Contributing Source - Ron Reil

I would like to relate to you information about two men that I met in my sailing that you may be familiar with. Although this is a "Tristan Jones" page, I also want to include a couple of paragraphs about my personal childhood hero, Thor Heyerdahl. When I was only 12 years old I read the book "Kon Tiki" by Thor Heyerdahl. It was responsible for me going to sea, and Thor had been my idol for many years. Several years before Tristan and I crossed wakes, I had been fortunate to be in Barbados when Thor sailed in on "Ra II". I learned of his approach, and sailed out 24 miles in Vega to meet the Ra, at sea, just as she was taking the line from the government tug "Culpepper". I sailed along side the Ra and exchanged conversation with Thor and his crew, as well as we could, considering the language differences in his multi-national crew.

After meeting the Ra at sea, I was able to go aboard the Ra a week later, after all the welcome activities had died down. There were over 200,000 people waiting to meet Thor when he arrived in Barbados! It was a wonderful experience to cross wakes with my childhood hero. I can't think of anyone who has had a greater impact on my life than Thor Heyerdahl.

Tristan Jones

In early March of 1973 Tristan Jones came into my life with a rush. My first glimpse of Tristan occurred one early morning when I was brought to Dart's deck by a big ruckus ashore. High up on the hill, in town, I could see Tristan running down the road toward the bay, as fast as he could go, with the local sail maker right behind him waving a big machete and screaming profanities at him. Apparently Tristan had pulled a fast one on the sail maker and was about to pay for it with his life.

Tristan was fleet of foot, however, and reached the end of the town dock about three steps ahead of the sail maker's machete. Tristan launched off the dock gracefully clearing 20 feet of water before entering the sea in a head long dive. He swam out to "Banjo" and climbed aboard in a fierce temper. He could be heard all over the bay cussing at his two young black crewmen. It has been said that Tristan couldn't swim, but if that's true, his actions are a testament to quick learning in a pressing situation. If Tristan couldn't swim, I think he must have forgotten that fact for a moment.

I got to see Tristan quite often after that. Tristan loved the rum bottle, especially someone else's rum bottle, and would often come back to Banjo in a fierce roaring mood that would get the whole bay up on deck to watch. One such event occurred one afternoon when Tristan returned to the beach after some heavy socializing. He yelled to Banjo for his crew to come in to the beach and pick him up with Banjo's dingy, but received no response. He continued to bello from the shore while his thermostat moved steadily up into the danger zone. Finally he couldn't take it any longer, waded in, and swam out to Banjo, once again forgetting he couldn't swim. When he climbed aboard Banjo he was in an extreme temper, and in a rage, stormed below decks. A few moments later he showed up on deck again with one of the little black boys held high above his head and threw him into the sea. He immediately went below again and brought up the second one repeating the gesture.

When the boys climbed back aboard Banjo, Tristan had not cooled enough yet, and he repeated the treatment, throwing each one back in the sea while yelling profanities at them. The entire bay watched while he went through this ritual. Finally he had cooled enough to go below and crash for the day. It was a demonstration I will not soon forget.

After some time passed, Tristan became aware that I had put Dart up for sale. He hailed me from shore one afternoon, and I went in to get him in Dart's dingy. We spent the afternoon on Dart discussing Dart, and working on the gallon and a half jug of rum I kept on board. That night, Wednesday 13 March, Tristan and I reached agreement on the sale of Dart. That night the bottle of rum also became history.

If I had turned Dart over to Tristan, and departed Bequia at that time, things would have been much better than how things actually worked out. I elected to keep Dart until the 1st of April so that I could sail her one last time down into the Grenadine Islands for a visit. When I returned to complete the deal, and turn Dart over to Tristan, things started to deteriorate. As matters worked out, however, I never did make the trip down through the Grenadine Islands.

To understand my feelings about what happened you need to know about another event that happened during the transition time when Tristan took Dart, and I moved aboard Banjo. Shortly after the sale, I was bitten on the lower right leg by a spider. It turned out to be very poisonous, and soon the wound was a horrible mass of rotting flesh. Nothing I did made any difference. It was getting to the critical point when I decided to take things into my own hands. I sat down in Dart and scraped and cut away the entire rotting mass as best I could. It was on the back of my right calf, so seeing and reaching it was a problem. I had no proper disinfectant, so I opened a bottle of cologne and poured it on the open wound. That almost sent me into orbit, and it did little good, as the wound was even worse the next day.

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