Sailing Under The Big Dipper To Zihuatanejo Poem by Ron Stock

My friend, Melody, and I were sitting on the veranda of our casa overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Mexico as a long, sleek, white sailboat cruised into the Bay. In unison we muttered, "That's one thing I could never do, be on a sailboat for a long time."
An old sea dog I hadn't seen in 10 years, Captain John, was soloing that boat. So, when Captain John asked us to sail for three days down south to Zihuatanejo, we jumped high.
Getting to the boat proved to be an adventure. I was in knee deep water when a huge wave lifted the wooden dinghy up and dropped it onto my legs. My feet, calves, knees, and thighs slipped into the space between boat and sandy bottom. Melody swam out.
We pointed west out the Bay, around a buoy marking a reef, then south to Zihuatanejo.
Not much wind so we motored five miles off the hilly coast almost the entire way.
I recommend sailing with two world class chefs, and if you'd like those two chefs to be responsible for doing the dishes as well, puke, over the side of the boat. Worked for me!
It was hot. Large sea swells rolling under the rocking boat lifted us up, down, up, down. We passed turtles, and dolphins played at our bow. Still mountain silhouettes on the left. Open sea to our right. An orange sunset behind. Now darkness, and occasional lights on land. Captain John taught us both radar and celestial navigation. As we looked into the night sky at the Big Dipper I thought of David,13 in 1957, a sweet, brilliant boy who came to our school on a Monday. I fell in love with David's mind. He asked me to his house on Wednesday. After dinner, we walked on a country road. As David pointed to The Big Dipper, he said, "All energy comes from the stars and the universe beyond. We human beings, like all things, are only energy." I rode home under those stars on my bike, high. High. David was killed the next morning while riding his bike to school. I felt sorrow, and being an ignorant Michigan boy, a certain responsibility. We motored south.
Around eleven o'clock, while I was at the helm, I saw the lights of a boat not far off to our right, the starboard side. But Captain John, sitting at his station inside the cabin, could not pick the craft up on his sophisticated radar. The craft passed nearby. Then circled around behind us. Was it a government boat? Drug runners? We motored on.
Starting at midnight we each took a two-hour shift. Melody was on watch between 4 and 6 am. I was asleep on the deck when I heard my name, "Ron, I need help." I stepped down into the cockpit at the rear of the boat as Melody pointed out two tiny white lights in the darkness on the horizon on our port side; the lights appeared to be moving. I rushed to the radar in the cabin. Nothing. Back up three steps to the cockpit. The lights appeared to be getting larger. Downstairs. Nothing. Upstairs. Two lights. "Should we wake Captain John? " Melody asked. "Not yet. Let's wait a few more minutes." As we stood silent on the raised step behind the brass steering wheel those two lights increased in size, until we recognized two slight rays of a full January moon rising behind a cluster of dark clouds.
The next night, Captain John forgot to switch fuel tanks and water vapors were sucked into the diesel engine. For four hours, as the old farm boy from Ohio bled water from the fuel lines and changed filters, we drifted south, under the Big Dipper, to Zihuatanejo.