Captain John Smith

Stardate 63987.7 
23:17 -  We met Captain John Smith (or Juan Chico in Central America) en el 19th dia de Junio o stardate 63968.5 en the town of Puerto Viejo. Our group and Captain John Smith were staying in hammocks at the "Rocking Js' Hostel ($5 a night) and ran into each other while we were splitting a bottle of rum on the back patio. What followed was one of the most interesting conversations I have ever taken part in and a relished chance encounter with Caribbean history.  Captain John Smith's history as told by himself is riddled with tidbits of truth and (as I researched later) stories. What I want to share with you is the highlights from that evening.


Captain John Smith claims to have 64 summers, not years; a fact he shares along with stories about his Mother's Native American Heritage. He also advises you to not mix the unnatural with the natural. When he walks on the grass or the beach with his bare feet, he will not fall because it is his natural feet on the natural grass. But when he goes to walk on tile, he slips on the "man-made surface".  He repeatedly reminds you that his original home port is in Connecticut and that he has four sisters, "but he loves the women folk." When he was younger, he was a member of the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. I did not bother to fact-check this because I am not a hundred percent sold on John Smith being his real name. During his tenure in the Navy, Smith was assigned to train dolphins to blow up ships by tying explosives to them and having them swim close to the enemy ships. Upon further research, I found out that the U.S Navy  and others have in fact used dolphins in Vietnam and Iraq for their ability to detect mines with SONAR (War Dolphins). However, the U.S. Navy does not uphold that the dolphin soldiers detonate said mines.  Still, Smith appalled by the idea of sending his sea friends to their deaths was discharged from the Navy "on an account of [him] being crazy but [he] wasn't crazy, mon, they were." Since that time, he has sailed the seas for forty years except being stranded in a St. Bart's cemetery for a period of time. He has never been married because the women you marry don't want to sail with you.  He once was close to being tied down to a girl in France in 1992, but it did not work out, and he left on his boat.  Since that time, Smith has never been more than a mile from his boat with exception of that night with us.

Juan Chico now tends the wheel of a magnificent wooden boat, se llama Mermaid of Carriacou. He was insistent that it did not have a motor and that Carriacou was spelled with two 'Rs". He asserts that he has never once owned a car or boat motor in his life. Also, "[he has] never been in a plane; [he] doesn't like to get that type of high, if you know what [he] means." But as the rum bottle dwindled, he admitting to having a motorcycle early in adulthood.  He also mentioned that we could google "John Smith Mermaid," and check to see if he was being honest about the boat. So, I obliged him the next Monday (63972.6 Mermaid of Carriacou). He was right! The captain did indeed save this ship, which was marked for destruction, and returned it to its former glory. Now, he cruises upon the sea, not commands the sea, submitting to her demands and bidding his time on this earth.  In my opinion, one of the surprising características de Juan Chico es his ability to quote poetry of all types. Smith delighted his audience with verses from Walt Whitman to Bob Dylan. A writer himself, Smith has authored four books starting with  "Letters from a Sinking Ship" to his most recent "Big Fish Little Pond" ( Amazon). When questioned about his favorite book, he replied with "Omeros" by Derek Walcott, a Pulitzer Prize winner from St. Lucia. Omeros written in the style of the Iliad or the Odyssey is a modern epic poem about the Caribe.


Our conversation trolled up four 'claims-to-fame' for Smith. Primero, Chico can speak four languages: English (his native tongue), Spanish, French, and some language that sounds 'Native' to somewhere. We assume it was a Native American language. Smith refused to comment further about the language in English or Spanish. He simply continued on in this mysterious dialect. Segundo, Chico claims to be the fifth place winner of the 1968 U.S. Olympic trials for the decathlon. His story to back this claim was that he was in the Navy and training simultaneously. Well, I had my good-friend Broderick Morgan fact-check this tidbit, and there seems good reason to doubt this. The winners are as following in order:  Bill Toomey, Rick Sloan, Tom Waddell, Jeff Bannister, and Jeff Bennett. The name John Smith does not appear on this list.. Then again is his real name John Smith? Trecero, we were discussing Led Zeppelin when Smith chimed in with an account of him having Robert Plante on his boat. Plante and his girlfriend were aboard, refused a joint, and only drank Guinness. Smith also recounted the meal of fish and lemon he grilled for them. Now, another new found companion from a small British island near France, named Adrian, claims Smith mentioned Guinness because Adrian was wearing a Guinness shirt and that a British guy would not drink the frothy Irish beverage...? However, Adrian, a Brit, was wearing a Guinness Shirt... So, point 1 Captain John Smith. The benefit of the doubt is yours.(Side note: do not attempt to argue about currents or trade winds as Adrian did with Captain Smith. "[He] knows what he is talking about. [He is] a sailor.")  Ultimo, Smith described the person he was most proud of hosting on his boat as a man with a scarf and hat so no one would see his face and traveled with a body guard. "That man was Bob Dylan." Even more so, because of the time Dylan and Smith spent together, Dylan wrote a song inspired by Juan Chico himself.  He began singing the song that Dylan wrote: "Like a hobo sailor does, But it was just a funeral parlor, And the man asked me who I was..." As I researched later, I came across the song of Dylan's, se llama "115th Dream."

Throughout our time with Juan Chico, we saw his stories rock back and forth blurring the horizon between truth and practiced story-telling. We were anchored to our seats unable to not believe him, but too skeptical not to laugh. Back at my home in Heredia, Costa Rica, I am left reading his poetry and reflecting on that night. I vividly remember standing ankle-deep in the Caribe staring up at the stars long after the Captain disappeared and thinking there could not be a better place in the world than seeing stars crop out over palm trees, hearing the waves, and feeling the ocean. Captain Smith told us that he despised the 'electric' world. For him the most liberating feeling was sitting on his boat in open water without one single light and gazing up at the stars. Smith couldn't tell you how to get where you wanted to go by roads. All he needed was a clear view of the stars, and he could get you there with only his boat and ability to fish. Capitan John Smith is a man of almost too many words. Therefore I will let him have the last word in this post, even though he still owes me a promised drink of rum at the bar:

"Ideas are thoughts you have not experimented with yet. When you are in an airplane, are you ready to jump without a parachute? Will the ideas that you have when you are young carry you when you are old?"  --Captain John Smith