to how that all came about is one of my favorites. Only because it was the absolutely worst trip I was ever on. Well, if not the absolute worst then it was at least right up at the top of the list. My son, who was 14 at the time, and I had just come through the Panama Canal with the intended next stop Jamaica. This was back in 1989 about the time that the US invaded Panama to toss out General Noriega. My son had been hanging out with two brothers on another boat heading in the same direction for the last couple of months and so I had gotten to know the father pretty well. The mother, however, was never around and they didn't talk much about her but I never gave it much thought. We were med moored at the Panama Yacht club and one night the father, Scott, came to me and asked me if I would sail his boat to Key West for him with his two sons. I was shocked to say the least but when he finished his story I agreed. I had to agree because his wife had lung cancer and her lung had collapsed and she needed to be flown to Miami to a hospital that could handle her situation. He needed to be with her but his boat would have to be left in Panama and he had no one to keep his two boys while he was dealing with his wife's care. The Panama government wasn't issuing any visas at the time because of the political situation and so Scott couldn't get a professional skipper from the states. There was no one in Panama that he would trust his boat and to kids to so I was elected. I left my boat in a slip at the club, screwed down the hatches with some number ten machine screws, borrowed a Canadian flag and dropped a sleeping bag over the stern to cover up the "Los Angles" plastered all over her back end. Jared and I got onto the boat just in time to meet the wife who had stopped by to say good by to her two boys. She looked like hell but managed a smile and thanked me for taking care of her kids. A half an hour later Scott helped his wife into the cab and headed off to the waiting plane. I had a total of, maybe, 20 minutes of instructions on how to run his boat. I had three kids as crew, a 13 year old, a 15 year old and my son who, as I said, was 14. We had, roughly, a twelve day trip from Panama to Key West in front of us and I figured I was just about screwed any way you looked at it. Almost as soon as the cab left I set about getting as much information about the boat from the 15 year old as I could. Unfortunately, LS (for little Scott) understood that his mother was dying and wanted to just dial himself out of the entire mess. Bradley, the 13 year old, hadn't made the connection yet but was already homesick for his mother. Jared stepped up to the plate and started helping me get under way while encouraging the two boys to join in. We got underway and immediately raised the mainsail and staysail. They had a 170 hanked on the roller furling system which had a bad Sunbrella cover which was too much sail to deal with so I left it alone figuring it was going to be a motor sail just as fast as I could make it. I was down below reading the SatNav manual trying to figure out how it worked when I heard a shotgun blast from up on deck. We hadn't even left the protection of the harbor and already we had lost the mainsail. It had ripped from luff to leach above the second reef point. Scott had warned me that the sail was weak but he said that we had enough fuel to motor the entire way if anyt5hing happened. The boys had it let loose before I even got on deck but the damage was done and we were now a motor boat with a staysail, a triple reefed main and a mizzen. Bradley, who was behind the wheel at the time, started to cry and saying that he wanted to go home and see his mother! This so totally sucked that all I could think to do was turn to the kid and say "Bradley! you just grew up! There's a revolution brewing in Panama, your mother's in Florida and we're not going back! You're off course!" I then turned around, went back down below and thought to myself, Holy shit, what have I got myself into? We spent the next week and a half motor sailing towards Key West but I began to see that we were not going to have enough fuel to reach home. We were in the stream and not making the kind of speed and distance we needed so I cut the corner around Cuba to close. By this time I was pretty tired and LS and I couldn't find the pilot charts that Scott said were aboard. I struck a course that was too close to the end of the island and got myself caught in the counter current and was being set in towards Cuba. It was here that the alternator bearing decided to fail which took out the belt. I didn't want to loose any ground to the current so I elected to change the alternator while the engine was running. Later, we ran out of fuel and managed to have the Coast Guard drop off enough to finish the trip. You talk about a trip from hell and this one had it written all over it. Changing the alternator was just a foot note to the story and hardly worth mentioning when relating this to friends. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, Pam was able to leave the hospital and spend a few months in the Bahamas with her family before the cancer finally caught up with her. I ran into Scott several years later while on a bare boat charter ending in Granada. He was working for an American construction company still living on board his boat. He had a new girl friend.