables. But currently his compressor is broken. His plan is to do more commercial dive trips in the future.
During his last transfer he came in a storm, lost half of his main sail and the Genua totally. His engine died after he had a mechanic doing a service on it and did something wrong. He talked about anchoring under sail and being towed into ports. Currently stitching up the Genua and waiting for parts. He therefore is stuck in Samoa.
He had been to the Philippines and talked about a few places, which I had not been to though.
He wanted to see our compressor. I ignored it because I was afraid he would ask for spare parts.
At some point, he said, if he meets a nice woman, he thinks he might settle down on an island around here.
When Aileen came up he made sexist comment, which I ignored and with body language indicated that it is not welcome. What is it with certain type of sailors (see also the Aussie group at the regatta), too long abstinence on sea to behave decently when the come back?
After two beers, a Bloody Mary and a few cigarettes, which he smoked on the cushioned seats besides being asked not to, and three pees overboard, he decided to go back to his boat. I was quite relieved after he left, being his center of his attention as skipper while the others had to deal with him only occasionally.
He came back the next morning, wanted to come aboard again to provide more advise on the Genua while Guy, Francis, Carlito and the crew were already fixing it and we were actually preparing for departure. Gael managed to to explain to him politely that we had everything under control.
Overall I enjoyed hearing the life story of a different kind of expatriate, with partly similar but mostly very different experiences.
Bobbel