Mazatlán had lured me into its mañana menagerie of laid-back beach living, a calm warm ocean, smiling faces, and the catch of the day every day, from the first of several Pacíficos savored in a beachfront cantina while devouring a platter of fresh grilled shrimp. I knew I had to go.

Kathleen grabbed the wheel and turned the boat as I sheeted out the sails. The strong wind overpowered the sails, excess spilling across the Dacron, as the swells and breaking waves combined to push us over to a sixty-degree angle toward the water. The boat lurched violently as the next wave rammed broadside against the full length of the hull and the wind mercilessly pummeled the sails. Snapped to the safety line I crawled forward, clutching the rigging, and managed to wrestle the big jib down the forestay and tie it in a bundle in the bow pulpit. Ocean spray covered the entire boat, and the starboard deck was awash, buried in water to the pilothouse cabin windows. Clawing my way back to the cockpit, I glanced into Kathleen's terrified face and took the wheel from trembling hands. For nearly three hours, at eleven-second intervals, each swell delivered its force of foaming fury, heaving us over as if every time the boat might be tossed completely over into the raging water. Quaking and shuddering as we were pounded and pitched over sideways with each wave, I wondered how she could not be breaking apart.

By now I had figured out that what I thought was my own personal hell in the form of sunburn, windburn, stiff muscles, salt and sweat-encrusted skin, broken ribs, a broken boat, and sleep deprivation, was the normal condition of many sailors.

Aahh, Pancho's on the beach, where the ocean never stops whispering its praise of each moment, bikini-clad beachgoers are ever stopping by for a cool one, and the best cheeseburgers for two thousand miles keep showing up on a thick, heavily varnished, wood table, right next to a brown bottle of Carta Blanca. The brown bottle of Carta Blanca glistening in the heavy afternoon heat reminiscent of brown ladies on the beach, beads of moisture gathering on glasslike skin, containing the elusive possibility of joyful intoxication if drunk in carefully and tasted with imagination and appreciation.

You can't see the beach from my table, but you can smell it. Once in a while you can feel it and sometimes even taste the nearly liquid salt air as it gently floats across the water, languidly drifting through sporadically illuminated streets, gathering and mixing evening aromas of shrimp grilling in outdoor restaurants, perfumed women, and spilled tequila.

The wind-driven waves, unimpressed with my correction, were still arguing with the bow, throwing a tantrum of white spray thirty feet back over the deck, in protestation of their displacement. We lunged ahead as if emerging from an engraved illustration in an ancient leather- bound volume of sea stories.

Those pieces of water are magical. Without exception everyone on board, even the very young and restless, succumbs to the spell of wind and waves and salt spray. The rigging creaks mildly in response to the strain, the wind glides along the sails, filling the white Dacron with energy and life. The boat dives into a churning wind wave and comes up on the rising swell with a piece of ocean it tosses back over us. This is a time to hold on, watch, taste, and feel the experience. The horizon is so close you think you might reach over and run a forefinger along its infinite edge, yet so distant you know there is not the slightest hope of ever arriving. You are forging a thoroughfare across one of the two most powerful natural forces in our world, propelled by the other, in an ingenious craft designed by ancient ancestors. This craft, this vessel, alive with the memory of its predecessors' history of bold exploration, perilous adventure, and the delivery of sweeping unimaginable changes to every corner of the globe, awakens a small all-knowing part of your soul and mind to its faded memory of lifetimes of adventure. Surveying the distant horizon, leading to everywhere, you feel as if you are Columbus, Gardner McKay, Fletcher Christian, Leif Erickson, or Captain Cook. And, for a split second, you are……..

Remembering, with difficulty, I was presently Captain Dave, the horizon must yield for a slow turn toward the Mazatlán harbor. "Federico, take the wheel, OK?"

