Sailing in Jamaica sounded like a good idea _ and it was.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Charles Buhman

Our idea of yachting is the all-day pass on the Water Taxi in Fort Lauderdale, so when my wife's childhood chum calls from Kingston inviting us for a week sailing the north shore of Jamaica on a 40-foot captained charter, we're a bit leery.

``Come, nuh,'' Michele's friend, Debbie, insists. ``It'll be fun. Everything's arranged.'' We'll meet her family in Oracabessa, she explains, just east of Ocho Rios, and sail west. It's easy, the wind behind us all the way to Negril where she's rented the sweetest little villa on a cliff overlooking the sea. We won't have to do a thing. The skipper and mate do all the work. Don't worry about getting seasick. It's a catamaran, very stable.

We'll have to think about it.

The next day Debbie plays a trump. We'll have to make a little detour, but Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, perhaps the greatest soca carnival band in the Caribbean, will be in Port Antonio the day after we arrive.

We're there.

Later that day Michele gets a fax from Debbie listing the things we should bring ``from foreign,'' as they say in Jamaica, things you …