Crossing Panama

Chapter 21: Crossing Bahia San Lucas.

Monday February 19, 2019. Day #36. Day #5 of 6 sailing to Cabo San Lucas.

We had coffee and sugary canned fruit for breakfast and Carlo delivered the bad news: we were totally out of ice, the only things left in the ice chest were two wine bottles, warm water, and a few kernels of corn sloshing around. He drained it down the kitchen sink then dumped the boat's sewage tank and suggested we take deck showers and try to shave too so we didn't arrive in Cabo looking like the movie Cast Away (2000).

"Where'd you get this ice chest from?" He shouted.

"Sportsman's Warehouse I think."

"I've never seen one of these before, it's huge."

"It's a Yeti Tundra, about a four day cooler, they ain't cheap either."

"It's the heaviest cooler I ever lifted. How much was it?" He shouted from the cabin.

"Eight hundred with tax." He never commented on it again.

Carlo got our stuff ready while I strapped the wheel and took off my clothes to join him in the back corner by the railing. On our third day at sea we started showering every day, probably because it was bonerific fun and it killed over an hour of time, I washed him first. One independent measure of enjoyment was who arrived at the shower spot with a boner, both of us usually arrived in the back right corner that way. Thank God for being far from land!

It started with the bucket dropped over the side, pulled up on deck with the plastic rope, which was more painful than it sounded. I slowly poured about a gallon on his head and shoulders which made him shiver and grip the pole that stuck up above the railing (and one of the mast guy wires too). I rubbed him down to evenly wet his body, especially his legs and back. Carlo started washing his arms and arm pits, then his shaggy hair and face. I did everything below his arm pits while he stood like a statue holding onto the pole or the mast wire with his eyes closed and his dick proudly pointing towards the sky. An idea I kept to myself was if Carlo survived the cold ocean water without losing his boner then he needed `service' too.

After the soapy part came the rinse, which meant he had to slowly rotate around while holding on. After the rinse I slowly poured a bottle of water on his head and shoulders then hand squeegeed the water down to try to remove as much salt as possible, because it usually made your skin itchy/tingly after it dried, but it also made your dick taste better. After he was dry we swapped spots and repeated the process. After bathing we set the bucket on the bench and sat on either side, facing each other, and shaved at the same time so we could serve as mirrors for each other. My face usually had a lot more growth than his, Carlo was not a hairy guy. The honest truth was neither of us was `hairy' but I grew more than him in some places.

After that project we got into position and used the small battery powered trimmer to buzz each other baby smooth from our belly buttons down around our parts, behind our balls and up our butt cracks to the top. Carlo had more hair on his lower legs than me, but we left those because I had no desire to lick his legs. The hairs he had growing from his waist up to his belly button were very thin but I cut them off regardless. I recalled when I first saw his belly up close a year ago he didn't have any hairs there at all, now he had a few little black ones. I really enjoyed taking time to trim him smooth, he seemed to enjoy the attention.

During lunch he told me more about his frustrating bus ride and the scenery too, like ruins of Mayan cities in southern Mexico. He said when the bus stopped for the day everyone had to get off and wait in the bus terminal for the next driver to arrive in the morning. He slept on filthy floors with a dozen strangers all trying to sleep in the same room, with snores, coughing, and fussy babies. He said after three days of no food the sense of hunger went away, he lived off water he drank from the big thermos jugs they usually carried on board. It seemed like retelling the story of his bus ride made him a little depressed and he was rather quiet the rest of the day. He said in one town there was no shelter, just rough hewn wood benches on the sidewalk so he napped on the dirt near the benches and got attacked by fire ants during the night. The old guys he was travelling with laughed at him for being stupid enough to sleep on the ground near the fire ants. He said they called him `Estupido.' Carlo said he pretended not to speak Spanish, I told him I did it too. But he just glanced at me funny because he really had no idea I had 7 years of Spanish in school.

Carlo told me he figured out why the Mayan civilization died off after seeing the ruins at Tikal. After I asked why he said, "...they collapsed because of the location, lots of tiny lakes, hilly land, and unreliable weather." He said there were almost no highways in southern Mexico like we had in the USA because of the terrain, that must have limited movement for the Maya too and contributed to the collapse when they got too big to sustain themselves, that and decades long dry spells. But he added when you went through that area the local people today were the descendants of the Maya, so they're still there today farming, ranching, and making textiles like two thousand years ago. Today the Maya have gasoline engines and electricity, cell phones, power tools, and antibiotics. He said they looked different from Mexicans, very old looking faces, very sharp facial features. People think the Maya were all gone but that's wrong, they're there today doing the same stuff they did three thousand years ago."

I told Carlo I believed that all Indians in the Americas were descended thousands of years ago from people we called Asians today, not only did they discover and settle islands across the Pacific but they kept going east and settled the Americas too. I told him if you saw a modern day man from Japan and compared his naked body to modern day Indians in North America they look exactly the same, just a small difference in the shape of the eyes.

I tried to explain the story about the human fossils from New Mexico called Clovis Man, but that was just part of a theory that they crossed over a land bridge to North America ten thousand years ago, but my idea was they crossed by boat. That was why people found evidence of humans going back that long ago on almost every major island on the central Pacific.

So many modern scientists have the idea that bronze and Stone Age people were incapable, ignorant, lived in caves, and died by age 22, but those ideas are based on old and incorrect information.

That evening he came up on the back deck with a knife in hand (I was at the helm looking at the radar image in the IPad). He asked why there was a Zombie Slasher knife beside the bunk. I told him because I carried hitchhikers across Panama. But it turned out they were decent American kids and never caused any problems, I forgot it was there. He said he'd put it in the kitchen drawer.

Carlo asked if he was going to get hassled trying to re-enter the USA without any ID, and I said probably not but we'd have to be careful and let me do the talking. I told him we might encounter Coast Guard ships in US waters but maybe not. I told him the worst thing that could happen would be he was taken into custody at sea and detained pending identification in San Diego, I'd sail on into Del Rey and then drive down and bail him out. "When we get to Los Angeles you need to work on requesting a replacement driver's license sent to your mother's house then overnighted to us. Then you'll need a new passport too." I admonished him in a serious voice.

I told him when we arrived we'd be hiring cars to get around and our first priority would be getting settled into the new apartment, renting furniture, filling the place with essentials, starting cell service for Carlo and buying us one new scooter. My car was likely to be very dead and Uber avoided parking dilemmas. Day two will be finishing those immediate tasks and getting internet activated in the apartment, transportation, household stuff, shopping lists, cash at home for your allowance, and being patient with each other. Our first week there is going to be challenging. He did not look excited about our arrival and the end of our long voyage. For both of us everything would be new and stressful. I reminded him one of his first jobs will be to get a replacement driver's license ASAP, at any cost.

We discussed D&C again, I turned on the IPad and showed him more of the pictures I took in Panama (some he'd seen before). Dave leaned into Carly, his arm over her shoulder, he had no shirt on. I watched Carlo's eyes as he looked closely at them. "Big tits!" was his comment, "...yes she had the two things young men craved, she was a very nice girl, and you would have liked them. He had an innocent boyish charm. Neither of them was particularly attractive or educated. And neither of them looked or acted like two kids that would someday inherit a huge fortune."

He stared at the picture and said it looked like they were very much in love, "Ant they were the ropers you met in Colon?"

"Yes, the Americans at the bar looking for a ride across Panama with their huge backpacks."

"Huh. Did you take video?" He asked and I said yes, in the locks and on Gatun Lake.

I told him some of the things they said about their lives and I got the impression they were both wealthy Seattle Snowflakes that were too sensitive and fragile to hold jobs or be forced to do anything except play video games and live in their mother's basements, but not so much for her.

Carlo asked, "They were lazy Gen-Z'ers and you helped them?"

And I told him, "Yes, of course. They were good kids, very inquisitive, polite, and stunningly naïve too. I'm usually pretty good at reading people, I felt they were safe so I trusted them. As I got to know them they revealed that since they weren't into materialism they enjoyed pleasures of the flesh instead, but to them it was just a thing, like chewing gum. He jerked me off a few times, and I did his twice. His boner was very long but slender." I told Carlo it appeared that during their trip across South America they discovered they could get almost anything they needed from guys after Dave offered to jerk them off, and it worked great! They actually told jokes about it! She said it worked better than a genie in a bottle.

I told Carlo dealing with them made me feel like Beetlejuice, like when he looked at the newspaper obituaries and called it the business section, `Ew la la, what do we got here, the Maitlands eh? Cute couple, look nice and stupid too.' He laughed at my imitation and told me he left that DVD at his mother's house.

