TRAVEL TALES

Young Chang

They called themselves “boat boys” and sailed up to Jeanne and Jerry

Berry’s 38-foot catamaran to deliver hot bread, ice and fresh fish

whenever dawn broke in the middle of the wide and deep Caribbean blue.

The Berrys grilled the fish, ate the bread, cooked complete breakfasts

with bacon and eggs on their boat and spent most their days sailing

without a single ring from land-line telephones nor other technological

interruptions.

“It was wonderful,” said 52-year-old Jeanne Berry of Newport Beach.

“Can you imagine being away from phones?”

The couple bareboated -- sailed without a captain -- for 19 days

through the Caribbean doing nothing but getting to know other

bareboaters, grilling fresh fish and hearing Bob Marley tunes strummed by

a local who entertained them on the beach just to be hospitable.

His name was James, and he even cooked the couple dinner one night.

Barbecued lobsters topped the menu.

“He was pretty well-known in that area, and he played the guitar,”

Berry said. “Bob Marley is the man down there still.”

The couple sailed, snorkeled and hung with the locals.

There was Mo, a former Newport Beach resident who lives on her own

boat in Trinidad with a dog. The Berrys gave her their two-week old Daily

Pilot, which she was nostalgic to read.

There was the couple who cruised -- which means sailing for two to

three years with no agenda except to hang out on the ocean and at various

stops on shore -- and told stories about the storms they had weathered.

And, of course, there were the fixtures at pubs who partied by night

and played in the water by day.

“The water there is aqua blue. It’s so beautiful and so clear,” Berry

said. “When you snorkel, it’s like being in an aquarium.”

Jerry Berry said he and his wife have done a lot of bareboating in the

past, but that the characters on this trip were memorable in their own

right.

“You don’t get too friendly with ‘em cuz you’re only there a day, but

we ran into a lot of interesting people,” he said.

Jeanne Berry, who works at Diversified Business Services in Newport

Beach, said she misses the ocean blues already.

“It’s the other world,” she said. “And re-entry is tough, but I’m

ready to go back again.”

* Have you, or someone you know, gone on an interesting vacation

recently? Tell us your adventures. Drop us a line to Travel Tales, 330 W.

Bay St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627; e-mail young.chang@latimes.com; or fax to

(949) 646-4170.