Requiem for a Sultana

I’m trying to read under a Mexican palapa, but I’m distracted by the giant catamarans—like nautical space stations—powering by with paying passengers searching for something pretty to write on a postcard.

These cats fly neither jib nor mainsail, they’ve been reduced to tricked-out tourist conveyance traps—twenty-five bucks for a quick snorkeling trip. Technology has brought change to the tropics where all the new high-speed ferries are catamarans that bring a fresh batch of tourists from the mainland every 30 minutes.

I watch the masts of my Cheoy Lee, 50’ away, sway in the undulating wakes. My wife, Lora, and I are sailing for a year with our five boys aboard our boat Boisterous—hoping to augment their home-schooling with some third-world perspectives. The oldest is 14, the youngest just 3. Right now, two boys are inside the boat doing schoolwork. One is in the cockpit, and another is hanging in a hammock reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Lora, and the youngest are paddling a pink kayak toward a rusty steel wreck on a nearby reef.

Every hour I move my Adirondack-back chair a foot or so to stay in the palapa’s shade. I can see four or five boats anchored out in the Isla Mujeres harbor--about 7 miles offshore from Cancun. A black bitch and her two pups sleep under the dock, and several blue-green needle-fish dart about in the shallows. Overhead majestic frigate birds hover, looking like prehistoric pterodactyls with sharp elbows and split tails.

One hundred yards away the wood-planked Sultana Del Mar sits sadly against a dilapidated dock, her paint peeling and rust streaking down her sides like teary mascara. But in her youth, she too ferried tourists in her belly--tourists with pockets full of paper pesos--tourists diligently searching for a t-shirt to take home to Toledo, Ohio. In her heyday, the Sultana served as Hollywood’s whore, starring in the 1984 feature film, Against All Odds with Rachel Ward and Jeff Bridges. But that fact is lost on today’s Play-Station generation.

This is my sixth trip to this coconut island; three times I’ve arrived under sail--sunburned and salt-stained. Twenty years ago when I was a college student, the Sultana first ferried me from Puerto Juarez--her proud bow plowing turquoise waves. She conveyed schools of children on field trips, honeymooners and hippies, peasants and paupers. Back then a hotel room on Isla Mujeres was a mere $7—no phone, no pool, no pets; there were fewer taxis, tourists, and t-shirt vendors.

So there she sits, mostly rotten and utterly forgotten—all her memories and secrets soon to slip quietly into the sea. Later some of her planks might be scavenged to reinforce a tar-paper shack. Ah, but once starlets and directors trod upon her decks, where now only the dung of pelagic birds sits steaming under a tropical sun.

Rest in peace, Sultana, and thanks for the rides.