Carlo liked the part when I told him about their early lives, being best friends since grade school. She was his first kiss, his first sex partner, and how they experimented with sex before they started puberty. He described how they explored his penis once she saw it got hard and stuck out, they read about it online and she tried kissing it and rubbing it but nothing happened. He said they spent hours trying to get his penis to do things. Carlo said they should have adopted a puppy instead and taught it to do tricks.

But I think he missed the point that from the very beginning they were both fascinated by his penis and he was very willing to share it with her (and others) anytime they wanted.

I wondered to myself when she first saw his rod if he was exceptionally long before puberty, back in elementary school.

Carlo stretched out on the mattress at 9pm, I stayed at the helm and took two naps overnight.

We'd drifted a little further west and kept a heading around 320 degrees and never left the GPS route box. Tomorrow we'd make a course change to 360 degrees then we'd be on final approach to Cabo. In some ways this segment of our trip was similar to two guys driving from Miami to Nashville at 8mph in an old bus with no brakes.

Tuesday February 20, 2019. Day #37.

Day #6 of 6 sailing to Cabo San Lucas.

Our days at sea followed a comfortable routine, he made most of the meals and did the clean-up too. I did most of the steering and we agreed on keeping it that way. Last night we sailed into a storm that appeared to develop on top of us, we had some big seas so we kept all the doors and hatches shut and latched. The biggest waves were about ten feet, which was a bit extreme for Susan, waves crashed over her bow, but the good part was the extra wind got us moving really fast, almost a perfect tailwind as the storm drifted to the north-east and up the coast and blew us along, once we were past the center of the low we went as fast as 24mph and sailed out of it rapidly, but neither of us wanted to eat or do much of anything except sit on the back deck and try not to barf. The side panels kept the spray off us and I was very pleased with the new canvas cover. It felt like the temperature dropped into the low 60s during (and after) that storm.

Carlo asked what the difference would be in seas like these, between Susan and a four million dollar motor yacht. I told him I really had no idea, but Susan was designed to slice through these waves so she didn't lose as much speed to the wave energy against the hull. I told him perhaps the mindset on a motor yacht was that you'd watch it closely on radar and sail around a storm instead of running through it. They'd watch the radar and steer a path away by the fastest route possible, regardless of the direction.

We talked a little about Cabo and I told him I'd never been there but I'd seen pictures and I've known people that owned timeshares there, then as a joke I told him it was a place where wealthy weirdoes (and Karens) from Scottsdale and Paradise Valley went to be total assholes and get away with it. Carlo said he had no idea what I was talking about, and I said he might find out first-hand.

Carlo said he thought he saw a rip near the top of the mainsail, we shuffled up the gangway and looked but couldn't do much about it out at sea, besides it wasn't very big. I told him we'd patch it in Cabo. I had hand sewn repair kits on board and already watched the instructional videos online (cut to size, apply glue, clean sail around tear, apply patch, let it sit under a weight for 24 hours, then sew in place around the edges).

Shuffling along the gangway in heavy seas was dangerous, we used a buddy rope and life jackets and did it anyway, going down the right side, holding onto the railing tightly, we both got drenched from the bow spray and it was very loud out there too. The most dangerous part was the section between the windshield and the nearest place you could step down onto the deck because there was almost nothing to hold into except the railing.

The measurement and specs for the sails was written down on paper and taped inside a kitchen cabinet along with other specs, it was a common (off the shelf) size and could be ordered from several places online, but they were expensive.

"Like how much?" He asked.

"Ummm, the foresails cost about $3,000 for the pair, and the mainsail cost $6500 if you got a colorful pattern and good quality, but this one is cheaper which is which is why it's plain white, but the fabric for a racing sail costs more. You probably wouldn't want to put standard sails on a racing hull." He never asked why which was good because I had no idea but I've heard lots of people say it. I met a lot of people that looked at Susan and said she had a racing hull but I had no idea what they saw, all I saw was sailboat, but she was sleek and slender looking above the waterline. It could be that slender appearance that gave away its purpose.

"You know Carlo I could order a new sail with a silk screened image from any photograph now." He looked at me as if he didn't understand why that mattered.

Then I told him I could have a profile image of your tit printed fifteen feet tall on both sides of the sail. He burst out laughing then looked at me to see if I was serious. Most of the time people used that feature for printing logos on sails.

He laughed and said, "No wait! I can see it now! Silva's Mushroom Farm, with an image of a plastic basket of mushrooms like they sell at the store, but the head of my dick would be mixed in with the mushrooms and nobody but us would know!" We laughed.

"Yep, we should do that sometime, photograph your dick stuck through the bottom of a mushroom basket from the store with your head surrounded by real mushrooms."

"The color would be wrong."

"So we do it in black and white, maybe put some makeup on it first," and he chuckled again.

He obviously sat there and thought about it for a long time, then Carlo added how weird that would be to lie out on his back in a photo studio as people took pictures of his dick head blended in with a basket of mushrooms after painting it to match the color of the others. He said he's never been hard in front of more than two people before and couldn't imagine having some makeup artist spending half an hour airbrushing and hand painting his dick to make it look like a mushroom. I told him since he was well able to keep a boner for long periods of time he'd be the perfect guy to do it, not to mention having the perfect shape too. I think he got turned on thinking about it. I thought I'd keep that idea in the back of my mind to do someday.

The ocean calmed down after the storm moved away and were back to zigzagging, when we got within thirty miles I changed the GPS to aim us directly at the (west end) bay. Back in January I made a reservation for late February but didn't know the arrival date, I told her I'd call and update them as soon as I knew the date and time. I put down $300 on a slip with utilities, even though we might not really need electricity, after so much wind and sunshine our wind generator and solar panels probably kept the batteries above 99%. I couldn't check them because of the waves.

Twenty five miles out I used the sat phone to call the marina to tell them we'd arrive that afternoon. After I re-confirmed our reservation I told them I couldn't reach them by radio, he said we were too far for the VHF. He gave me the slip number and said they could have someone on the pier with flags waving if we needed. With the marina map in hand we reviewed the location and I was satisfied I knew where to go, the spot was near the boat ramp.

We had a large collection of empty (two and five gallon) water jugs tied together with string to throw away in Cabo, we stopped tossing plastic over the side last year. We still dumped steel cans and glass bottles into the ocean, because when they hit the bottom all the crabs fought over who got to live in em, til they rusted away. And we've put a few notes inside wine bottles and pushed the cork back in and tossed them in the ocean.

The bay, Bahia San Lucas, was natural and deep. Ten miles out we started to see larger boats and two enormous cruise ships sat anchored in the bay. There were tons of small boats running people to the beaches along the dramatic cliffs south of the harbor entrance. The entire scene sat beneath a vast cloudless blue sky, the jagged and dramatic cliffs sat to our left, everything else was reddish brown rock, white beach, or green ocean. I didn't see any trees, almost the entire view above the water was barren red rock and buildings.

Carlo stood on the bow with no shirt on and pointed where we needed to go, he saw the sign for marine fuels and showed me the way. It was rather distracting having Carlo on the bow like a pornographic hood ornament with his protruding nipples, while I was 19 feet behind him steering the boat. It was difficult keeping my eyes on the waterway! But having an extra pair of eyes on the bow was better than radar, I don't think he knew how valuable that was to our safety. And I never had to ask him to do it.

We followed the tall rock cliffs along the west side of the bay to the harbor entrance. We sailed around the lighthouse and straight to the fuel station, our first stop. Luckily there was no line at the pump. We tied up and pushed the button to call the attendant to fill us up with diesel: 6.7 gallons (almost half a tank). I paid cash ($31), our US currency was welcome. The thought crossed my mind if we were traveling in a large ocean class motor yacht how hard it might be to find a place to fill our three thousand gallon tanks and how much it would cost. Quickly in my head I guessed it would cost about eight thousand to fill the tank but had no idea how long that would last in a 150 foot yacht. On a ship like that they ran a motor 24/7 to make electricity, but I'm not sure how much fuel it used per day, and I bet they used batteries too.

After fuel we had to turn around and sail to the northwest all the way to the one and only boat ramp and tie up to Pier P, just to the left of the boat ramp, the one spot nobody would lease. On the positive side we'd be less than two hundred feet from dozens of stores and bars. This spot was sort of like pitching a tent on the grass beside the main entrance of a very busy shopping mall.

At 5:10pm we connected to shore power and water. We never needed the guy with the flags because the location of the slip could be seen easily from a distance and I already had satellite photos of the harbor.

We tied-up and plugged-in without complications. Our slip was along a floating pier, like Acapulco. Landing was easy, Carlo hung four bumpers while I did the ropes. Since we moved-in ass-first I grabbed the stern rope and stepped off the side onto the pier and tied us to a cleat then stepped back on board and ran up front and grabbed a bow rope, jumped onto the pier and tied it off while Carlo moved the bumpers so we didn't directly contact their pier and the big truck tires they hung on the side.

