10:00 PM local time, Thursday, January 24 (1600 Jan 24 UTC) 06 02 S 080 13
E. Temp. 84, Humidity 82%, Cloud Cover 100%. At a dock in Galle Harbor, Sri
Lanka (Ceylon).
Sri Lanka, as the reader may know, is the home of the Tamil Tigers, who are
not a baseball team. They are descendants of former slaves located mainly in
the northern part of the island who now are fighting to subdivide Sri Lanka,
which one would think is small enough already, into two states. The harbor at
Galle, where Maverick is now rafted up to a large steel yacht, has in the
recent past been the target of attacks by the Tigers. What they have done is
put a frogman in the water with explosives, who swims into the harbor
underwater and blows boats to smithereens (remember that band?).
The government of Sri Lanka has taken the following defensive measures: (1)
There are guard towers at the shipping entrance to the harbor and around the
perimeter; (2) There are guards armed with machine guns and a checkpoint for
IDs at the road into the harbor and more armed guards patrolling the area;
(3) At night, fishing nets are strung across the harbor entrance and at other
potential attack points; and (4) All through the night, the Sri Lankan Navy
drops small depth charges into the water at random intervals but more or less
about every ten to fifteen minutes, and at random places within the harbor,
and sometimes these sound as if they are within feet of Maverick's hull. The
latter is a bit disconcerting. Usually one to three are fired off at a time,
and they are not huge explosions, but are more like very big cherry bombs.
We knew about this before we got here, and we were also warned about the
Windsors, who are yacht agents that take care of many of the labyrinthine and
arbitrary formalities for a fee. They had been compared to the mafia and to
thugs. We had no trouble with them whatsoever. Their fees were little higher
than those of the last several countries we've visited but they were quite
straightforward and timely, which was a positive change from Thailand and
Indonesia. As far as the mafia comparison goes, the Captain, in one of his
former careers, had occasion to meet with members of the mafia, primarily in
nightclubs in the northeastern US, to discuss matters of mutual interest like
whether drinks were free for the band. He will confirm that they shared two
traits with the Windsors, and those are courtesy and efficiency. In dealings
with either group there have not been any misunderstandings, and this may
account for the Captain's lack of experience with whatever negative aspects
there may in some cases be.
Ship's Motorcycle Enthusiast Terry Shrode and the Captain spent the day
riding around southern Sri Lanka on rented 250 cc. dirt bikes. We finally got
to see some of the tea plantations and rice paddies we've heard about, and
some small villages. Not many large buildings have been built here since the
Sri Lankans gained independence from the British in 1948. This, and the
tendency of women to carry parasols against the heat of the sun, gives the
country a 19th century look. (As everywhere we've been since the Marquesas
has been hot, one would have thought that this charming custom would have
been more widely observed.) The cultivation of rice and tea makes for a
different look from the rural areas of many of the tropical places we've
visited, although here it seems the countryside is referred to as jungle
anyway. We didn't actually make it up to the highlands but what we did see
was very beautiful. Since we were dealing with computer problems, we had
little time for photography on this stop, and we apologize both to our
readers and our friends in Sri Lanka for providing an even more inadequate
pictorial record than usual of the lovely scenes of this island.
The reader may by now be tired of the apparently uncritical eye of the
Captain, who seems ready to give a thumbs up to wherever he may wander. But
of course we have sought, as the reader would have done, to travel when
possible to the most beautiful and interesting destinations along our route.
Since the world is not an undiscovered place any longer, these are all too
well known. You'll be notified when something sucks.
We'll probably leave for the Maldives tomorrow, the new computer finally
having been brought into communication with the radio, for email, and with
the GPS, for navigation. But to those certified few who have direct access to
the boat's email, please hold off sending any messages until further notice.
While our system was down a lot of mail arrived which, unlike land-based
email, cannot be deleted without downloading, and this means our allotted
airtime for the nonce must be used in recovering old posts before we can get
new ones.
ADDENDUM: One of our Phuket shots is or was a featured photo on Latitude 38's
website, which provides a link to www.ussmaverick.net.
PS to friends of Okiva: They're not here yet. I know because I hear no
reggae.
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