Big Galliot Cay, Exumas, Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: NE-E 15-20 knots, gusting to 25
Seas: 4-7 feet offshore
Karl’s big day has been beyond uneventful. We didn’t leave, big surprise. I didn’t sleep well at all, listening to the wind howl in the rigging and trying to gauge its strength and imagining being out in it or trying to decide what sail to carry. When the alarm went off at six, the wind simply seemed too strong. Or it may have been tiredness speaking, or our inertia.
We seem to have been here an eternity. I remember nothing before and foresee nothing after. It’s like an eternal gestation, forever resting in the womb of the boat in our little bay. Tonight, though, the wind and swell is shifting to the south, so our little protected spot from the northeast will not be comfortable anymore. We’ll have to find a new spot, if we can overcome our lassitude.
I convinced Karl to play cribbage today, my grand accomplishment, and I also officially finished Ulysses. I had dug out my literature folder and found some assorted miscellany from my college days, so I was studying and rereading, but I think I’ve exhausted the tome, for another ten years at least. I can finally turn to my vast library of paperbacks, about whose weight Karl is eternally complaining.
Today I’ve been thinking of the noble bums, those who are remembered well by history even though they did little other than what we’re doing: Hemingway, Gaughin, Conrad, Melville, London. Mainly writers. I suppose one is defined by history by what is done while doing nothing. All of them created great works of art while bumming. I’m not sure I’m accomplishing much, despite my grand ambition.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Big Galliot Cay, Exumas, Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: NE-E 15-20 knots
Seas: 5-7 feet offshore (according to forecast)
Our torpor continues. We’re stagnant here. I try to pretend otherwise, but if this is a test, we’re failing. What do you do with limitless time? I don’t know. Even writing seems to have fallen flat--how can I stay motivated when it might be another month before anyone reads this? Keats said he would write his poems anyway, even if they were burned each morning. I’m no Keats. I have to convince myself to write for myself alone, myself, no one else. Everything boils down to that out here, in complete isolation. If I want to do anything it’s for myself. There’s no one to impress.
Except Karl, of course. Tomorrow he turns thirty. He chooses to ignore the milestone, and gets annoyed when I mention it, but it’s a big birthday. We celebrated tonight with couscous and kielbasa (yes, the kielbasa that’s been stored unrefrigerated in our icebox since Florida), and I used the end of our flour to make a giant flaxseed loaf stuffed with cherry-pie filling. It’s not a cake, but close.
We’re planning to leave tomorrow, again, based on the offshore weather report we received from a catamaran anchored nearby, but despite the forecast, the wind is howling through the rigging again at what sounds like at least thirty knots. Georgetown has taken on the mythic quality of the speed of light. The closer we get, the farther away we are. I’ve begun to doubt that we’ll ever make it. No, we’ll still be here in another thirty years, listening to the ceaseless northeast wind whistling through the halyards and wire. I have to believe, right? I set the alarm for six tomorrow morning. The dinghy’s not on deck, we have two anchors out, and we haven’t reefed the main. We’re not mentally prepared, not staged. There’s a tremendous amount of inertia after a week and a half.
What dooms us is that I’m not convinced we should go. The wind’s still too strong, and it hasn’t stopped blowing. There’s a very good chance there’ll be a “rage” coming into Georgetown, something everyone talks about, but I’m still not sure what it is--something about current against swell. The forecast is still for eight-foot seas and 25-knot winds, potentially. I’ve been in 25 knots. It’s not fun, especially close-reaching against a lee-shore, no matter what our new French-Canadian friends on their catamaran say.
I feel like Hamlet, or, worse yet, someone from a Beckett play. To go, or not to go? To wait or not to wait? To take sail upon a sea of trouble and, by attempting, end it all?
Wind: NE-E 15-20 knots
Seas: 5-7 feet offshore (according to forecast)
Our torpor continues. We’re stagnant here. I try to pretend otherwise, but if this is a test, we’re failing. What do you do with limitless time? I don’t know. Even writing seems to have fallen flat--how can I stay motivated when it might be another month before anyone reads this? Keats said he would write his poems anyway, even if they were burned each morning. I’m no Keats. I have to convince myself to write for myself alone, myself, no one else. Everything boils down to that out here, in complete isolation. If I want to do anything it’s for myself. There’s no one to impress.