Pablo and Paseo are the two youngest waiters in the crew. Pushing twenty-one, they are each tall, dark, and handsome, with dazzling white movie-star teeth and just the right mixture of Spanish accent sprinkled on their English. They, like many of their numerous counterparts in various bars and cantinas around town, have perfected the art of convincing an endless supply of pretty young vacationing females, often intoxicated, preferably blonde, that each was the very first one to awaken the "luv" in their hearts. Their lives are organized around airline arrivals and departures, jet-ski rental prices, happy hours, and hotel rooms. At the end of long days of work and play in the "Golden Zone," with its sparkling blue swimming pools and cantinas laden with margarita-toting tourists, they will disappear into the huge yellow public bus bellowing its winding way into the dimly lit, dusty outskirts of Mazatlán, that part of town unknown to all but the most intrepid tourists, where handwashed laundry hangs from overworked clotheslines in hot, heavy air, in thousands of tiny concrete-block-walled back yards filled with starving trees, scrawny chickens, dirty naked babies, mangy dogs, and layers of dust.

It was her last night in Mexico. Strange and unpredictable emotions often confiscate a person on their last night in a beach town in Mexico. Odds of getting in trouble are reduced to one night. Odds of returning to Mazatlán, to be able to get into trouble, loom menacingly, and settle heavily on your heart. You assess why you came, what you came from, and what you're going back to. You make decisions-secret, subtle decisions.

…….Patterns etched by the sands of time cannot compete with patterns etched by the waves in the sands of Mexican beaches. The bright, hot, foreign southern sun so severely distorts some images that, for many of us, they never come clearly into focus.

He studied me. I contemplated him. After long moments he spoke, somberly shaking his head from side to side. "Amigo . . . yuu haff muchos problemas. Sí, es verdad, muchos problemas. Muy malo, verry bad fhor yuu, señor . . . " I bleakly, silently, stared at him. He had more to say. "I theenk, señor, that yuu maybee wheel gho to jail."

My mouth went sour with the acrid taste of fear. My stomach turned in on itself. I was glad I was not standing. I had heard all the stories about Mexican jails. I could not visualize myself prospering in one. I wasn't impressed with Jorge's results so far and had no way of knowing if he was gaining any ground. As far as I could determine, the port captain, aduana (Customs), and Immigration each had representatives at this gathering. How many gringos doing sailing charters had they busted lately? Not many. One. Me. They had to be making up the rules as they went along. They could, absolutely, do anything they wished.

My "amigo" in the yellow room finally brought it all together. I wondered what had taken them so long.

"Amigo, doo yuu haff any mhonee?"

"Here? Now?"

"Sí."

I thought I'd try the unbelievable truth on him. "I have, maybe, fifty thousand pesos," (about twenty dollars, US).

His bushy eyebrows shot up over widening, disbelieving eyes. "Señor, that ees all?"
"Yes. Sí."

"Yuu haff other mhonee, sí?"

"How much money do I need to have?" No response. I waited. He waited longer. "I have about three hundred dollars at my house."

It was an insult. "Ohh, amigo, yuu weel need moch more. Maybee some thow-sands."

My fear turned into quiet anger, then resignation, then exhaustion. "Señor," I blandly inquired, "can we go to my apartment on the way to the jail so I can get some long pants?"

He frowned. "No, señor."

I thought for some moments. "Do they have mattresses in the jail?"

He frowned again. "No, señor." Interestingly, his English comprehension improved with each question.

I thought some more. "Do they have blankets in the jail?"

He scowled and very grimly responded, "No, amigo, no blankeets."

I lowered my head and closed my eyes. He thought they had me, and my money. He had convincingly confirmed the last of my suspicions about the municipal accommodations. I was mentally and physically exhausted. I wasn't thinking clearly. I just wanted to sleep. Wearily, I raised my head off my knees to meet his gaze. "Señor, I am ready to go to jail."

He wasn't expecting me to give up. His look changed to total disbelief. "Amigo, it ess veery bhad een thee jail."

"I know. I'm ready. Let's go."

"Amigo?"

"Sí, let's go to the jail. I'm ready. Take me to the jail." I was serious, and he knew it.
Now he was confused.

