"Mi Dushi"

Since all of our prayers for more rain were answered on this last Tuesday night, there were no boats that went out.  I just returned from a Caribbean Cruise and thought I'd share one of my experiences on one of the excursions I took while on this cruise.

ONE GREAT EXCURSION

I was recently on a Princess Cruise line that was scheduled to stop in Aruba. I normally do not plan excursions in advance, but a day or so before our arrival in Aruba, I noticed that there were several excursions offering a boat ride to snorkel around the Antilla. This is a German ship that sank off the coast of Aruba sometime around World War II. One of the excursions appeared to be very professional, which would normally be my preference. Unfortunately, this one had no vacancies, so I had to settle for my second choice: an excursion that included rum drinks, lunch and a “swing” on a boat called “Mi Dushi”. I have seen this type of excursion before and they are usually called “Jolly Rogers” and offer all the rum you can drink. I have witnessed people returning from these “Jolly Roger” boats so inebriated, they couldn’t make it up the gang plank to the ship. This is not normally my idea of fun, but I was desperate to experience my first wreck dive so signed on for “Mi Dushi”.

I met my fellow excursioners and boarded the bus to get to Mi Dushi. Imagine a school bus with all windows removed, painted vividly in Caribbean colors with island style sayings painted inside and out. “Not the brightest crayon in the box”, “Every little Ting’ll be all right” were emblazoned on the inside of the bus. Add blaring rasta music and a very happy local driver advising us all to use enough sunscreen declaring he used to be a blond! In this atmosphere it would be impossible to be depressed.

We were dropped off and escorted to Mi Dushi, which was so big we had to ride a water taxi to board the boat. As we approached the mother ship, the person next to me mumbled “My God we’re all gonna die”. From far away and up close, the ship looked like it was in a sad state of disrepair. Mi Dushi is a 90 foot 90 ton gaff rigged ketch built in the 1920s. I have been on many of these excursions when they never even hoisted the sails and just motored from place to place. The skipper came out and introduced himself and his two deck hands: his son Alex and Jose from Colombia. He explained that the name Mi Dushi means “my sweetheart” in Danish. Despite my first impressions the boat was very seaworthy. Sure enough, they slipped the mooring line and hoisted both the main and Mizzen sails. My first experience sailing on a Gaff rigged sailboat. What intrigued me was that there was not a single winch on the boat. To get the sails hoisted completely, one deckhand would run the halyard under a large wood cleat and take the tension up as the other “jumped” the halyard pulling it straight out from the mast, incrementally tightening the halyard until the sail was raised.

As we sailed up the coast to the shipwreck, I studied the nuances of sail trim with a gaff rigged boat. Without a windex or tell tails it was nearly impossible to ascertain our point of sail, but it seemed to be a beam reach. The upper booms were twisted off quite a bit which really stabilized the boat and I wondered how they would have trimmed it if we were racing and not entertaining a bunch of novices. The boat moved along well and was very stable, as we motor sailed our way to the wreck. We finally snagged a mooring line and all dove in for the wreck dive. It was interesting with the shipwreck rising to within 10 feet of the surface and plunging down to over 60 feet. Divers and snorkelers were everywhere, but with the 30 knot winds and chop, it was a little too murky to see much. After a while, we retreated to a more protected snorkel spot closer to shore, where we swam through massive swarms of very small fish. Exploring further away from the crowd, I saw some squid-like cuddle fish. We all returned to the boat and went to another location where we got another mooring line and the skipper and Alex went below to prepare our lunch, while Jose stayed out to prepare various cocktails and introduced us to the trapeze. Most of us gave it our best to swing as high and as far from the boat as possible before letting go. Then Jose announced that Alex was going to perform a special trick for us. When Alex stripped his shirt off, I was surprised to see that he did not have an ounce of fat and was in great physical shape. He got on the trapeze step and had one of the ladies wrap her arms around his neck and clutch tightly to him. When all set, they both swung off the step and somehow he was able to accomplish and complete a flip with the woman.

 

The food was served and more alcohol was consumed. The food was nothing short of amazing. I heard comments from several people “this is the best fish I’ve ever had!”. I asked Alex what kind of fish it was and he said Grouper. Grouper, chicken, Rice a little salad and a skewer of different melons and pineapple; need I say more?

We once again slipped the mooring line and headed for the home mooring line. I was grooving to the music on the foredeck when Jose came by and said “put your camera in the backpack, Alex is going to climb the mast to take pictures”. Here we were with all sails hoisted, sailing back home as Alex climbed the line clear up to the spreader. I could not believe it: no safety harness or bosuns chair for Alex. As he straddled the spreader, he took each camera out and snapped photos down to the deck fore and aft and even a selfie of himself with the deck of the boat in the background. Once all photos were take, he slipped off the spreader to the upper boom of the mainsail, swung around the mast and gracefully came down and passed out the cameras to each of the owners. 

We got back to the mooring line and took the bus back to the ship. There was not a single person on that bus that was not high! High on life and the experience we had just had. As the rasta music blared we all hooted and hollered at the tourists on the sidewalks and beaches as we passed. Many of the tourists quickly grabbed their cameras to snap envious photos. The only sad point of the whole day was having to leave the party and return to the festivities of the Princess Cruise ship and normal life on board a cruise ship.