Most harbors on the Pacific Ocean had floating piers but they were tightly anchored to the bottom, even if we banged into the pier it wouldn't move them much. They used floating piers because the tides varied more on the Pacific than Atlantic, from what I heard anyway.

We stood on the pier briefly and discussed the rip in the sail. Then we climbed on the gangway to examine it up close. I showed him how the sail was made with reinforcing seams to (hopefully) stop rips from propagating very far. We carefully examined the all-white sail. I told him we'd need to tie a temporary rope to the carabineer on the end of the halyard (the rope that raised the mainsail) to keep it from flying up the mast when we let go. He cranked the chrome reel to let out more rope then when it was long enough he unclipped it from the sail and clipped it to the crank! His idea was much better than mine. We joked about the repair for a bit and his quick insights.

"You know Carlo if you had a measuring scale tattooed on your dick we could also use it for things like measuring sail damage. He looked at me, chuckled and mumbled, `Nerd!'" We both laughed then walked towards the business district.

We walked over to Cabo-Blue Bar & Grille for dinner and some nachos (to-go) to keep us from getting hungry overnight. We stopped on the way back for two bags of ice and two twelve packs of Coors Lite. It looked like the entire marina area was one huge party `til sunrise. Our spot on the pier was near the main walkway so we had very little privacy on the back deck. After it got dark out I grabbed our biggest flashlight because I wanted to see how much water we had under the prop and the keel. The prop looked like it had almost two feet so it was fine as long as we were already at low tide, but there was nobody around to ask. I noticed Susan was sitting higher in the water now since the sewage tank was empty and our stores were low and the water tank was almost empty too.

We even heard gunshots in the distance echo off the hills around the town. Carlo let me sleep all night on the V-bunk. He slept on the back deck to guard our stuff from getting ripped off since were near a public street and a busy strip mall. He kept my zombie slasher knife beside him all night.

At 4am I woke up and checked on Carlo, he was asleep in his nice shorts and a button down short sleeve shirt on the back deck cushions. I took a Benadryl and wrote him a note to let me sleep. I didn't wake up until 3pm the next day.

Wednesday February 21, 2019. Day #38.

I got out of bed at 3:11pm and used the bathroom. You could always tell when you're on city water because when you pushed down the flush pedal the water kept running until you let off the pedal, if you pushed the pedal all the way down it opened the bottom valve and dumped everything into the downstairs dookey tank.

When I stepped up on the back deck Carlo was nowhere to be seen, so I stretched out on the benches to wait on him. It was sunny and warm out, not as muggy as Panama but the sunlight was almost hot, I guessed it was almost 85 degrees and 50% humidity. While he was gone I inspected the bilge which was dry. Our water tank was full and the sewage tank was empty. I saw no signs of leaks or weird smells, like hot motors or failed bearings in the generator. This would be our last stop before we arrived in Los Angeles unless something went horribly wrong.

Twenty minutes later I heard a distant whistle of Pop Goes the Weasel as he stepped onto the pier by the street with bags in both hands, seems he went out for food. Once in a while he forgot and whistled Three Blind Mice instead of the Weasel song.

"There's a Burger King two blocks over there!" He handed me a bag, I reached in and pulled out the fries and Whopper. I sat near him and wolfed it down, then he handed me the fries, even without catsup they were great! I asked why he didn't get something better with all the restaurants around us. "I didn't have enough money," was his explanation, I gestured to him to follow me.

We went below into the front cabin, I showed him the plastic bag with the cash in the cabinet above our bunk, and apologized for not telling him sooner, he said it wasn't a problem. I pulled out a wad of cash. Carlo smiled and folded them into his pocket. I think I handed him about $400, for Carlo that was a lot of money. Then we went back on deck to finish eating lunch, I told him to help himself but let me know right away. Just to make sure he understood I gently gripped his arm, he turned his head and looked me in the eye, I told him again, "You don't have to ask, but always tell me right away." He smiled then went back to eating.

After I was done eating fries one at a time I asked him to help me move all the drinking water jugs off the captain's bunk. Then using the floating ball tester and a flashlight we checked charge status and the fluid level in each cell, six cells per battery, eight batteries equals forty eight checks. I added water to fifteen cells and showed him we only had a pint of distilled water left, we should look for more here in Cabo, just in case.

After that chore I asked him to take all the empty plastic bottles and put them in the dumpster. While he was gone I brushed my teeth and shaved using the electric in the bathroom mirror and turned on a fan in the cabin.

After that I got out the sail repair kit and we laid the top of the sail out on the cabin roof to closely examine the damage. The tear was near the peak of the three sided sail, about four inches long and probably happened during the storm this morning.

I handed him the kit to open with his zombie knife. We looked at the enclosed instruction sheet and decided how to position it over the rip and sew it in place. He went downstairs and got a large scissors from the kitchen while I used the alcohol wipes to clean both sides of the sail around the tear. Carlo carefully cut open the tube of glue and spread it on both sides after cleaning it and letting it dry in the sunshine. Next we applied the patch and pressed it place by setting it on sheets of newspaper and positioning a heavy book on top of the patch to apply even pressure across the entire patch. The last step we'd do tomorrow was to hand sew two lines of thread around the perimeter of the patch (the patch had a sewing guide printed on it, you just hand stitched it following the pattern printed on both sides). We stacked a few heavy cans of stew on top of the book for added weight, we'd sew it tomorrow after the glue cured.

After the patch was glued I asked him to go below with me and I sat him on the front bunk then leaned him back and yanked down his shorts and rubbed my face all over his crotch then blew him. The best part was playing with his mushroom headed dick like it was a rubber sex toy. Carlo relaxed on his back and let me do whatever I wanted, like he was donating blood. He came on his stomach, I cleaned up. He moaned softly as he came and tensed his leg muscles, his feet came off the floor as his prostate prepared to squeeze. This time I licked his shaft while he squirted lines of semen across his belly. He said it felt very nice being licked while coming. After he was cleaned he wanked me in the same position and after I came he tasted a few tiny spots and then cleaned me too.

After we relaxed briefly Carlo got out the brochure from the marina to look at the facilities and found they also had laundry and showers so we grabbed our stuff and walked to the showers. The men's bathroom was empty so we got into the shower together and washed each other. I used my finger to deep clean his belly button.

During the shower he told me the zombie knives on board were about as sharp as butter knives, did I have anything on board to sharpen knives and I told him I had two different sharpening stones in a cabinet towards the back, in white boxes.

After that chore we walked to the liquor store two blocks from our pier and spent $490 on booze to refill our bar and extras to put in the kitchen cabinets. We carried four plastic bags full of clinking bottles back to Susan and handed each one over the railing, he decided which bottles to put on the rack or in the cabinets.

After the trip to the liquor store was done we gathered all our laundry and did two loads, mostly towels, bedding, underwear, shorts, and T-shirts. We really didn't use much clothing at sea because it had been warm enough to almost live full time in just a swim suit.

After laundry he got out the sharpening stone and showed me how to use it but I kept holding the blade wrong, so he showed me how to examine the edge by holding it to reflect light if it was dull. If it was sharpened correctly the very knife edge would be mostly invisible to the eye, if it reflected light and you could see a line then it still needed sharpening. We sharpened every knife in the drawer. I helped a little but it was a good opportunity for him to see how much hand-to-eye coordination for me was a major problem for me.

Late that afternoon when shadows were getting long we discussed dinner and he said he'd go get chow for us. He was gone 70 minutes and returned with dinner and another 12 pack of cold Coors Lite.

We sat at the table drinking beer and eating our Mexican steak dinners on plastic dinner plates with steel forks and knives. We were both pretty buzzed too.

Carlo commented about the people in the restaurant lobby waiting for carry out, he said it was a very odd bunch, some of them were borderline abusive towards the staff. "What do you mean I have to wait two minutes?!" He shrieked mocking one of the worst. Then he did vocal imitations of the some others, all of them were older women. He pinched his nose and imitated people complaining about everything from too many napkins to the waiting room chairs being uncomfortable.

He said he saw several people with botched plastic surgery. He said the worst was what looked like a lady in her late 70s, she had droopy skin on her arms (bat flaps), elbows, legs, neck, and jaw but she had perfectly inflated D-cup breasts that stuck out like she had two balloons stuffed down her bra.

He said the moment he saw her stand and stagger to the window to collect her order he involuntarily laughed loudly and couldn't control it, the lady glanced back and glared at him but all he could do was look at the floor and hold his hand over his mouth. He saw one tranny with a deep man's voice and extremely long fake eyelashes and about a pound of makeup on her face, along with D-cup breasts that also looked like a nightmare sex clown from Las Vegas. He said the worst part was that they actually thought they looked nice and had the guts to go out in public looking like circus freak rejects.

"Just be glad that wasn't you or me." I replied, paused a moment, then added, "Or your grandmother!"