Except Karl, of course. Tomorrow he turns thirty. He chooses to ignore the milestone, and gets annoyed when I mention it, but it’s a big birthday. We celebrated tonight with couscous and kielbasa (yes, the kielbasa that’s been stored unrefrigerated in our icebox since Florida), and I used the end of our flour to make a giant flaxseed loaf stuffed with cherry-pie filling. It’s not a cake, but close.
We’re planning to leave tomorrow, again, based on the offshore weather report we received from a catamaran anchored nearby, but despite the forecast, the wind is howling through the rigging again at what sounds like at least thirty knots. Georgetown has taken on the mythic quality of the speed of light. The closer we get, the farther away we are. I’ve begun to doubt that we’ll ever make it. No, we’ll still be here in another thirty years, listening to the ceaseless northeast wind whistling through the halyards and wire. I have to believe, right? I set the alarm for six tomorrow morning. The dinghy’s not on deck, we have two anchors out, and we haven’t reefed the main. We’re not mentally prepared, not staged. There’s a tremendous amount of inertia after a week and a half.
What dooms us is that I’m not convinced we should go. The wind’s still too strong, and it hasn’t stopped blowing. There’s a very good chance there’ll be a “rage” coming into Georgetown, something everyone talks about, but I’m still not sure what it is--something about current against swell. The forecast is still for eight-foot seas and 25-knot winds, potentially. I’ve been in 25 knots. It’s not fun, especially close-reaching against a lee-shore, no matter what our new French-Canadian friends on their catamaran say.
I feel like Hamlet, or, worse yet, someone from a Beckett play. To go, or not to go? To wait or not to wait? To take sail upon a sea of trouble and, by attempting, end it all?
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Big Galliot Cay, Exumas, Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: NE-E 15-20 knots, gusting to 25
Seas: 5-7 feet offshore
We’re going on three weeks now without familial contact, and with the barest amount of outside human contact. We may turn into actual barbarians of the sea out here. The plan is still to leave on Thursday if the weather holds. We went to the beach again today and wandered around, checking the wind and the waves on the windward side, but still threatening.
It’s so exhausting trying to make this decision, especially feeling like we don’t have all the information we need. We don’t have reliable weather forecasting--not even a barometer. We’re dependent on some age-old Bahamian resident who reads other weather forecasts aloud on the VHF in the morning. Sometimes she skips whole sections, or doesn’t read it at all. I’m incredibly grateful that she does it, because otherwise we’d have nothing, but it’s still not the best weather resource.
We see other boats leave all the time. Another boat, a red monohull of about our size, came and anchored beside us last night and left before we awoke this morning. Are they just crazy, taking unnecessary risks? Or are we the crazy, overly timid ones? These are the thoughts that keep going through my head. Based on the weather we have, if we were to wait for an ideal window, I’d say wait until next Tuesday. Another week, though? It seems more than I can bear.
At least the sun has been out the last two days and the wind has moderated. It’s good for the psyche, if nothing else. I find myself longing for something, anything fresh: an apple, a tomato, a steak, cold milk. We ate our last chunk of cabbage tonight, cooked with weevilly pasta. We’ve more or less given up on fishing, after our margaret-fish head rotten in the sun as we both studiously ignored it. The sick-sweet smell of decaying fish wafting through the cabin was actually a pleasant change from ever-present head odor.
I try to sit and focus on zen exercises. Stare at the blue water. Study the clouds. Compare and contrast green land growth with white sand. Crouch by tidal pools and watch the periwinkles crawl. Follow crab tracks back to their holes. Try not to think about the glorious feeling of lifting sail, of eating an orange, of a wonderful meal eaten at a new restaurant in the company of friends, of the sound of my father’s voice. This isolation is, after all, what I wanted. Peace, serenity, and solitude. Paradise is always different than what one had imagined.
Wind: NE-E 15-20 knots, gusting to 25
Seas: 5-7 feet offshore
We’re going on three weeks now without familial contact, and with the barest amount of outside human contact. We may turn into actual barbarians of the sea out here. The plan is still to leave on Thursday if the weather holds. We went to the beach again today and wandered around, checking the wind and the waves on the windward side, but still threatening.
It’s so exhausting trying to make this decision, especially feeling like we don’t have all the information we need. We don’t have reliable weather forecasting--not even a barometer. We’re dependent on some age-old Bahamian resident who reads other weather forecasts aloud on the VHF in the morning. Sometimes she skips whole sections, or doesn’t read it at all. I’m incredibly grateful that she does it, because otherwise we’d have nothing, but it’s still not the best weather resource.
