November 24, 12:36pm

I forgot to mention the guy I met the other day with Ruth. His name is Ansel Saunders, brother of the Ashley Saunders who wrote the biography of Bimini. Quite an extraordinary guy. He's 74, and a Bimini native. Besides having Martin Luther King on his boat 3 days before he was shot, and having the world record bonefish, he builds boats. Wooden boats that you wouldn't believe. They're GORGEOUS, and it takes him about 6 months to build one, by hand, from scratch. He takes a boat to South Bimini, cuts down a horseflesh tree with a chainsaw, and then uses the wood from that, plywood from Africa (teak, I think), some white oak, and a ton of work. His picture is here with one of his boats in progress. I have more I'll show to you all later. He uses brass screws, just like my grandfather, handsaws like my grandfather used, a folding tape measure like grandpa Charlie, and a jack plane. It was like hanging out in my grandfather's old workshop when I was a kid, seeing some of the same tools, tools I never saw anywhere again. I can still remember that smell of sawdust. Anyway, we bought a copy of his brother's book from him, even though we were low on money, and it has a story about the bonefish record. He also had a CD he made, of the Psalm he wrote (I think the 51st? Take how many there are in the Bible, and add one, anyway). It's a poem, about how beautiful nature is, and how there must be a god because of how awesome it is. He read it to Martin Luther King and he said that Martin Luther King said he felt he could see God's face when he listened to him speak of it. Wow. We didn't have money to get that too, we were tapped. He ended up giving us one, and saying we could pay him later. Send it to " Ansel Saunders, Bahamas" and he would get it. Pretty cool mail system. Maybe I'll at least put "North Bimini" on there to be safe.

I gave him a hug, and he actually made me cry looking at his boats.

I had him autograph the book to Ruth, Me, and Charles Hayward, my Grandpa.