"Yeah, it was sad. I actually felt sorry for them. Way too much bad plastic surgery, I just don't understand." He lamented.

"I think for some of them it's not how they looked but the fact that they paid for it. Since they cannot walk around flashing a wad of cash they got DD-cup breasts as if to say: Look what I can afford."

Then Carlo added, "Well the sad part is when people do things just to manipulate how strangers thought, that's the truly sick part."

I told him that as a lawyer I heard lies and boasting from people about their wealth all the time, but I learned to ignore it and never react.

I told him another notorious place for weirdoes around here was another beachfront community north of Cabo called Rocky Point, it's also another freak show with fake breasts, hair plugs, and liposuction scars, and half of them were from Scottsdale or Paradise Valley. I told him I heard there was a surgery center in Scottsdale where they did transgender surgery, like cut off your penis, flatten your breasts, surgically create a fake pussy, and install breast implants but they usually paid cash and the place was very hush hush. Clients arrived through the secluded back entrance and left wearing sunglasses in a wheelchair into a waiting limo with darkened windows a couple days later.

I grabbed our empty plates and stuff and set them in the bucket for washing later. Carlo gathered the garbage and ran it to a trash can on the pier and came back. I asked if he took his meds and he snapped to and said, "Thanks for reminding me." We both went into the bathroom and took our pills, I took another Benadryl and he took his last antibiotic and had about twenty more iron pills to take. He went on deck and filled the bucket to cover our dishes with water but let them sit on deck all night. We locked the cabin door after making sure there was nothing of value left out, except the ship's compass (and the dinghy on the roof). We went to bed and spooned all night, him in front, my nose buried in his shaggy hair.

Thursday February 22, 2019. Day #39.

Last full day in Cabo.

We slept until 9:30am then got cleaned up together in that tiny bathroom (but I thought those morning bathroom times were intimate) then we decided to walk some place for breakfast. We got home around 11am after a very filling hotel style breakfast buffet at a very busy restaurant. I was waiting to see how long it would take before one of us pooped in front of the other in the bathroom. We always talked about weird stuff in the bathroom.

"Say, do you know where the Weasel song came from?"

"No, not really. I suppose it has something to do with the Black Plague or something?"

"Ha! No not that one. You're thinking of London Bridges, but weasel started as sheet music in bars in England in the middle 1800s as a popular dance song. I used to know the lyrics but don't any more. Mom taught me when she was teaching me to read. I think there was a famous boat named after the song too back in the 1800s. It's entirely British."

After a moment of silence he asked, "What's a weasel?"

"I'm not an expert but I think it's like a ferret, they live along the edge of lakes and rivers and eat fish and mice, and had the misfortune to be born with valuable fur. They're a long skinny creature with short legs, kind of a cute face." Carlo just said "Ahhhh."

"The big question is can you eat them?" I asked Carlo but he never responded. "I heard you can but they don't have much flavor, but if you skin and cook them right you can eat most rodents."

We discussed when we were going to leave Cabo and decided to leave tomorrow morning, so we inventoried our stores. It's about 900 miles from Cabo to Los Angeles. In that segment the trade winds reliably blew down (N>S) the coast, precisely the wrong direction for us, hopefully it would blow from a bit to the left or right so we wouldn't have to zigzag the entire ten days. The further you sailed from shore the more the direction of the wind changed which translated into: further from shore=more wind changes=faster speed=less zigzagging=increased risk too.

We made a shopping list and stocked up for the final leg, it took one trip to the store (with the bag lady cart) just for water, but we had enough left over from the last segment we only needed ten gallons this time. Our on-board water tank was mostly used for flushing the toilet at sea. We decided not to use the life ring to poop in the water because we were sailing far from land.

After our trips to the store (three blocks away) and we had everything we needed for a non-stop run to Del Rey and double checked things and felt we were safe to sail again. While we were putting stuff away Carlo said he was surprised that during the last storm the only part of the ship that creaked was the weather seal around the mast where it passed through the cabin roof.

After that we went up on the cabin roof on our stomachs and hand stitched the patch in place which took an hour. We bumped knuckles a lot but it was fun. We started at opposite sides and hand stitched following the marks printed on the patch. The kit even came with needles and thread.

During that task we talked about how Susan was built and why she was so expensive. After we finished the sail repair we reconnected the halyard and raised her up a few feet above the boom and went down into the cabin. The patch instructions said to raise it up so the patch was exposed to sunlight to help it cure faster.

I pointed to the wood ceiling and said they were handmade panels, not crap purchased at Builder's Mart. "Did you ever see the rocks down in the keel?" I asked but Carlo just sat there defiant, four hundred thousand bucks was way too much to pay for any sailboat. I motioned for him to come over by the bottom of the stairs and lifted open the bilge panel (leaned it against the kitchen cabinets) and lit the keel with flashlights.

"See how rounded and perfect those rocks are?" I asked.

"Yeah, so what? They're frickin rocks."

"Those are river rocks, naturally polished smooth granite and hand selected by some dude in Maine for the keel weight in these handcrafted sailboats, if they wanted to be cheap they'd use chunks of lead, but each of those rocks was handpicked from the banks of the Penobscot River, they're weighed so they came to the exact keel weight." He looked me in the eyes then sat back down and just shook his head side to side. I told him we'll go to the Luxury Boat Show in Los Angeles and see how the new sailboats in this size were made today, very few were made to sail the oceans any more, today they're made to host parties and sail near land and impress your wealthy alcoholic friends.

Carlo just mumbled, "Meh." Like he thought it was grossly overpriced no matter where the rocks came from.

After storing our supplies we left again on foot looking for a drug store where we got a liter bottle of distilled water, a box of Q-Tips, and a small bottle of hydrogen peroxide. When we got back I had him lie on the back cushions and slide his shorts down to his dick so I could service his belly button hole again. I got a couple tiny chunks (of lint + dried skin flakes compressed into tiny black flakes) out of the bottom but eventually the peroxide stopped bubbling, so I rinsed him out and dried it with paper towels and my pinky finger. If he stayed flat on his back then people walking by couldn't see him but they could see me from the shoulders on up. From what they could see it looked like I was putting together a jigsaw puzzle or hand rolling cigars.

While it soaked and bubbled I gently fingered his tits (he got hard). After he was done he cleaned mine which was smaller and went lots faster, maybe ten minutes. I bet I spent almost forty five on his but most of the time was watching it bubble as the bacteria died. I was erect during both jobs.

That afternoon we did our pre-trip inspection and closely inspected the sail repair. We checked the charge on each battery cell and added fluids to six cells and replaced the caps. The batteries and cables were in great shape. The hull looked fine but we decided not to swim underneath her to look below the water line because the water was shallow and I had no idea what creatures might be living in it.

We were quiet for a bit and looked around the shopping district with binoculars. Carlo called his mother to tell her he was in Cabo. After he got off the phone I asked how she was doing.

"She's okay. The house is up for sale and she moved in with the retired lady across the street, they're good friends and go to church together. Her life has changed a lot, she said she's going to sell the store."

"How old is she?"

"I think she's 64, its one of the things I'm not allowed to ask."

I chuckled when he said that but it was also sad how she treated him as if he was still five years old. I wanted to say something to him about that, like putting a stop to all her rules that were the same as when he a small child, but I decided to hold off for another day.

Then we talked about what we're going to do on the first few weeks in Los Angeles, what things we needed to do first. Then he asked, "You going to try to stay with class action suits?"

"Not totally sure but they hired me for my class action experience and history of success. The problem with those is the company usually had to borrow money to fund them. They're super expensive to prosecute and don't always make a profit. They're very risky, that's why so many lawyers avoided them, but well established firms can finance them because they're usually well known and bring in a lot of new business if they're handled right."

Carlo asked why the suits were expensive so I explained it to him, "It usually took a staff of three or more to investigate and interview. During that time those people were probably not generating any income for the firm. Think of it like running the tire store but you had three employees that sat in the office and played cards all day."

"They'd have to hire a private investigator, a paralegal, and rent more office space (and computers, recorders, copiers, furniture, etc.) to keep all the records and interview people. Most offices didn't have enough empty space in their main office for such a big project. And sometimes the investigations and people were in another city, like our case down in Miami."

Then I told him, "Despite what you may have seen in movies law firms don't have boxes of cash lying around, they run a very tight financial ship and are expected to make a profit or close their doors."

Carlo asked how I found class action cases and I told him by talking to people, some called it ambulance chasing, but that's a really bad example. I found the one in Atlanta in my spinning class by just talking to other people. It was a similar process for the Miami Police case. After we lived in Los Angeles I'll join a gym and listen to people talk about what pissed them off, which was how most class cases were discovered. Sometimes you saw them in the news first: three hundred people diagnosed with skin cancer after using a certain brand of shaving cream, instances like that.

