Kings and Pirates

Someone must have let the word out that I can fix heads on a boat...Karen thought I should be crowned the Head King.

Here's the rest of the story: Michael "Beans" is an entertainer/songwriter/musicionary that lives in the bay next to Marina Cay. He has a "pirate" music show that he performs Monday through Thursday each week at Marina Cay's Rob White Bar. A couple of weeks ago, he was laid up due to a back injury and unable to do the show. Since we're retired and gypsy around with few chores of our own, I volunteered to help in whatever way he could use (I thought that he would ask me to sing in his place). He had another, better idea...we were told that his girlfriend was coming in a few days and, that if I really wanted to help him, he had a problem. His head didn't pump the raw water in to flush out the "stuff" and, if I could please help him out, see if there was something I could do. Oh, by the way, there was another head in the forward part of his boat that did the opposite...raw water could go in but the "stuff" wouldn't pump out. At this point, I felt that my singing debut would have to wait, and I said yes. Karen was pleased to get the chance to photograph the initial work progress. Anyway, I ended up removing the 1st head to take ashore to rebuild it and, after understanding the particular design of the older head he had, was able to work on the forward one while in place. Needless to say, Michael was a happy camper when both heads worked as designed.

After a few more days rest, Michael was able to perform his show for some very happy boaters. His show is the highlight of many charterers that work their way around the BVI for their vacation. We saw Michael perform last November at the Lats and Atts annual convention, but his regular show was completely different and a lot of fun.

Michael has been helping people of Haiti with his charity work for over 10 years. He takes the proceeds from his CDs and t-shirt sales, as well as his tips and donations from his show and donates it to his charity work there. We helped him a little bit during his show and saw at least one donation for his charity given in a $1,000 check. Wow! He refers to himself and other boaters in his fundraisers as "Pirates with a Poipose". Here's his website link that talks more about his work:   http://www.goodsamaritanofhaiti.com/  His latest venture is enlisting the help of some tall ships (square-rigger sailboats) to deliver tons of donated milk and rice to one of the isolated Haitian islands.

We've noticed that there are nightly contests during his shows that bring out the "blowhards" from each boat to see who can win the longest conch horn blowing contest. Karen volunteered me. Of course, I am competetive just a little, so I joined in the fun. There were 4 gals and 7 guys. The record time  for the longest count was about 80 seconds...standing since last year...by a gal. Of course it's due to their larger lungs, so I consider it more of a challenge than defeating a guy. The other guys made it up to 34 seconds and I got all the way to 44 seconds. The gals were no challenge, giving an average blow time of 14 seconds. They did have pretty small lungs, though. Thus, I won the contest, was crowned "King Conch" for the evening, and won a 5th of Pusser's Rum. The record holder gal must have had really big lungs!

Michael, Karen and I sure had a fun evening!! We've made it a point to exchange information between us to ensure we can stay in touch and help when able.