Island Idiocy

A tempestuous day with squalls racing through. George and I decide to take a hike along the spit to see the wrecked sailboat. The spit is the coral barrier that runs about 1/2 mile along the mangrove lagoon. The boat is to the left just beyond the point.

This boat has been left abandoned for two years. And, as with everything and everyone on STJ, it has a story. Whether the story is true or not, I don't know, people love to elaborate. It's like one big never-ending game of "Telephone" around here sometimes. You have to take everything you hear with a huge grain of salt.  BUT... a good source personally told me that he himself witnessed the event where the owners - totally drunk - purposely steered the boat to the spit head on and crashed it for fun.

Wasn't that a blast? 

When we first went to to the boat, a very sweet 22ft sloop, it hadn't been wrecked long. All their stuff was still there. Paperbacks, boxes, kitchen utensils, cookware, packaged foods, clothing, a radio, tools, CDs - you name it. The detritus of an idiot. Funny, his stuff seemed normal enough, you wouldn't know he was a TOTAL RETARD.

Over time the boat got picked apart by scavengers, human vultures, who took just about everything they could. The last to go was the metal railing which is I believe I've seen covered in vines and taking up a parking space at Aqua Bistro restaurant. Some of the trash washed up on shore to become someone else's problem, or not.  Over the months the weather took it's toll; Hurricane Irene and had her way with it, the tides shifted the boat along, but she's a strong little lady who isn't giving up the ghost so easily. 

Now there's is nothing left but this disgusting fiberglass shell that is already chipping into brittle, tiny pieces of horrible plastic.

Do you understand why anyone would do this deliberately? I don't. Nor do I understand why once it happened no one wanted this valuable little sailboat that was in really great shape. Are things really so worthless? Or are some people just trolls?

And if it wasn't done deliberately wouldn't the drunken slobs who lost control want to get the boat back? 

And will it sit there forever while everyone just accepts it? 

I just don't get it and no one will explain this to me. Worse, I don't like the assumed answers to these questions. I'd like to see the captain of that boat. I wouldn't even have to talk to him. I might have seen him already but how would I know him from all the other unwashed flub dubbers sitting at the bar at 8AM drooling until it opens? And why do I assume that's what he looks like - what if he's just a regular guy?

These questions will continue to circle my head whenever I see this boat or anything like that down here; a situation where some individual just doesn't give a flying fig about their world, anyone and anything in it. They're here, it's warm, there are few demands, who cares? There are a surprizing number of ex-pats here with the mentality of a fencepost. 

The bumper sticker goes "We're all here because we're not all there" and it's unfortunately true. 

Steal away, on a sailing star,

We can drift away, so far.

Catch on to a dream,

Float along a star-filled stream.

Come drift away with me,

Because dreams are vast as the sea.

Maybe we could sail away,

Onto the crest of a new day.