Salacia
	Thousands of people pay thousands of dollars to float a hundred feet from the Caribbean, never to truly see it. I have weighed anchor, I have hauled in the jib to the sound of thunder and the wonderful feel of cool rain, I have swayed with the swells and felt the sea spray upon my face. I have slept on the deck, the warm breeze and the gentle splashing of the waves a better lullaby than any written by man or woman. I have stayed up half the night on anchor watch, then slept half the day without a care. I have been on the water, and in it. I have been in the Caribbean.
	Her name was Salacia, and she was beautiful. Forty-two feet bow to stern, eight and a half feet wide on the beam, and a six foot draft. She moved by a diesel motor, a mainsail, and a jib. Below there were fore crew quarters, aft captain's quarters, with a head, a galley, and a mess between. There was a hatch to go below from the deck, and a door each to the captain's quarters and the head. From almost anywhere below, sky or water could be seen. For four precious days, she was home.
	After descending the ladder to go below deck, I would walk across the floorboards directly above the ship's beating heart, a four cylinder diesel engine. Then, I would edge around the root of her most important limb, the mast. I saw more of that mast than my shipmates, as I once climbed it to put the flag rope through a pulley on the crossbar. This, of course, inspired my shipmates to begin quoting Geoffrey Rush; "we named the monkey Jack." My favorite place to be, if we were not working on the sails, was right on the bow, looking out on the water, feeling the warm breeze and the cool ocean spray. Sunsets, Caribbean sunsets, nearly defy description. The water, a cool, dark, wavy landscape that ripples out to the ends of the earth, is set ablaze by the touch of a great orange ball of flame, which then sinks until all is cool and dark once more.