We see other boats leave all the time. Another boat, a red monohull of about our size, came and anchored beside us last night and left before we awoke this morning. Are they just crazy, taking unnecessary risks? Or are we the crazy, overly timid ones? These are the thoughts that keep going through my head. Based on the weather we have, if we were to wait for an ideal window, I’d say wait until next Tuesday. Another week, though? It seems more than I can bear.
At least the sun has been out the last two days and the wind has moderated. It’s good for the psyche, if nothing else. I find myself longing for something, anything fresh: an apple, a tomato, a steak, cold milk. We ate our last chunk of cabbage tonight, cooked with weevilly pasta. We’ve more or less given up on fishing, after our margaret-fish head rotten in the sun as we both studiously ignored it. The sick-sweet smell of decaying fish wafting through the cabin was actually a pleasant change from ever-present head odor.
I try to sit and focus on zen exercises. Stare at the blue water. Study the clouds. Compare and contrast green land growth with white sand. Crouch by tidal pools and watch the periwinkles crawl. Follow crab tracks back to their holes. Try not to think about the glorious feeling of lifting sail, of eating an orange, of a wonderful meal eaten at a new restaurant in the company of friends, of the sound of my father’s voice. This isolation is, after all, what I wanted. Peace, serenity, and solitude. Paradise is always different than what one had imagined.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Big Galliot Cay, Exumas, Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: ENE 16-24 knots, gusting higher
Seas: 5-8 feet offshore
Things are looking up today. The sun came out and the wind moderated enough that we were able to take the dinghy to shore to visit the pristine white-sand beach I’ve been eyeing lasciviously since we anchored. So even though the wind’s supposed to blow out of the north above twenty knots for yet another week, and even though we missed our weather window today, I’m content. Karl put it all in perspective today when he said, “How much do people pay for this? $35,000 a day?” Who cares if we’ve eaten sardines for the last four meals and we’re jealously hoarding our last two onions?
We may risk it and try for Thursday. The wind’s forecast to be lightest that day--only twenty knots--and then it’s supposed to pick up again until next Monday. I don’t know if I can take another week. I keep thinking that we’re being over-careful, especially when I see boats leave the cut every single day, even in 35 knots. Today, though, our Bahamian fisherman friend stopped by again, for the first time in a week. He said it was the first time he’s been out since we last talked and agreed that we were being prudent. The American lady who dives with him, off a Columbia 33 named Eagle, told us that some cruisers abandoned their boat on a passage from San Salvador Island to Georgetown. They were rescued by the Coast Guard in helicopters, the whole nine yards. Their boat’s still adrift out there somewhere.
That’s enough to make you think you made the right decision staying put. Another week of it, though, will be nearly impossible to take. It won’t be so bad if we can come to the island every day. It was food for our souls today, being on dry ground again. Just being able to get more than ten feet from each other was heavenly. I love Karl to death, but you try it. Just try it. Even with the person you love the most, being that close to another human being for that long is an ordeal. Karl wandered all over the island--sometimes he just has to walk--and I lounged in the powdery sand, letting the clear warm water trickle through my fingers.
We studied the geology of the beach, as best we could figure it out. The beach is surrounded by potholed cliffs, piled up besides which are thousands of abandoned conch shells in various states of decay, swept up by the surf. When I tried to pull some of the shells up I discovered that the rock is made up of ancient conch shells. They fill with sand and harden into stone. The holes in the cliffs are where the sand used to be: the sandstone that filled up the shells is eaten away by time faster than the lime of the shell. In some places you can actually see the spiral where the holes in the shell used to be.
The rocks are a little poky to sit on, but there’s shade above them and a beautiful view of the water. I can see a huge orange starfish through the water right along the beach, and giant red hermit crabs in taken-over whelk shells, the size of two fists, skitter through the bushes. I climbed earlier with Karl over the island, and we saw the water on the other side. Six-foot seas, with a whitecap on every one. I could feel the full force of the wind, unlike on this side of the island, which is sheltered but still windy. It confirmed it for me: we’re doing the right thing. Stay put, enjoy the beach, and try not to kill each other.
Wind: ENE 16-24 knots, gusting higher
Seas: 5-8 feet offshore
Things are looking up today. The sun came out and the wind moderated enough that we were able to take the dinghy to shore to visit the pristine white-sand beach I’ve been eyeing lasciviously since we anchored. So even though the wind’s supposed to blow out of the north above twenty knots for yet another week, and even though we missed our weather window today, I’m content. Karl put it all in perspective today when he said, “How much do people pay for this? $35,000 a day?” Who cares if we’ve eaten sardines for the last four meals and we’re jealously hoarding our last two onions?
