I consider it my duty to support other writers. I also enjoy it. And I have to because of how many other writers have supported me. Example: Janet Groene was an extremely successful marine writer... and she told me her every professional writing secret... again and again until I finally managed to absorb them.

Here goes...

 Peter at Skinny Leg's of St. John

Breath, his Paul Johnson Venus 42

On Peter Muilenburg...

I was in Borneo. It was night. Pitch-black. We were anchored off an illegal logging camp in the middle of a disappearing rain-forest----far up an uncharted, croc-guarded river.

Dyak Indians slid silently passed in dug-out canoes----as if ghosts from another era.

Fireflies lit the gnarled trees.

Snakes swam.

Decay.

Rot.

Death.

I was scared and worried and thrilled----which is just how I like to be. I felt alive. Lit up. High! I was getting exactly what I came for----a writer needs to kiss life full-on-the-lips if he is to write well. There is, alas, no substitute for hard-earned, knuckle-busting, ego-bruising experience.

I mean, if you haven’t squatted in some ditch in South America, Africa or Asia... and disparagingly crapped on your ankles... how are you gonna accurately convey the reality of the Turd World?

But the writing life isn’t all fun and games----there are boring parts too. Later that evening, just before I fell off to sleep in my mosquito-netted, (hopefully) malaria-free bunk, I rummaged though a pile of old American magazines to do a little market research.

I usually enjoy this----especially if the articles are poorly written. It gives me hope. Anyway, I just happened to flip open one of the glossier mags to a story about some guy sailing in the Med...

...and the words immediately rang true. He’d been there. Done it. Tasted it. Tongued it. Kissed it. Licked it... wow! GOOD STUFF!

And so I flipped back to his byline----and smiled a big fat smile.

How do you measure a man? By many yardsticks Peter Muilenberg falls woefully short. He is poor in the empty-pockets, kite-string-for-a-belt, duct-tape-on-his-eyeglasses sense. He seems to have no idea how to use the levers of power. After forty years in the same small place, zoning boards, bank presidents and real estate developers haven’t the foggiest of notions who (or what) he is. (If they do, they certainly don’t care.)

...even his yacht is... well, not very!

...and his tie-dyed 60's politics----please!

And yet Peter Muilenberg is the man I most admire on St. John... the man that I’d most like to become.

How can this be?

It was a typical St. John party----during which I drank so much that I drank myself sober. (Or even worse, believed I had.)

It has since went down in Coral Bay legend as the Party of Three Fiddlers----a music extravaganza which ‘just sort of happened’ when the Sun Mountain Fiddler (Dick Solberg), Dave Dostal and Peter Muilenberg all uncased their fiddles... while Joe Colpitt, Sexy Thea and I beat on our guitars. (Even Lou Lou Magras from St. Barts wobbled a tune or two!)

Rafael, Peter’s older son, was there----tilting his head in that quizzical, analyzing, deep-thought way of his. He was perfectly at ease with his parents and his younger brother. The Muilenbergs are first-and-foremost family, true... but they are also best friends and mutual supporters as well.

At one point Rafael was playing the bongo drums off in a corner... eyes rolled back in his head, his mouth agape, shoulders undulating... not looking at all like the Ivy-league, West Coast lawyer he’d become.

Diego, the younger son, is handsome as a movie star. He’s such a straight-ahead good kid, he is almost surreal. Once I hired him to a job for me for a few weeks, and when I paid him what I promised, he said, “That’s too much!” as he attempted to hand back the money.

Across the noisy, smoke-filled room was Dorothy. Dorothy is Earth Mother. She is quiet, reserved, private, easy-going and soft-spoken----the perfect school marm. But it would be a mistake to think that, because Dorothy is so caring and kind and considerate, that she is weak. She is not. She is strong----in some ways stronger than the rest of them combined. There is stainless-steel in the soul of this woman... and only a fool would cross her.

Peter was playing fiddle----blinking, halting, jabbing.

Now Peter’s fiddle playing... is enough to make an alley cat in heat consider giving up sex. But that doesn’t stop Peter. He’s a hootenanny-type player who knows the joy is in the music, not the technique. And so he just sails right into the tune... scratching and jabbing away until he finds a note... any dang note... jiggles it... and bends it... and bows it... for all that note is worth. Every once in awhile his fiddle spits out a brief melodic run... and afterwards Peter sort of stops, allows the fiddle to fall from his chin... as if, he too, is thinking, “I wonder where that came from?”

I glance over at Dorothy----the love for Peter so fierce and plain in her eyes.

Peter had just gotten, I knew, some bad news about his Parkinson’s disease. But he didn’t let it show.