I asked him what he was going to do in LA and Carlo said, "Its gonna take me a while to figure out where stuff is, stores and roads, where it's cool and where to avoid, stuff like that. Then I'm going to keep my eyes open for business opportunities. I told him I had seen firsthand that the clientele around marinas were usually very underserved, but I wasn't sure why that happened. He asked me to explain that.

"Del Rey is huge, nearly two thousand boats. From what I've read one in every thirty is lived-in full time. But their access to services is limited and their space on-board is limited. People on boats usually don't have dishwashers, carpet shampooers, dog walkers, cable-TV, deliveries, and basic retail type services that are available to people that live on land. There is a huge potential market there for skilled high-end services. Because the costs are high you don't find squatters or drug addicts living in luxury yachts but you do find people with spendable income in need of basic services. Even something as basic as a maid service would likely be immediately successful in many marinas once you got used to the clientele and the reality of cleaning cabins in luxury yachts. Something else odd about them is the incidence of people hiding in their boats from things like process servers, divorce lawyers, and tax collectors is probably higher than average. You get the picture?" I asked him.

"Yes I do. If I could find a niche I could start with minimal investment I'd certainly give it a try, with a maid service I could hire a few young ladies to work for me and a few vacuum cleaners and the rest of the gear and give it a whirl."

"Now you're thinking!" I heard his stomach growl loudly which gave me an excuse to gaze at his belly button again.

"Hey Carlo let me ask you something stupid, why do Mexicans have such perfect belly buttons?"

"Oh I know this one. I forget the name but there's a cloth strap mothers tie around the stomach of a newborn that pressed in on the belly button and causes the part on the inside to heal to the intestines, so it stays in instead of popping out, that's why. I don't know how long they wear it or what it's called, but I heard my mom talk about `em, she said it was American doctors that convinced American mothers to abandon the tradition which lead to it also being one of the few places you commonly saw herniated belly buttons. Even in third world places like Viet Nam, India, China, and Incas in Peru you rarely saw outies any more because they rejected modernity."

I told him I thought it was genetic but I guess it came from better mothering guided by hundreds of years of tradition.

We had a few minutes of quiet then he asked, "Can we get carry out steak dinners in these clothes?" I told him yes, I'm sure it's okay since everyone here dressed down in public.

We went below to clean up in the bathroom together. I brushed my teeth and he pretended to be fucking me from behind while he waited for his turn at the sink.

I stepped to the side while I brushed my teeth, he washed his face and checked his look in the mirror. With a mouthful of toothpaste I mumbled that he needed a haircut. "I know," was his reply. I really enjoyed the intimacy of sharing the bathroom with him.

We finished up and put sandals on and got ready to leave. I locked the cabin door and we left on foot for the steak restaurant three blocks away. On the way we discussed what to order and agreed on prime rib steaks, steamed veggies, salads, bread and butter. They served steaks in round tins with cardboard covers but you couldn't cut a steak in those pans, your knife would cut the aluminum too. Carlo said a plastic knife might cut prime rib but not the aluminum pans.

After we got back with our carry-out dinners I told him more about the trip from Panama City to Quepos, I read some of my sea log notes and explained about C&D and showed him some IPad photos and described Dave's body in detail. By the time we'd crossed the canal and nobody got hurt and everyone ate well and had a good time together they started to act more like themselves, off came the clothes and in went the booze.

I told Carlo that those idealistic young people really changed their tune after they got drunk then their tune became: It's all about Dick.' Carlo said when they published their first book for the cover photo they should pose near the Washington Monument since it's represents a giant boner. After all he was the Father' of our country!

Our dinner was fantastic, I think I ran my mouth during the entire meal. We sat on the dinette and ate with the fan blowing. We emptied two bottles of wine and got rather drunk. I could tell he was sauced because his eyes looked weird, like they were more reflective. Carlo offered to hold the IPad so I could jerk off to Dave's photos. I laughed and reminded him his body was a dream come true, Dave would never satisfy me that way. I was fascinated with his foot long wiener, but it wasn't very thick. Carlo said he'd like to see a foot long wiener sometime. I told him I might be able to arrange for them to meet but after that he was on his own, but if he asked nicely (when Dave was drinking) he'd probably let you see it because he was very proud. "Ain't no sense in having a record breaking dick and keeping it a secret."

It was a very unusual dinner, sitting at the table eating a very nice meal and discussing dicks in great detail, and sipping wine at the same time. I bet I spent five minutes trying to describe Dave's dick and balls in great detail, even down to the appearance of his pubes. I could nearly sketch it on paper except I can't sketch.

While I did dishes in the kitchen sink he stayed beside me and we talked about leaving tomorrow morning. We discussed what still needed to be done, I told him the sail would probably be fine, if it ripped again we had more patch kits. I hoped our repair didn't create another weak point.

Since we were up and moving I flipped the switch up to solar charge only. We'd barely use them during the rest of the trip because the solar and wind would power our lights and radios the rest of the way to Los Angeles.

We went into the front room and I started taking off my clothes, then his. I got him on his back and climbed in top and fucked him on his back but came on his stomach. I liked being able to see or feel my semen, to me it was an independent measure of how good it was: more semen = better sex. To me it was like an independent assessment. I cleaned us and then we went to bed, alarm time 5:30am tomorrow, about ninety minutes before sunrise.

Friday February 23, 2019. Day #40.

Departure day.

When the alarm went off I muted it quickly and left Carlo asleep in bed while I got Susan ready to sail. Water heated on the stove, while I checked the bilge. I inspected the mast, cables, ropes and cranks by flashlight, then I went on the pier and checked that side of the hull, checked that the dinghy was still on the roof and properly inflated. I turned on all the nav lights, everything worked. Moments later the espresso pot started to gurgle so I turned off the gas and poured one cup for myself and set it in the cup holder on the captain's chair. Next, I poured the other cup and went into the front cabin and woke Carlo to the wonderful scent of a steamy cup of `nearly espresso.'

One thing I enjoyed was waking Carlo in the morning, I greeted him with a hot cup of coffee. He had the most appreciative tone in his voice and was so sexy, gentle, and vulnerable it really was sweet, it was sort of like a glimpse of what he looked like at age four when his mommy got him out of bed for a bowl of Apple Jacks and a glass of milk. Today, he was asleep on his back with his tits sticking up, the highest things on his body. I slid my hand across his chest and whispered his name to wake him. He started to roll over until he noticed the hand on his chest then he smiled and relaxed while I raised the cup so he could smell it and see it. He rubbed his eyes then sat up to reach for it.

On most people if you messed around with their tits while they were asleep they'd push away whatever was on their chest, but not Carlo, even in his sleep he welcomed intimate contact.

I slid my hand down his shorts and gently held his dick and balls while he got into position to take a sip of coffee. I whispered to him we were ready to sail, I could do it myself but he told me he'd be on the bow after he peed. I stretched his scrunched up wiener so he'd have better aim in front of the toilet. I saw he flipped on the NAV lights then climbed onto the bow using the hatch above our bed, which was unusual.

Two minutes later we dropped the lines and pushed off the pier then motored down the main waterway and turned to the left towards the harbor entrance channel, then out on the bay. After I could see the cliffs along the coast between the sea and the harbor entrance I started the gradual turn to the right. Once we were halfway past the cliffs Carlo cranked up the mainsail. As usual for him when he entered or left any harbor he stood (or sat) on the bow with no shirt on. This morning he was out there in the dark but I saw his silhouette from behind.

The sound of the ratchet clacking on the halyard spool filled the air as he raised the sail to the top. To lower a sail you flipped the lever and turned the crank the opposite direction and slowly lowered it to the boom. You needed to keep a eye on any sail you were moving in case something went wrong, after lowering the mainsail you had to bunch it up and strap it to the boom or it would pile up on the cabin roof and block the solar panels. It could also inflate into a large Macy's parade balloon. The boom had Velcro straps for securing the mainsail. The last strap was tied by stepping onto the bench seats and reaching up, and fastening the straps. This was one disadvantage to having a canvas cover over the back deck, it meant one long section of mainsail couldn't be fastened to the boom. Usually the person steering the boat fastened the last strap after pulling the sail tight. That was not a fun job to do in the rain and it was kind of scary to do in heavy seas.

It took about four minutes of manual labor on the crank to raise the mainsail, it got harder the further up it went. I loved watching his upper body muscles flex as he worked it. Whether his body was upright or bent over during the cranking his belly button remained wide open which I thought was very erotic. He knew I liked to watch him while he worked like that but I think he felt slightly self conscious when I watched him with lust on the brain. He said I was the only guy he ever knew that saw beauty in his body while he did routine things.

I was told by lots of people over the years that if I wasn't autistic I'd probably be an artist of some kind, maybe a photographer.