We may risk it and try for Thursday. The wind’s forecast to be lightest that day--only twenty knots--and then it’s supposed to pick up again until next Monday. I don’t know if I can take another week. I keep thinking that we’re being over-careful, especially when I see boats leave the cut every single day, even in 35 knots. Today, though, our Bahamian fisherman friend stopped by again, for the first time in a week. He said it was the first time he’s been out since we last talked and agreed that we were being prudent. The American lady who dives with him, off a Columbia 33 named Eagle, told us that some cruisers abandoned their boat on a passage from San Salvador Island to Georgetown. They were rescued by the Coast Guard in helicopters, the whole nine yards. Their boat’s still adrift out there somewhere.
That’s enough to make you think you made the right decision staying put. Another week of it, though, will be nearly impossible to take. It won’t be so bad if we can come to the island every day. It was food for our souls today, being on dry ground again. Just being able to get more than ten feet from each other was heavenly. I love Karl to death, but you try it. Just try it. Even with the person you love the most, being that close to another human being for that long is an ordeal. Karl wandered all over the island--sometimes he just has to walk--and I lounged in the powdery sand, letting the clear warm water trickle through my fingers.
We studied the geology of the beach, as best we could figure it out. The beach is surrounded by potholed cliffs, piled up besides which are thousands of abandoned conch shells in various states of decay, swept up by the surf. When I tried to pull some of the shells up I discovered that the rock is made up of ancient conch shells. They fill with sand and harden into stone. The holes in the cliffs are where the sand used to be: the sandstone that filled up the shells is eaten away by time faster than the lime of the shell. In some places you can actually see the spiral where the holes in the shell used to be.
The rocks are a little poky to sit on, but there’s shade above them and a beautiful view of the water. I can see a huge orange starfish through the water right along the beach, and giant red hermit crabs in taken-over whelk shells, the size of two fists, skitter through the bushes. I climbed earlier with Karl over the island, and we saw the water on the other side. Six-foot seas, with a whitecap on every one. I could feel the full force of the wind, unlike on this side of the island, which is sheltered but still windy. It confirmed it for me: we’re doing the right thing. Stay put, enjoy the beach, and try not to kill each other.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Big Galliot Cay, Exumas, Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: NE-E 15-23 knots, gusting higher in showers
Seas: 4-7 feet offshore
We’re cooped up on the boat, still. We missed the weather again this morning--it’s a tough signal to pick up on the VHF--so we don’t even have an update as to when this system is going to break. There was a prospective window opening tomorrow, but now we don’t know if that forecast held, so we can’t leave at dawn tomorrow morning. We would need to do that if we were going to try for it tomorrow, to take advantage of the tidal current and the night lee. We need to switch out our 130-percent genoa anyway before we leave and we can’t do that in heavy wind, so we’ll have to wait for the next break in the weather, which might be another week. I know it’s a good idea to wait for the swell to abate anyway, but I just don’t know how long I can wait here.
Tomorrow we’ll have been here a full week. It’s enough to make me screen. I keep reminding myself that God must be trying to teach me patience, but all I can see is a whole summer, months and months of waiting, stretched out in front of me. It’s supposed to be what I want, time to live, time to think, time to do nothing but loaf and write and become an artist, but all I can feel is the sweat dripping down the back of my neck and beading under my nose, pooling between my breasts, all I can hear is the howling, never-ending wind in the rigging, and all I can smell is the head, which has overtaken the boat.
It’s some kind of existential crisis: what can you do with nothing to do? All our CDs seem dated and tired, the ones we can get to play on our rigged-up (but newly wired!) old car stereo. We keep finding weevils in food we thought was clean. I get hungry and cooking food just heats up the boat. The dishes pile up in overwhelming heaps and never seem to get clean in the saltwater that’s almost impossible to draw in this wind. Our one bucket leaks. The head gets more and more disgusting, and our fresh water supplies keep dwindling.