I was nodding off----misplacing my drink, losing my ashtray, stupidly allowing my guitar to slide down a wall.

And I was looking at Peter while hearing my own father say, “It is not what happens to you, son, that people judge you by... but how you deal with it.”

I decided right then and there that Peter was ‘dealing with it’... and had dealt with life... pretty well. So the following day when I woke up in the late afternoon, before I lost the good-vibe feeling, I penned Peter a brief note.

Why? Because we so often don’t say the things we should to those we love. If we’re in some bar and an asshole annoys us... sure, we might loudly tell him off... but almost never do we tell the people who delight and nurture us... that they have.

“Ahoy Peter,” my letter said. “Just a quick note to tell you that I think you’ve got it... got it pretty much right.”

Yeah, I suppose it is unusual for one man to write another a love letter like that----but if you act out of kindness, what you do is seldom wrong.

And as a person that’s enough----I like and admire Peter, told him so, and that’s that.

But as a writer, of course, it falls short. I owe the reader more----to illuminate Peter... to allow my heart to speak in ways my head can not.

Here goes: there is a certain endearing boyishness----an eager Eagle-scout-ness----which is at the very core of Peter. He is earnest in the best sense of the word. Oh, Lord, yes, he’s a preacher’s son----even if he’s rejected the specifics of the Christian message. Peter cares. There are rules in life. A higher being. Sin exists. We, as human beings, have choices. We can go this way or that.

And sometimes it is important which.

Peter is one of those rare individuals who isn’t full of shit. By that I mean morality isn’t a theoretical equation to him----but a daily struggle. He doesn’t just BELIEVE in racial equality----he put his life on the line as a freedom rider in the American south in the early 1960s of desegregation. He doesn’t just mouth words of peace----he refused to go (“Hell no, we won’t go!” was the chant.) and STILL refuses to go along with the war-mongers of today.

And he’s modest about it. When I question his work in the Cause... his time in the Movement... how it felt to be locked up that one night... in a jail cell... hiding behind a post... waiting to be shot at by those good-ole-boys creeping around out back...

...he dismisses it.

“Aw,” he says, “I don’t want to make it a big deal. It was fun. I was young... as much interested in getting laid as anything else.”

Not too many people have put their life on the line for any cause----let alone the civil rights of others. Those few who have... seldom let us forget that they did----which is their earned right. Peter is the only man I’ve ever met who has done one without the other.

He doesn’t suck up. The only person who has ever visited St. John who Peter was rude to was Richard Milhouse Nixon.

He doesn’t net-work----he’ll keep a senator from St. Thomas waiting as he chats with a homeless drunk in Coral Bay... because the later needed the kindness more than the former.

Example: I bumped into Peter at the 2004 St. John carnival. I was in full party mode: dancing, singing, drinking...

Peter was there with St. John school teacher Doris Jadan. Doris is wonderful woman with a huge heart----and she’s getting old now. She is frail. Unsteady. But Doris has been really swell to me over the years and I wanted to say hello to her. But it was never quite convenient: too many old friends to greet, too much food, another cold beer. When I finally decided to make time for Doris----it was too late. She’d tired. Peter had brought her home.

That’s Peter----always doing what the rest of us would be doing... if we were better people.

The last time I saw Peter, he was walking alone down the road in Coral Bay. It was hot, and his bald spot sweated in the scorching sun. His left arm was held stiffly at his waist and his right hand gripped the backside of its open palm. He shuffled.

“That’s courage,” I thought to myself. “That’s class.” (End)

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Peter has written a book. It is available here.

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Alvah

 Alvah Simon is another writer I respect as an inkslinger and as a man and as a sailor. His book is available here. His weekly BLOG on Cruising World's web page is here.

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I admire Lin and Larry Pardey very much. Here we are in NZ together. They are passionate about boats. We have some lively discussions. Check them out here.

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This is Tere Batham and her husband Michael. We just had them over for dinner in Thailand (Aug08) and had a fine time. She grew up on a schooner too---the Maverick of St. Thomas. Her brother is a Lagoonie named Timmy, of Fabian Landings fame.  Tere wrote a very nice cruising guide to Japan which is here.

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Beth A. Leonard is really writing some nice stuff. Check her out  here.

One of my favorite writers is Herb Payson of SAIL. His book is here. 

Two young struggling writers I'm interested in are Sally of Moana and Jonah Manning.

Janna Cawrse Esarey writes about cruising from a female perspective. She has a very fine eye and a nice turn of phrase. Check out her new book "THE MOTION OF THE OCEAN: 1 small boat, 2 average lovers and a woman's search for the Meaning of Wife" right here.

I'll add more later... but you get the idea. There's lots of talent out there.