The thing about Carlo's body was sort of like modern day models you saw in clothing ads. Many times when we saw clothing models people thought that person really wasn't very attractive but they all had some outstanding feature that attracted your gaze, Carlo was the same way. At a glance on the street he looked like just another Mexican guy, but naked was a totally different story. Sometimes when I saw a Spanish style Catholic Church that's what I said in my mind, "Thank you God for giving us Mexican boys!" I often wondered how much of their beauty came from Spanish DNA and how much came from Native American DNA.

The truth was it wasn't just Mexicans but most Hispanics boys were hot! My favorites came from Mexico and Columbia.

Eighteen minutes later we exited the bay and continued our gradual turn towards 325 degrees, he raised the foresails and we gained speed to 6mph. We had to sail southwest six miles to clear the south end of the peninsula before returning to our original course, the original narrow boxes on the GPS screen.

There are some dramatic rock formations at the point of land that marks the edge of the bay, and along the southern tip of Baja are some huge sand beaches, dramatic rock cliffs, and lots of hotels. But they thin out and it becomes desert and rock the rest of the way to Tijuana.

The route I programmed in the GPS was to sail above the Pacific shelf, off the west coast, the trench usually stayed 100 miles from the coast but came closer at a couple points, like the big point of land called Punta Eugenia on the west coast of Baja. After that our last course change came when we were straight west of San Clemente Island (northwest of San Diego) we'd turn towards Marina Del Rey. In that area I fully expected to be `inspected' by the Coast Guard or the US Navy when we got near US waters. We'd be in international waters but their guns were bigger. It's a semi-legal form of piracy they committed at sea to stop vessels without cause, but it's not worth a fight. My policy was to be pleasant and get it over as quickly and politely as possible. If we didn't get stopped then it's no big deal. I told Carlo we were probably already being watched by satellite. He looked at the sky and said he wasn't going to lie out naked anymore! He mumbled, "The War on Drugs."

"There is no war on drugs. There's only a war on the wrong drugs." I reminded him.

"What does that mean?"

"The drug war is against competition because nobody messes with the CIA's monopoly on manufacture and importation. That's how they fund clandestine actions, like the one that failed to remove Fidel from power, or the failed attempt to oust the Ayatollahs. The CIA's desire to manipulate foreign regimes (esp in South America) had a very poor record, but they kept trying because they had few consequences for their failures, but the American people certainly did."

"It makes me sick of governments."

"Yep, me too. I just want my slice of the American Pie, otherwise I don't want to know about the rest of it, but if they asked me I'd say if you wanted to defund something that might actually improve the world, shut down the CIA and the other eighteen spy agencies too, throw all of them in jail because if you let them go they'll just start it up again under a different name. All those people can get jobs with the Peace Corp. After them we should defund the IRS and actually simplify the tax code, one form for business and another for personal taxes. We'll limit the tax code to ten pages of nine point printed text, and no more."

"Wow, Mister Not Political spouts off on politics."

"Well I never said I don't think about it, I just don't live for it, I don't hang on what they say and I don't brand myself with a party label, I hate all of `em equally, and I don't watch their propaganda on TV either."

"Now you sound like my Dad."

"Well, he was a boxer, he had to know how to read people to keep his face from getting smashed."

"I thought Aspies couldn't read people."

"I'm blind to most of it, my brain sees body language for exactly how it looks, but doesn't decode it. I learned a few simple ways to read people, but my skill level is very basic, like a child. I actually learned most of what I know today during law school. Reading eyebrows is my primary means of understanding people. The big difference between Aspies and neuro-typicals is more in what my brain doesn't do, not so much in what it does wrong."

I paused for a moment then told him that... your average dog is better at reading human body language than me.

"Steve, I can't even guess what that must be like."

"Adult Aspies are blind to most of it and that makes them feel alienated and isolated from society. Even dogs understand basic human body language, but to Aspies most of it goes unnoticed, they appear as insignificant movements. I think that's part of why most Autistic kids tune out the world, because it's overwhelming and makes little sense. Imagine being sent to live in a foreign country where you didn't speak the language. Everything was gibberish, that's sort of what it's like."

"Let me ask you something really personal, okay?"

"Sure."

"What exactly do you expect from a lover? It seems like someone with autism needs special friends. I've seen TV shows about autism but they never talked about the people that stood behind them."

The fact that he noticed that struck me like an electrical shock, it seemed he was truly trying to do the right thing. This was a special moment for basic clarity. At first I wasn't sure I could answer his question because I never thought about my special needs, nor did I understand what it was like to be the significant other to someone with autism.

"Well, I think most relatives of autistic kids adapted to it over time so everyone grew into it slowly. Some failed, some succeeded. But when I meet strangers many simply walked away because they sensed something's wrong."

Then I continued, "Most people desire to do the right thing, but mistakes happen and some people just can't handle being around autism. Being a close friend to an autistic is sort of like meeting and befriending someone that is deaf, it can complicate things and requires some learning, perhaps a lot more than with a normal person. If you're with me for selfish reasons it will become evident eventually and you'll simply walk away, like Cozumel. If your heart is in the right place then the eventual rewards will far outweigh the extra work."

Then I added, "You know more about Aspies then you realize." I thought about quoting Obi-Wan, `Use the force, Carlo,' but decided not to.

I also told him, "I graduated law school and passed the bar that made it legal to practice law in California. But for me inside I went to law school and became an autistic lawyer. My personality and my brain became a lawyer too, it made me the person you know today. Since Autism sort of robbed me of a normal man's life I decided to become something, so I became a lawyer. Some people become actors, painters, salesmen, some become alcoholics and violent assholes, I became a lawyer. Does that make sense?" I asked hoping he understood what I said. I guess what I meant to say was some people had jobs but I became a lawyer in my mind, body, and soul so I acted less like a man with autism that had a law degree.

I briefly mentioned politics again and told Carlo I thought the US should make a law limiting all elected offices to two terms with no possibility of serving in any other elected office for life. And that also applied to their spouses, children, and former spouses. The idea was to prevent something like Person A serving two terms, then his wife serving two more, and his daughter serving two more, the law was designed to prevent political dynasties. We both confessed that neither of us were registered voters.

After that conversation we both went about our business. Around 11am Carlo made us lunch while I hand washed dishes in the bucket on the back deck.

While we ate the subject of narcotics came up again, it was a question I started to answer earlier but we got sidetracked.

"It's easier to understand if you look at it on a small level at first. Take the city of Saint Pete, last time I looked it had a population of 300,000 souls. If you included the chain of cities across central Florida along Interstate-4, Saint Pete, Tampa, Orlando, and Daytona Beach you're talking now about four million residents.

Medical Marijuana in Florida is legal with restrictions, growing pot is illegal and narcotics are illegal too. Last time I looked at the CDC statistics for Florida, use of pot has grown dramatically after medical marijuana started, especially in the elderly with chronic pain and disease. The stats for the entire state were one person in every thirty was a regular user of marijuana. For narcotics (which includes Meth, Heroin, Cocaine, and synthetic drugs like Fentanyl) the use statewide was estimated around 200 pounds of narcotics a day. If you combined marijuana and narcotics the numbers jumped up to around 500 pounds a day, that's one palletized crate of drugs imported into the state daily. You with me so far?" I asked.

Carlo just nodded yes.

"When I say pallet I'm talking one of those wooden frames you pick up with a forklift truck, with a huge cardboard box glued on top of it, which can hold about one cubic yard of stuff, roughly. So now we're talking about volume of space, not pounds. Florida used at least one cubic yard of drugs a day, roughly ten pallets per week. Over a month that adds up to one and a half steel shipping containers just for the state of Florida. If Mexico was where this stuff came from the volume just for Florida meant almost two steel containers a month coming by train across the border into Texas. Those containers needed to be lifted off rail cars and placed on frames that rolled behind a semi then driven a thousand miles to Florida. That meant someone had to schedule the drivers, the trucks, pay for vehicle maintenance, driver benefits, new tires, fuel, insurance, all that crap. Once they arrived in Florida they need to be unloaded, unpacked, weighed, and divided up into districts, and delivered to local warehouses around the state, all that took management, computers, record keeping, payroll, and man-hours. Who managed all that?"

"Let's imagine the guy scheduled to drive the next container from Texas to Florida had a wreck and couldn't do it, who does he call and who do they call to get another truck and driver that day?"

"Who manages the delivery network? Who schedules the drivers and vehicle maintenance? Who paid the bill if a truck broke down on I-10 and needed a roadside mechanic at 2am? When was the last time you heard in the news that due to drug busts the state of Florida ran out of meth or heroin today? I'll tell you when: never!

The power goes out, roads crumble, bridges collapse, sinkholes appear and swallow entire houses, people die from medical malpractice, truckers go on strike, loading dock workers go on strike, NASA launches rockets that end up in the ocean, but the fucking narcotic distribution network has never failed." Carlo had a smile on his face that gradually got wider as I spoke.

