title: Into the Land of Coconut Dreams: A Travel Log, A Sea Story, and a Passage in Time; Mostly True
author:  Bill Hezlep 
description: Bill Hezlep, a former Naval Officer, and a former professional geographer and cartographer for the United States Department of State, first went to sea, at seventeen, aboard a square rigged school ship. Since 1994, with his shipmate and partner in adventure, Betty, he has lived aboard a series of boats: a sea going thirty-six foot ketch, an iron hulled Dutch canal cargo barge, and several power boats, including a Maine lobster boat. Bill and Betty, aboard the latest M/V Walkabout, continue to explore the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States, the inland waterways of the United States and Canada, and the islands of the Bahamas.
zlib_text: Historian's Note
  
  
  This story is set in the year 2336, forty-three years after the presumed death
  of Captain James T. Kirk aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise-B in Star Trek
  Generations, and twenty-eight years before the launch of the EnterpriseD in
  "Encounter at Farpoint."
  
  
  ## Prologue
  
  
  Ishep was dreaming, and that should have been a mercy because bad dreams
  always end. Then Ishep would have awakened and known that this was all in his
  head.
  
  
  In his dream, his father, the Night King, wasn't in his tomb deep underground
  in a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the Red Mountains, and Ishep should have
  been happy. In his dream, there should have been bright sunlight and grass so
  green and beautiful his heart hurt-and there was, and it did-and he should
  have stood with his father by the shores of a deep, clear lake that was clean
  and still-and he did, because Ishep, who was a bastard, had loved his father
  more than Prince Nartal, who was First Son and a coward, ever had. But Ishep
  knew everything was