THE BAHAMAS CHRONICLE

I spent many months during the 1990’s sailing the Bahamas with friends, and in particular my partner Captain Hank. One evening in the summer of 1994 we dropped anchor in the lagoon at Spanish Wells, and spent a day there waiting for a weather window to make the sixty-mile crossing of the North East Providence Channel to Little Harbor, Abaco. That evening a pod of dolphins came into the anchorage and started playing. I was fascinated and put on a facemask and snorkel and jumped in. Several dolphins came and nudged me, I touched one of them, and it didn’t go away. When I took hold of its dorsal fin, it dragged me around the lagoon where a number of other sailboats lay at anchor. I waived at the different people and it was a lot of fun. Finally the dolphin ended at our own boat, and dove deep and I climbed back on board. I saw the same dolphin several times again, and I felt that it recognized me.

We made the crossing next day and set the hook in Little Harbor where we had the famous Pete’s Pub groper sandwich for lunch. That’s where, when I began making an entry about the dolphins in the boat log, something unique happened; I kept on writing and eventually it became this book. A good friend and author, Erica Orloff, edited the manuscript and submitted it for publication.

After reading it my dad, as they say in Australia, chucked a wobbly. To say that he took a fit would be is too mild. I was stunned. He was deeply offended by the book and insisted that I withdraw it from publication. He was an old man, and I took that insistence as his dying wish.

I recently found an old floppy computer disk and when I took it to a service company to have it transferred to something readable, I discovered that it was the manuscript for my story. I had not seen it for eleven years and became very excited when I read it. I take its discovery as a sign that Dad who died 1997 has realized that there are people other than those of his mindset in heaven and perhaps he overreacted a bit way back then. Hopefully he will be less offended now.

It is a story about Nes Reklof, a charter captain who is asked to deliver an old sailing yacht, that had its engine removed, from the Virgin Islands to Palm Beach, Florida where a new engine would be installed. While preparing for the voyage he met Old Jake, a man so ancient that he remembers when the islands were sold by Denmark to the United States. They find that they have one thing in common. They each have a small painting of the boat with mysterious inscriptions that proclaimed that when the owners meet, the dolphin would speak. They also discovered that while the boat was now named Hamburgers, its original name was Dolphin, and Old Jakes father, who was lost at sea when Old Jake was a small boy, then owned it.

The voyage starts with Old Jake on board, and it becomes a journey of great discovery. A letter written by Old Jakes father is found with the profound proclamation that due to vibrations in the rigging the boat attracts dolphins of unusual abilities; with the engine removed these vibrations have returned and the pod of wise dolphins appear. Old Jake has a special gift of distance viewing and mental telephony, and finds that he can intrepid the thoughts of the dolphins. Nes Reklof finds that as a result of a childhood experience the dolphins can tap into his thoughts and understand him. Together the two has incredible dialogue with the dolphins. It becomes a journey of discovery, not of lands but of life itself.

The vessel is lost in a terrible maelstrom, and Old Jake is washed overboard. Nes Reklof goes down with the boat and drowns. In his near death experience the gates of knowledge are opened and he learns the answer to the most perplexing question asked by mankind. He comes to know why God created the universe, why there is life, why we are here.

There is an element of intrigue is woven into the story line. Due to his special abilities Old Jake has been identified by the government and is being watched. When he disappears from the island, his watcher reports to his superiors. As there is a vague Cuban connection, they call a meeting attended also by a Dr. D, a woman studying dolphin communication and other paranormal phenomenon. Upon hearing the story Dr. D chartered a plane and heads for the Turks and Caicos Islands, chartered a boat and sets out to find the missing yacht.

In his drowning moments Nes Reklof is overwhelmed by his discovery of the secret of why life exists. He devloped an urgency to return to life, and his death is reversed; the dolphins lead him back to the surface. He is rescued by Dr. D. and as he has saved the floppy disk on whish the dolphin conversations were written, he shares these with his rescuer.

It is after I had written the story and reluctantly put the manuscript away that the weird stuff began. I had never been to the Virgin Islands, but when my wife and I first went we found that it was exactly as I had described. There was a hotel with a bar on the dock. We drove the island in a rented jeep kind of car. The people were so friendly and waiver at us and honked their horns. We waived back, only to learn later that we were supposed to drive on the left side of the road. A hurricane had passed through, and all street signs were gone, as were many houses. We parked one place where the view was spectacular. An old guy was standing by the side of the road looking over the ocean. We asked if his house was damaged, and he pointed to the concrete slab on the ground.

“This was my house”, he said.

We were totally dumb founded when he told us that his name was Jake.

“They call me Old Jake, ” he said.

The book speaks about the Stargate project, which has become a TV serial. Dr. D? There is in fact such a person, and the book describes her accurately. I was not aware of this when I wrote the story.

Visit www.dolphincommunicationproject.org/

The book begins with the loss of the yacht, Dolphin. Years later, January 2002, Captain Hank and I with several other guys were taking a 54′ ketch, Dragon Lady, mentioned in my story from Boca Raton to the Virgin Islands. We lost her in a storm in the Bahamas. It was midnight and we only got one Mayday call out before she sank. This gets weird. A town counsel was having a late meeting, and had left a VHF radio on channel 16, the distress channel. They responded to our call and came to our rescue. Their town was Spanish Wells, the same place where my encounter with the dolphins took place. How many coincidences does it take before you begin to think that something is going on? Nes Reklof in the book saved his floppy computer disk and was therefore able to tell his story. I had no recollection of storing my manuscript on a floppy disk, and had not seen the disk for many years. We have moved and sorted our stuff many times, and never seen the disk, and then suddenly there it was at the top of my junk drawer. That did it. I am compelled to complete what I started, after all Nes Reklof is my last name spelled backwards. Is there a mirror image to our reality? Is there a parallel universe in the dimensions of the spirit that we are vaguely aware of but cannot prove?

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 5

Henry Folkersen

Tampa Bay, Florida

August 2011