"When you included the nearby states of Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana and add in their drug use you see the tonnage grow dramatically, we're not talking about college kids during spring break sneaking a few ounces of cocaine over the border at Brownsville, or people selling booze in Stiltsville, Florida during prohibition, we're talking steel shipping containers crossing the river into Texas almost daily with dozens of semis hauling them around the country, none of them get busted and it's never interrupted. So when people say `The War on Drugs,' I yell BULL-SHIT! There is no war. The real war is on anyone that fucks with the system they started during prohibition. It started with gangsters in January, 1920 but now it's a government managed civilian operation, all they want is the money."

By now Carlo was smiling and said now that he thought about it he guessed once you added in all the surrounding states it would have to be a serious transport operation, maybe even bigger than Fedex to supply just the southeast states with drugs, and it's never failed.

After a few moments of letting him sit and ponder the situation I told him that was the real reason why there were no roads from Panama into Columbia, the US government doesn't want their heroin competing with the 90 year old importation networks in Mexico and Central America. Most of the imported poppies refined into Heroin and Cocaine in Mexico came from Afghanistan and Southeast Asia. I said if you wanted to know the actual reason US troops were in Afghanistan, this is the reason why. It's the world's biggest producer of opium poppies. It's their biggest export. That's why China is interested and why Russia occupied them too. It's all about money and control of the production of heroin.

I told him the last time I checked there were eight train lines that crossed from Mexico into the USA, in fact one of them was in the very town he grew up in, Laredo, Texas. When I said that Carlo got a surprised look on his face since he grew up nearby and never knew it was there.

I told him an easy way to get someone killed would be to go near the Laredo rail yard with a nice video camera and a long lens and start video recording trains crossing the border bridge. Near the street entrance record drivers faces and license plates going in and out of the yard. Once they saw you watching you'll soon end up disappeared. And I told him I guaranteed there were only bomb sniffing dogs in that rail yard or any of the other eight yards on the border from San Diego to Brownsville. Most narcotics had to be transported over land to protect potency and profitability.

After some quiet time for him to ponder the situation I told him Columbia was another major grower of poppies and producer of narcotics, they could send some by boat to Florida, those were the busts you heard about but the real target was the money flowing back and when that got stopped those arrests never made the news. The crates of cash simply disappeared. Columbia was an unwelcome competitor to the CIA's monopoly.

Narcs flowing across the Caribbean weren't as good as Mexican because it started to fall apart from exposure to humidity during shipment. Extra packing also cost more and took longer. Their heroin could be ruined by mold and excess humidity. Northern Mexico was a dry desert that was ideal for transporting drugs, and rail transport was cheap, reliable, and never suspected by the American people. Most Americans had no idea that freight trains crossed the border uninspected every day.

The weather was clearly getting cooler as we slowly zigzagged up the coast, the constant headwind slowed us down, and there were times I'd swore it looked like we were moving backwards. We were much further north now, the low temperature at night had dropped, and it actually got cold on the back deck at night, coolest since we left Florida. I decided to not look at the GPS to see our speed, just our heading and how far we were from the deep trench below us. Even the dolphins stopped visiting us because we were moving too slowly for them.

One time I stood on the shower deck watching the waves and Carlo walked up beside me and hung his hand on my shoulder and we stared at the sea.

"It looks like we're standing still." He said.

"Stay there."

I went into the cabin and got the lid cut off a can of tuna out of the trash and brought it back on deck. I stood beside Carlo, he ran his hand all over my back while I carefully tossed the steel can lid into the ocean, it left a few bubbles on the water that we watched float away. "There, that's how fast we're moving!" I said as he turned his head to watch the bubbles slowly move away behind us. He sighed, looked at me, smiled and went back to reading his book.

That afternoon I got Carlo stretched out on the back deck cushions and slowly sun screened his entire body and jerked him off too. After clean-up I retrimmed his pubes and the hairs in his arm pits too. I never asked, I just did it. I think I spent almost three hours messing around with his body, he seemed to enjoy being the center of my little world.

That evening he asked if he could fuck me, of course I said yes. He said he wanted to do it standing, with me holding onto the captain's seat.

Carlo emerged naked from the cabin with a boner, he smeared lotion up and down then asked me to hold the backrest. He positioned me with my stomach pressed against the back of the captain's seat with my legs spread, while he stepped up behind me and fucked me from behind so he had to shove upward inside me. I noticed he had shoes on to raise himself a couple inches. He fucked me hard and made lots of grunts and moans and came very hard inside me with some powerful upward thrusts that lifted my heels off the deck. I had to hold on tightly.

After almost fifteen minutes he pulled out and paced around the back deck, sweating, panting, like he just completed a 300 yard dash. It was totally erotic watching him catch his breath. I stood behind the chair with the sensation of goo starting to dribble down my thighs. Carlo was one of the few guys I've known that could come and stay hard afterwards. I think that was because sometimes just once wasn't enough to satisfy his appetite, he still hungered for another round. The thing I learned about his body was he really needed lots of physical effort combined with the pleasure of an orgasm to feel fully satisfied. Intensity of the orgasm alone was not enough for him, he needed to put in physical effort too. If he had been born an Elk he'd need a good hard chase before the fuck to satisfy his inner beast, running through the forest with his erect dick hanging out as he chased Mrs. Elk. My body worked the opposite of his, I'm more of a bottom, but Carlo was a top, maybe even an aggressive top.

After he was done I stood him on the shower spot and used the bucket to wash his crotch and butt, after I dried him off I moved him beside the captain's chair and got him to sit with his legs spread and spent the next two hours concentrating on his dick in or near my mouth, while I kept us on the proper heading. I think we stayed up to almost 1am with his dick in my hand, his rubbery mushroom head in my mouth or around my lips and face. I made him come after he begged me that he hurt badly and needed to orgasm again (his third time tonight).

Just before his last orgasm I asked him if he was getting close and he mumbled to me to shut up and keep doing that very thing.

Saturday February 24, 2019. Day #41.

We passed the island of Santa Margarita off the west coast of Baja. Daytime high 89 deg, clear skies, wind from the northwest, almost straight ahead. Average speed 5-7mph, I could run that fast. We averaged about 110 miles a day. I still predicted a week to sail from Cabo to Los Angeles.

Taking advantage of the cooler weather and the cloudless skies Carlo spent more time on the back benches to work on his suntan. Sometimes we played the radio, other times we enjoyed the peace of listening to the waves breaking on the bow.

We spent that night together on the back deck, he slept under the starry sky on the bench beside me under a blanket. We were head to head around the corner of the deck on our backs, holding hands looking at the stars, we talked for a few hours, it was one of the best nights of my life. We snuggled under blankets, I occasionally checked the handheld GPS to keep an eye on our heading. The steering wheel was two feet from my toes.

Sunday February 25, 2019. Day #42.

Black Sunday.

That morning I sat on the bench by the helm, Carlo got on his back with his head on my lap, I carefully shaved his face using a small amount of liquid soap and a wash rag, then I cut off the few hairs that grew above his waistband.

Around 10am we saw dolphins and tried fishing, he caught a nice yellowfin tuna. He filleted it, and cooked it in oil on the fry pan, we ate them for brunch along with our last can of peas. The bottlenose dolphins didn't swim with us because we were moving too slow, which was embarrassing. It felt like they were laughing at us. Carlo said he thought the dolphins were sort of an indicator that fish were nearby.

On the radar I watched the coast move closer as we neared Punta Eugenia where we would be within twenty miles of Baja and actually saw land through the haze. We also saw more dolphins and whales breaking the surface between us and the shore. That afternoon we sailed past the Point and watched the shore rapidly move away as we sailed further north. Much of the shoreline of Baja was so primitive it's like seeing the world hundreds of years ago when Portugal and Holland ruled the seas and the world's spices travelled over the Silk Road.

We ate sliced ham and instant potatoes (prison tayters) on the back deck for dinner, ran the radar to watch for obstacles sticking out of the water since I felt safer a hundred miles from shore, still sailing towards 322 degrees. We got some high altitude clouds today and the wind was up, still coming from almost straight ahead of us. Our average speed was 7mph. My normal running speed on streets was 5-6mph.

On the little shortwave radio tonight I was able to tune-in KNX radio on 1070am from Los Angeles, it was exciting to hear news from the United States, first time I'd heard native English voices since Carlo returned. Carlo came back on deck while I had the radio on, he brought me a cup of wine and had some whiskey for himself, my chest pain started when we heard this story on KNX Newsradio 1070am:

`In International news we're following the tragic story of two young people hiking across The Americas. A State Department spokesperson said Federal Police in Guatemala are investigating the apparent murder of a Seattle woman. A Seattle man was also found seriously injured nearby, he underwent emergency surgery in the capital city after being found along the road by local farmers. Since the incident there have been no sightings of the missing woman. Carly Cordova, age 22, is presumed dead due to evidence at the scene, near the rural farming town of Rio Bravo, Guatemala. Her friend has not regained consciousness, local police found no witnesses to the incident.

