I don’t know about you, but I am already tired of the cold here in New England. So when Rebecca from The Cadence Group contacted me about this book, it was a yes. Just imagine being transported to the Caribbean. That’s what today’s guest will do. So please help me welcome Richard Meibers!!
RICHARD MEIBERS
Richard Meibers is a professional writer living in central Massachusetts. He is the author of two previous novels, STEAL AWAY HOME and TREE RINGS. He has also written two non-fiction books, one on dealing with anger and aggression in psychotherapy, and another on the history of watch-making in the 19th century.
GUEST POST
Guest Post for FALLING OFF THE WIND.
BOAT BUMS
Twenty years ago, the eye of Hurricane Hugo smashed into the tiny Puerto Rican island of Culebra. It ruined a lot of boats that had sailed in there purposefully to avoid the big wind. The deep bay in the center of the island surrounded by low hills had the reputation of being a “hurricane hole,” a place of relative safety. A number of the boats that either sank in the bay or were blown onto shore were not insured and became a total loss.
Why not have insurance on an expensive and vulnerable piece of property? I wondered about this until I talked with several of these owners. My first introduction to a widespread, loose kind of community known as boat bums, people, unplugged from what we think of as normal society, who spend their lives roaming the seas in sail boats.
Some very few of these boat bums have money of their own, but most scratch out a living wherever and however they can, performing menial jobs, crewing on other boats, or doing what in our normal society would not be considered exactly legal. They are not pirates but they might, for example, smuggle computer parts into Cuba. Their preferred choice of boat style is the sailboat because they usually cannot afford the fuel for a motorized vessel.
Boat bums can still be found all over the Caribbean, as well as the islands of the South Pacific, the Mediterranean. Though they range far and wide, they never leave home. The boat is their home. And their community is mainly one of sharing information on subjects like where to find work, where to find an inexpensive shipwright to fix something, where to find a cheap mooring, where to hide from a hurricane, or who might be having a party on some other island.
Getting to know so many boat bums has been fun. They all have their reasons for “dropping out” as they used to say in the Sixties. One woman told me that after her first trip on a sailboat she stopped biting her nails. Another, from Minnesota, said she had gotten sick of snow. A army veteran who acquired a boat after his tour of duty inViet Namsaid the life on a sailboat helped him forget; and it must be working, he said, because after twenty years at sea he did feel a little better. An older man came to theCaribbeanafter selling his small Midwestern electronics firm when his wife died.
The boat bum has a lot in common with the ski bum. Their lifestyles both revolve around an intense and addictive pleasure. But the boat bum, living in a warm climate is not slave to the weather, but merely to his or her own whims, which breeds an independence as intense as the pleasure.
My novel FALLING OFF THE WIND is about a boat bum in the Caribbean..
ABOUT THE BOOK
Falling off the Wind by Richard Meibers. This enjoyable adventure novel delves into the lifestyle of a Caribbean sailor and explores the realities of life lived on a boat. Filled with hurricanes, smugglers, hardship and love, this story will reel you in and keep you hooked to the very end.
Purchase link: Amazon
THANKS TO REBECCA FROM THE CADENCE GROUP, I HAVE ONE (1)
COPY OF THIS BOOK TO GIVE AWAY. U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY.
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