All part of the romance of life on a boat, right? I keep believing that if we could just kick our butts in gear we could whip the boat into shape, clean and replumb the head, do some fiberglass work, insulate the icebox lid, touch up the varnish, repair old sails. All that work, though, requires resources we don’t have (like fixtures our plywood), or more space, even if it’s only deck space, which we can’t use right now because of the weather. I don’t know what to do about the head. I’m convinced it’s venting, if not outright overflowing out of the holding tank, into the cabin. Karl ignores it either because his nose isn’t very sensitive or because he doesn’t want to work on it (who could blame him?). He’s done working on it. I’d pay anyone a hundred dollars an hour to fix it. What we need is a completely new pump assembly and installation, but how are we going to afford it? Let alone find it?
It’s the elephant in our living room. The extremely stinky elephant in our living room. We don’t talk about it. It’s too painful and disgusting. The pump gasket now leaks, and sprays matter from the bowl onto one’s legs if one stands in front of it while pumping. I stand in the hallway (whatever the boat term for hallway is) to escape the spray, ignoring for the sake of my sanity where the spray goes when I don’t stand in front of it. I also ignore the green ring growing around the gasket. My nasal cavity makes up for my sanity’s lapse, though the scent must be killing brain cells, meaning that eventually I won’t have to worry about either problem. Even Ulysses is unbearable, although I sit above the holding tank, hour after hour, trying to make sense of the squiggles.
Wind: NE-E 15-23 knots, gusting higher in showers
Seas: 4-7 feet offshore
We’re cooped up on the boat, still. We missed the weather again this morning--it’s a tough signal to pick up on the VHF--so we don’t even have an update as to when this system is going to break. There was a prospective window opening tomorrow, but now we don’t know if that forecast held, so we can’t leave at dawn tomorrow morning. We would need to do that if we were going to try for it tomorrow, to take advantage of the tidal current and the night lee. We need to switch out our 130-percent genoa anyway before we leave and we can’t do that in heavy wind, so we’ll have to wait for the next break in the weather, which might be another week. I know it’s a good idea to wait for the swell to abate anyway, but I just don’t know how long I can wait here.
Tomorrow we’ll have been here a full week. It’s enough to make me screen. I keep reminding myself that God must be trying to teach me patience, but all I can see is a whole summer, months and months of waiting, stretched out in front of me. It’s supposed to be what I want, time to live, time to think, time to do nothing but loaf and write and become an artist, but all I can feel is the sweat dripping down the back of my neck and beading under my nose, pooling between my breasts, all I can hear is the howling, never-ending wind in the rigging, and all I can smell is the head, which has overtaken the boat.
It’s some kind of existential crisis: what can you do with nothing to do? All our CDs seem dated and tired, the ones we can get to play on our rigged-up (but newly wired!) old car stereo. We keep finding weevils in food we thought was clean. I get hungry and cooking food just heats up the boat. The dishes pile up in overwhelming heaps and never seem to get clean in the saltwater that’s almost impossible to draw in this wind. Our one bucket leaks. The head gets more and more disgusting, and our fresh water supplies keep dwindling.
All part of the romance of life on a boat, right? I keep believing that if we could just kick our butts in gear we could whip the boat into shape, clean and replumb the head, do some fiberglass work, insulate the icebox lid, touch up the varnish, repair old sails. All that work, though, requires resources we don’t have (like fixtures our plywood), or more space, even if it’s only deck space, which we can’t use right now because of the weather. I don’t know what to do about the head. I’m convinced it’s venting, if not outright overflowing out of the holding tank, into the cabin. Karl ignores it either because his nose isn’t very sensitive or because he doesn’t want to work on it (who could blame him?). He’s done working on it. I’d pay anyone a hundred dollars an hour to fix it. What we need is a completely new pump assembly and installation, but how are we going to afford it? Let alone find it?
It’s the elephant in our living room. The extremely stinky elephant in our living room. We don’t talk about it. It’s too painful and disgusting. The pump gasket now leaks, and sprays matter from the bowl onto one’s legs if one stands in front of it while pumping. I stand in the hallway (whatever the boat term for hallway is) to escape the spray, ignoring for the sake of my sanity where the spray goes when I don’t stand in front of it. I also ignore the green ring growing around the gasket. My nasal cavity makes up for my sanity’s lapse, though the scent must be killing brain cells, meaning that eventually I won’t have to worry about either problem. Even Ulysses is unbearable, although I sit above the holding tank, hour after hour, trying to make sense of the squiggles.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Big Galliot Cay, Exumas, Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: NE-E 20-25 knots
Seas: 5-8 feet offshore
I keep remembering the boat boy who wandered around at the marina, selling a dozen conch for ten dollars in Bimini. An obnoxious American on a half-million-dollar boat responded, loud enough that I could hear her from Secret, “That cheap?!” It was rather disgusting, the obscenity of American wealth compared with the natural resources of the Bahamians. He could make a living diving for conch, though.