Last year in central-western Guatemala three other tourists disappeared in that area. State Department spokesperson advised American Network News a travel advisory was in effect for the entire country of Guatemala due to civil disturbances that erupted following the election of Juan Ortiz to the Presidency in 2018. It is unknown if this was related to the election or on-going meth manufacturing wars. Guatemala City has been a popular tourist destination for their Easter festivities.'

With tears in my eyes I struggled to tell Carlo that I'm sure they were the hitchhikers I took across the canal. Carlo reached over and held my hand while I had a strong pain in my chest and a sense of fear. I wished I hadn't turned on the radio, but I was glad to hear he survived.

"I wonder what happened, they were just hitchhiking across the country."

"Maybe they saw something." Carlo replied.

"God, what a waste!" We sat in silence for a few moments, then I added, "Some of the narcotics headed towards the States from China and Afghanistan came ashore in La Union, Guatemala, and Salina Cruz, Mexico. They don't hesitate to kill anyone that posed a threat to that business."

I went down to the front cabin and came back with the IPad, then showed him pictures of them together, always smiling. I said, "That story said, Carly Cordova, 22 years old from Seattle, Washington, here she is." It became a struggle to stop from sobbing, he could tell I was on the verge of weeping and he stayed close to me, with one hand on me all the time.

I felt a real strong need to go for a run but was stuck a hundred miles from shore with nothing to run on. It's often a form of therapy for me, I can pour my frustrations into my running and I felt better afterward. Several times I just burst out in tears then fought to make it stop. Carlo was very uncomfortable seeing me so upset. Eventually, I fell asleep on the bench and Carlo steered most of the night, then around dawn we swapped positions. While he slept I cried again at the helm. When it became unbearable I went up front on the bow and cried as loud as I wanted. I swore and yelled FUCK YOU at the sky, I raised my hand and pointed at the sky and yelled, "YOU LET IT HAPPEN!" The sadness was almost more than I could handle.

All day I sat at the helm and stared out the windshield like a statue. I lost my appetite and sat there like a steering robot and kept us on course. Carlo kept an eye on me and said he was worried. My brain felt like I had lost a lot of emotional function, all I could do was sit like a statue and watch the GPS screen.

Carlo tried to kiss my cheek but I sat there unmoving like a bronze statue of myself. All I could do was sit, steer, blink, and breathe.

Monday February 26, 2019. Day #43.

Overnight I heard more radio stations on AM from the States. Carlo called his mom with an update around 8am. Again, he struggled to keep the call short.

He told me I was being robotic today, I told him it would take a while to get her death out of my head. Then he told me I was talking like a robot too, the only remedy I knew for that was to stop talking if it bothered him a lot. We rarely spoke the rest of the day and I still had no appetite so he kept busy in the cabin and I stayed at the helm all day, but we weren't mad at each other. I needed time to get the racing thoughts and emotions out of my head. Carlo had no idea what to do and I think my angry silence really bothered him.

I told him when I was very upset it was safer for me to be quiet so I didn't accidentally say hurtful things, I reminded him twice I was not mad (at him), just extremely sad. He offered to blow me but I told him that wouldn't fix it. I never ate today, just drank water.

We kind of avoided each other all day that also bothered him. Carlo spent most of the day in the cabin making sketches and notes on things to do early on in Los Angeles.

At dinner time he made himself something to eat and made sure I had water and he brought me a stack of saltine crackers, which I ate. After he ate he turned on the radio and stayed beside me, we sat there in silence, watching the ocean sail slowly by.

In every direction around it was nothing but waves and sky. No birds, airplanes, or fins. He found a country radio station from Arizona (KTNN 660am) he liked that played oldies but I think it was an Indian radio station because they sometimes played Navajo chants of some sort. That got me thinking about my grandmother and started decrease my anger and sadness.

Tuesday February 27, 2019. Day #44.

While I was out of service Carlo sat at the table and designed several sea toilets (on paper) we could mount on the back of the boat that hung your ass over the side and discharged everything down a three inch pipe into the sea, you flushed it by dumping a bucket of water on top of it. He sat on the back deck with a notepad and sketched lots of drawings for toilets that hung over the side. I was happy to see him apply his talents to an age old problem. What he was trying to do was to design a better mousetrap. I reminded him that toilets on ships was a design problem that went back over thousands of years.

The seas were often too rough to bring water into the cabin to poop in the toilet, even if you only put a couple gallons in the bucket and a lid on top. There were times we could use the inside toilet but the seas needed to be calmer. Even if you brought a bucket of water into the bathroom when you poured it into the bowl it was likely to slosh out onto the floor, so the entire toilet thing at sea was problematic no matter what you did. I think Carlo's toilet design was inspired by what he'd seen used as a ship's toilet on old wood sailing boats four hundred years ago.

Basically they just sat on a board that hung out over the side with a backrest and a round hole. Everyone crapped down the side of the boat but that was just the way it was back then. There was no privacy for anyone toileting on the high seas, it was just a normal part of life back then. Those sailors would have never seen or used a flush toilet their entire life because the world used outhouses or a hole dug with a shovel.

And they had no toilet paper either so if you smeared your ass with crap then you either got rinsed off with a bucket of water or you wiped with leaves or newspaper.

I liked Carlo's toilet concept but it needed work, there was no way we could make any holes in the fiberglass hull. Compromising the fiberglass would lead to compromise of the oak timbers inside the hull. His design used the deck railing mounts to hold the toilet in place, and two legs to keep it propped-up. Sometimes we used the camping toilet on the back deck. Because we could dump buckets of sea water on the deck and it ran out the drain holes and washed away any toilet matter that escaped the bowl during rough seas.

That afternoon the winds switched from the west and clouds approached, we were up to 9mph the rest of the day and part of the night.

Wednesday February 28, 2019. Day #45.

At 8:30am dark clouds moved in as a storm approached from the southwest, seas got large but our speed was way up. It was too rough to cook or eat. We got lots of spray off the bow so we lowered all three sides of the canopy, which made the back deck a lot more tolerable but it also meant that waves crashing onto the bow were louder when they hit the plastic sides of the canopy. Carlo drank some water then barfed it over the side and spent time huddled against me by the helm. For three hours he curled up on the cushions on the back deck beside me. I kept one hand on him the entire time. That was when I remembered we had anti-nausea pills in the bathroom so I went down and got two tiny Zofran dissolving pills, we each took one but still only drank water, and a few saltine crackers too. He commented that our food stores were a fraction of when we left Florida, but we still had about three weeks of survival MREs (for two people) in cabinets near the desk.

That morning I explained my plan if we got stopped by the Coast Guard when we crossed into US waters. Carlo said he understood why but was raised with the idea of trusting authority figures and telling them everything.

He told me I was acting a lot more like myself today, I told him I could go for 30 minutes at a time without thinking about Dave and Carly.

At 1:23pm we crossed into US waters but never encountered the Coast Guard, probably because we were a hundred miles from San Diego, they might have been watching us approach the line by satellite or drone and already knew who we were. Slowly, the storm weakened, the anti-nausea pills certainly helped.

We talked about him starting a business of some type, I suggested he should investigate multiple business plans. We hadn't had any intimacy in a few days now due to the bad news.

That night we celebrated being back in home waters. We ate the last of our favorite canned ham, with canned potatoes in cheese sauce, canned carrots (the last can of carrots), and for desert I broke out our last chocolate bar. We stayed by the helm and played cards and drank wine. I had the GPS and the tablet with the radar display on the entire time so I could see what was within ten miles of us. We should arrive in Del Rey tomorrow. I made sure the satellite phone was charged and the VHF walkie talkie had good batteries too. I also got out my cell phone and plugged it into the car charger cord.

By 10pm we were both drunk and laughing at everything. After cards Carlo sat by me sketching naked men on his notepad, he really had some decent artistic talent. When it came to the arts (and music) I had no talent whatsoever. I could draw stick figures and the outline of boats and houses with a yellow smiling sun in the sky, but that's about it. My art skills were like those of a young child.

We were both super excited and had a hard time sleeping, I napped a few hours but spent all night at the helm.

Contact the author: borischenaz gmail

You have reached page 424 in the paperback version.

Dear Readers, I've had to re-write most of the remainder of this book including this chapter. It originally ended at chapter 22. Last time I checked chapter 22 had ballooned to over 120k! It might be cut into two or three chapters, and I have not yet re-written the Epilog chapter. Your patience and emails are appreciated.