Roberto drove the boat home and I delivered beers, always bringing one for me, while making disconnected conversation with our customers. At 2:30, I watched the 1:30 Mexicana flight, glinting in the sunlight, climb, arching out over the water in its westerly sweep to the north from a southerly takeoff. The lady from Utah was sipping an aisle cart Tecate while catapulting out of my life at five hundred miles per hour as I was meandering back to the harbor doing, maybe, three knots. Some part of me was on that plane. I could feel a vague emptiness where it had been, and that void was becoming alarmingly expansive. I could feel the pulling away of a piece of my life, jetting away heading north, climbing and reaching into the sky until a single connecting gossamer filament, the last of that part of my body and soul that was leaving me, severed, recoiling to catch its new owner somewhere high over Phoenix. I realized I needed to go faster. I stepped up the pace to three beers per hour.

Alexandro took my still-damp twenty-thou-peso note and exchanged it for two happy hour Pacíficos, three five-thousand-peso notes, and a bowl of cacahuates. Cacahuates, peanuts. The cacahuates at the Las Flores bar are salty, spicy, with a hint of lime. Always so sabroso, so tasty! In lean times like these they were lunch or dinner. For the price of a beer, which I need anyway, I could stuff myself. It made an excellent complement to poolside Gamesas. I was prepared to spend the balance of my life savings, tonight, here at the bar.

I sipped from the sweaty bottle. I wondered if the ladies with the pink shoulders and the red wine had sensed my desperation and desolation and need for innocent company; or if they were making a pass at me. I remembered two ladies from Houston I had met in a hotel lobby bar in Cancún a few years ago, in the days when I never left home without my American Express Card, and wondered how I could allow myself to become so discomposed by circumstances I had created that my ability to interpret what are usually reasonably clear signals could be eclipsed. I wondered what the hell I was going to do next.

A generic couple in their fifties, from one of those states that begins with a vowel, twisted into chairs next to me. They thought my twilight jeep excursions into old Mazatlán sounded "just wonderful." The mister dropped sixty U.S. bucks on the bar, payment in advance for my picking them up tomorrow evening at six.

Thank God. My next ninety-six hours were relatively secure. I had pesos for Jungle Juice, Pancho's and Jeep fuel. Strange priorities. I strolled up the beach for a cheeseburger.

Liz and Susan were seated at one of the small, short, circular tables next to the low stone wall overlooking the beach. Dark brooding purple hues, reminders of a one-hour-old sunset, hung over the islands. Dimly lit, deeply tanned arms and legs and shoulders, oiled and fragrant, emerged from well-designed, loose-fitting, white tropical cotton. Sipping the last half of tall drinks, glasses half full of ice cubes, the ladies complimented the setting.

Lately, people were telling me things that couldn't possibly be true. Yet these characters in my life persisted with their absurdities. Then, against all odds, their assertions evolved into reality.

I walked to the bank thinking of adventures shared with my friend Roberto Castro. The laughter, anticipation, invention, and aspirations we had inspired in each other. Damn inconvenient his father was trying to steal the Cosas Buenas using a frivolous lawsuit (which he knew I could never single-handedly defend) and threatening to shoot me.

And in the end I was the victor. I fought fear and won. I battled loneliness and won. I challenged my ego--maybe the most difficult challenge of all--and actually managed to best it (well, maybe with a little help from a few federales) on occasion. I possessed a new confidence. Not in myself or any abilities I may have sharpened during my Mexpedition, but in life, in events. I felt a peaceful "knowing" that even as we exercise free will, life unfolds as it must.

I'd learned patience, discovered humility, and renewed pleasures in the simple, uncomplicated miracles of life. I found new friends and new love. I learned to listen and trust the inner voice in me, that voice that resides in each of us, that draws upon a millennia of genetic and spiritual experience to show me the way. I hope I can achieve the discipline to follow the bliss that inner knowing often illuminates for me. And I learned to forgive myself, most of the time, for being what some call an impractical dreamer, because I learned that if we do not have dreams, we have nothing.