It doesn’t seem like such a bad life. We could emigrate, become Bahamians, and then sell conch for $30 a day. We could live off that easily here. There’s nothing to do, nowhere to spend money. The ennui would get to us, I suppose, as it is now on the sixth day in a row on the boat doing nothing.
There are a seemingly infinite number of things to do on the boat: draw, write, read, watch DVDs or listen to music (if we’ve made enough electricity), clean, reorganize, do boat projects, play cards, sew. After all this time, though, I become exhausted even contemplating the possibilities. It could be the heat--with the wind we can’t leave the front hatch open, which makes it unbearably hot below decks, even though it’s cloudy out. Our rain-catcher (a ghetto-ass tarp weighted with miscellaneous pots and pans) is spread out in the cockpit so we can’t even lounge out there, even if the wind make it comfortable to.
It’s almost a couple’s test: could you survive in less that 200 square feet of living space for a week with your significant other? With no way to get away from each other, the only entertainment and electricity what you can make for yourselves, without cleaning facilities and with limited water, in dirt, and stench, and sweat, and heat? We could sell this as a retreat, a Hopi-style spiritual sweat lodge. Reconnect with your mate in adverse living conditions! It’s hard to overemphasize how important being able to jump in the water (which we can’t do because of the strong wind and swell) or hang out in the cockpit, or just being able to sail is to our collective psyche. This continued weather, our prolonged siege, is bearing down heavily on us. All I can do today is daydream about diving for conch. That alone would be luxury enough.
Wind: NE-E 20-25 knots
Seas: 5-8 feet offshore
I keep remembering the boat boy who wandered around at the marina, selling a dozen conch for ten dollars in Bimini. An obnoxious American on a half-million-dollar boat responded, loud enough that I could hear her from Secret, “That cheap?!” It was rather disgusting, the obscenity of American wealth compared with the natural resources of the Bahamians. He could make a living diving for conch, though.
It doesn’t seem like such a bad life. We could emigrate, become Bahamians, and then sell conch for $30 a day. We could live off that easily here. There’s nothing to do, nowhere to spend money. The ennui would get to us, I suppose, as it is now on the sixth day in a row on the boat doing nothing.
There are a seemingly infinite number of things to do on the boat: draw, write, read, watch DVDs or listen to music (if we’ve made enough electricity), clean, reorganize, do boat projects, play cards, sew. After all this time, though, I become exhausted even contemplating the possibilities. It could be the heat--with the wind we can’t leave the front hatch open, which makes it unbearably hot below decks, even though it’s cloudy out. Our rain-catcher (a ghetto-ass tarp weighted with miscellaneous pots and pans) is spread out in the cockpit so we can’t even lounge out there, even if the wind make it comfortable to.
It’s almost a couple’s test: could you survive in less that 200 square feet of living space for a week with your significant other? With no way to get away from each other, the only entertainment and electricity what you can make for yourselves, without cleaning facilities and with limited water, in dirt, and stench, and sweat, and heat? We could sell this as a retreat, a Hopi-style spiritual sweat lodge. Reconnect with your mate in adverse living conditions! It’s hard to overemphasize how important being able to jump in the water (which we can’t do because of the strong wind and swell) or hang out in the cockpit, or just being able to sail is to our collective psyche. This continued weather, our prolonged siege, is bearing down heavily on us. All I can do today is daydream about diving for conch. That alone would be luxury enough.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Big Galliot Cay, Exumas, Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: NE-E 25-30 knots, gusting above 35
Seas: 8-10 feet offshore
We found weevils today. After all my excitement about cooking on the boat yesterday I decided to dig into our noodle bin to make pad Thai. I pulled out pound after pound of pasta, each one completely infested with weevils. It was like something from a horror movie. We’d set a box of pasta on the table, thinking it was clean, only to have weevils, alive, black, and fully grown, come pouring out of the corner of the box.
We started just dumping noodles over the side, for fear the weevils would escape and infect more of the boat, but then we stopped--we paid fifty cents a pound for our pasta stock and here it’s probably three dollars or more a pound, if we can even find it. I wanted to try to salvage some of it, because I’ve always regretted not trying to eat the brown rice we threw away. We gave up, though, when we opened the packages. The corkscrew pasta had about ten bugs per noodle, crawling through each twist and turn, the inside of each macaroni elbow was full of insects chomping their mandibles, the tortellini we bought for special occasions was polka-dotted with black, the weevils breeding whole colonies in the cheese of each ring.
