This morning I found out my latest ship is registered in Port Vila, Vanuatu. That makes it sovereign Vanuatuan soil. A little piece of paradise. I live in fucking Vanuatu. Now, Port Vila isn’t actually very tropical paradise-like, being built by westerners for westerners and if I remember correctly, the Ni-Vanuatu (local folk) weren’t even allowed inside the town until around WWII. But hey, I’ve got Fiji for a neighbor and they ate people here in Vanuatu, even after I was born and I’m not that old. The locals call it “eating the man”; I prefer the term “long pig”. That’s going pretty fucking tropical on your ass, eh?

I suppose Vanuatu sounds familiar to those of you who watch TV. This afternoon, I learned that TV show called “Survivor” did a season here. Though I’ve never watched it, I understand the premise of the show is to dump people somewhere, starve them, make them perform like circus monkeys, and watch them act like asshats, hopefully.

It makes me wonder if there’s going to be a hidden camera in my shitter. Is the American television audience going to watch me take a dump? At first thought, I can’t imagine my grunting and straining to be the kind of thing you want beamed onto your 50” plasma TV. Then again, to me television is really just so much straining and grunting and I see headlines that scream people are rabid for reality TV. It doesn’t get any more real than pinching one off, right?

I could be a TV star like those guys catching crabs in Alaska (Cue any music better than Bon Jovi, which leaves it wide open for you folks). Hell, I caught the crabs in Venezuela, once and I’ve worked offshore Alaska. I’m in…OK, maybe not, but I’m still living in paradise. Well, sort of. There aren’t any palm trees, or a sandy beach, but the deck is painted with sand impregnated paint, so it’s sort of a steel beach and the masts might double as palm trees. Never mind. At least we don’t starve out here, usually and I’ve never acted like an asshat, no sir.

So maybe the whole Vanuatu thing is a stretch. I can always head back home to Panama, where I’m now registered (much like a ship, or a sex-offender-take your pick) as a certified seaman. They have palm trees there, don’t they?

/see you on the beach-BYOLP

The Pirate says that long pig tastes like chicken.

Any Port in the Storm Archives

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