Ruleo Camacho will turn 20 during our delivery to Jamestown, his second birthday on avalanche.  Last year Ruleo joined us for his first trip offshore and performed admirably.  His first solo sailing experience was across Falmouth Harbor in a Sunfish at age nine.  Since then he has become a fine helmsman and sailor.  In addition his fishing skills are excellent, an important consideration in selecting crew for avalanche.  It would be difficult to choose between Leo and Ruleo as the more skilled fisherman.  You might have to include a count of who broke more gear trying to land really big fish to decide that debate.  (And would that count for or against the fisherman?)  You will notice that in photos of Ruleo he is almost always holding up something that he caught!

Like Leo, Ruleo is West Indian.  He has grown up in Antigua and now attends the University of the West Indies in Jamaica and aims one day to be a Marine Biologist.  We met him 11 years ago when he was 8 and his father was our favorite taxi driver.  Since then our families have become great friends.  Through the years we have had the Camacho family on Avalanche for a weekend at Green Island; they have driven us through the countryside on Christmas Eve to show us all the beautifully lighted houses competing for a month’s free electricity and $2,000.  We’ve had lots of dinners and watched many boat races, both full sized and miniature models.  In addition to the delivery last May, Ruleo has visited our home in Jamestown 3 times, at 13, 15 and 16.  He has always told us that he wants to see snow–even strip to his swim suit and roll in it.

And that is what makes the story of Ruleo and the dishes so funny.  Naturally Ruleo doesn’t have winter clothes, so we loan him a few layers for those last 2-3 days when it is so cold approaching the east coast.  Last year we had come up on the continental shelf in pretty moderate weather for the season, but we were dressed in lots of layers to stay warm and had the heat on below.  Ruleo had all his layers on and was doing his job of washing the lunch dishes.  Ruleo found it so cold despite wearing warm layers that he managed to spend over an hour drying 2 pots in order to stay below where the heat was on!  This year we have added more warm clothes to his bag!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 6:44 pm and is filed under 2010 Trip North, Crew Biographies, News!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.