People who talk about just boiling the insects in with the food have either never seen an infestation like the one or a lot stronger stomachs than I do. We would’ve needed to slap them on the barbecue and chow them down by the squirming handful. I kept thinking, too, as we tried to save a few lousy pounds: what about our clean and newly purchased rice and flour? Should we risk infesting our clean food? Just two eggs and we could lose all the rest of the dry goods on the boat.
In the end we threw it all out. We double-bagged everything we have left that they didn’t get: the Liptons, ramen, instant mashed potatoes, mac-and-cheese, and all the other completely over-processed, stripped, and sealed foods that I hope they didn’t get into but that I’m not willing to break the seals of to check. The things that are left have almost no nutritional value. They always go first for the protein, the whole grains.
It’s unutterably depressing, as has this whole sojourn here been. The weather’s still not forecast to get better until next Tuesday, and Karl and I are getting on each other’s nerves in our ten square feet of living space. He wired together all the LEDs given to us by our friend Wade today, without much help from me, only to discover that he’d burned out all the blue bulbs (they’d already had the white burned out, which is why we got them for free) and they only glow red. Which is fine for our night vision, but makes the boat look like a cheap nineteenth-century French brothel or the war room of the Red October. I fear, if used long-term, they may incite one of us to violence.
Altogether we lost about twenty pounds of food: ten pounds of spaghetti, five pounds of whole-wheat couscous, and assorted fancy spinach macaronis and tortellinis. That’s on top of the twenty pounds of brown rice we lost a couple of months ago. The weevils only got one of our four bags of tortellini, so we boiled the rest for dinner, ignoring the suspiciously nibbled edges. So it’ll be tortellini salad and soup for the next couple of days, and then pasta, pasta, pasta until we use the rest of it up. So much for being able to live three months on the food we carry on the boat.
Wind: NE-E 25-30 knots, gusting above 35
Seas: 8-10 feet offshore
We found weevils today. After all my excitement about cooking on the boat yesterday I decided to dig into our noodle bin to make pad Thai. I pulled out pound after pound of pasta, each one completely infested with weevils. It was like something from a horror movie. We’d set a box of pasta on the table, thinking it was clean, only to have weevils, alive, black, and fully grown, come pouring out of the corner of the box.
We started just dumping noodles over the side, for fear the weevils would escape and infect more of the boat, but then we stopped--we paid fifty cents a pound for our pasta stock and here it’s probably three dollars or more a pound, if we can even find it. I wanted to try to salvage some of it, because I’ve always regretted not trying to eat the brown rice we threw away. We gave up, though, when we opened the packages. The corkscrew pasta had about ten bugs per noodle, crawling through each twist and turn, the inside of each macaroni elbow was full of insects chomping their mandibles, the tortellini we bought for special occasions was polka-dotted with black, the weevils breeding whole colonies in the cheese of each ring.
People who talk about just boiling the insects in with the food have either never seen an infestation like the one or a lot stronger stomachs than I do. We would’ve needed to slap them on the barbecue and chow them down by the squirming handful. I kept thinking, too, as we tried to save a few lousy pounds: what about our clean and newly purchased rice and flour? Should we risk infesting our clean food? Just two eggs and we could lose all the rest of the dry goods on the boat.
In the end we threw it all out. We double-bagged everything we have left that they didn’t get: the Liptons, ramen, instant mashed potatoes, mac-and-cheese, and all the other completely over-processed, stripped, and sealed foods that I hope they didn’t get into but that I’m not willing to break the seals of to check. The things that are left have almost no nutritional value. They always go first for the protein, the whole grains.
It’s unutterably depressing, as has this whole sojourn here been. The weather’s still not forecast to get better until next Tuesday, and Karl and I are getting on each other’s nerves in our ten square feet of living space. He wired together all the LEDs given to us by our friend Wade today, without much help from me, only to discover that he’d burned out all the blue bulbs (they’d already had the white burned out, which is why we got them for free) and they only glow red. Which is fine for our night vision, but makes the boat look like a cheap nineteenth-century French brothel or the war room of the Red October. I fear, if used long-term, they may incite one of us to violence.
Altogether we lost about twenty pounds of food: ten pounds of spaghetti, five pounds of whole-wheat couscous, and assorted fancy spinach macaronis and tortellinis. That’s on top of the twenty pounds of brown rice we lost a couple of months ago. The weevils only got one of our four bags of tortellini, so we boiled the rest for dinner, ignoring the suspiciously nibbled edges. So it’ll be tortellini salad and soup for the next couple of days, and then pasta, pasta, pasta until we use the rest of it up. So much for being able to live three months on the food we carry on the boat.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Big Galliot Cay, Exumas, Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: NE-E 25-30 knots, gusting above 35
Seas: 7-11 feet offshore
Another exhausting day doing nothing, paralyzed by the weather. We won’t remember how to cruise by the time we get out of here. On the plus side, we’re not spending any money. We can’t even get to shore. We’ve barely spent anything sine we left Florida--a phone card, some postcards, a Bahamian ensign, and that’s about it. We haven’t bought any food at all, nary a tomato, nor have we eaten out.
Because of that, our fresh food is getting extremely low. I have one mildewing cabbage and five onions left. All this is forcing me to get creative with canned cuisine. I made a really spectacular Thai coconut soup last night, tom kha gai, for those in the know, with kaffir-lime leaves from Trader Joe’s chili-lime peanuts and one last can of Chinese straw mushrooms. Tonight a fantastic baked mac-and-cheese with a corner of our last brick of cheese, and I’m speculating a three-bean salad for tomorrow.
I’ve committed to the canned cooking, in the spirit of the frontier wife. It is a challenge. How can I make delicious, nutritious food, without the benefit of freshness? It’s only recently that fresh things have been available in grocery stores year-round, and then only in the States. So what meat cans well? What vegetables? Things I normally revile, like canned peas and spinach, are now our staples, and I contemplate all the time things I wish we had canned. Why don’t they have canned carrots? Or green peppers? You’ll know I’ve gone off the deep end when I start canning by myself. I can see it now--home-canned pork loin and celery. Delicious.
At least our budget’s sitting pretty. Although what we’re going to do with all our Bahamian currency, I have no idea. We got a ton of it out of an ATM in Bimini, and now we’ll have to spent it all in Georgetown or convert it back to US dollars. After Georgetown’s the Out Islands, where there’s supposed to be even more nothing than there is here. I’m perfectly content with that. The bottom of civilization is where I’m happy. As long as there’s good weather.
Just having foreign currency around for the first time since I visited my sister in Honduras in 2003 makes me exhilarated, though. It’s so beautiful, all those pretty colors! It reinforces the fantastic feeling: I’ve escaped! Even if I can’t go anywhere until this blasted wind stops blowing.
Wind: NE-E 25-30 knots, gusting above 35
Seas: 7-11 feet offshore
Another exhausting day doing nothing, paralyzed by the weather. We won’t remember how to cruise by the time we get out of here. On the plus side, we’re not spending any money. We can’t even get to shore. We’ve barely spent anything sine we left Florida--a phone card, some postcards, a Bahamian ensign, and that’s about it. We haven’t bought any food at all, nary a tomato, nor have we eaten out.
Because of that, our fresh food is getting extremely low. I have one mildewing cabbage and five onions left. All this is forcing me to get creative with canned cuisine. I made a really spectacular Thai coconut soup last night, tom kha gai, for those in the know, with kaffir-lime leaves from Trader Joe’s chili-lime peanuts and one last can of Chinese straw mushrooms. Tonight a fantastic baked mac-and-cheese with a corner of our last brick of cheese, and I’m speculating a three-bean salad for tomorrow.
I’ve committed to the canned cooking, in the spirit of the frontier wife. It is a challenge. How can I make delicious, nutritious food, without the benefit of freshness? It’s only recently that fresh things have been available in grocery stores year-round, and then only in the States. So what meat cans well? What vegetables? Things I normally revile, like canned peas and spinach, are now our staples, and I contemplate all the time things I wish we had canned. Why don’t they have canned carrots? Or green peppers? You’ll know I’ve gone off the deep end when I start canning by myself. I can see it now--home-canned pork loin and celery. Delicious.
At least our budget’s sitting pretty. Although what we’re going to do with all our Bahamian currency, I have no idea. We got a ton of it out of an ATM in Bimini, and now we’ll have to spent it all in Georgetown or convert it back to US dollars. After Georgetown’s the Out Islands, where there’s supposed to be even more nothing than there is here. I’m perfectly content with that. The bottom of civilization is where I’m happy. As long as there’s good weather.
Just having foreign currency around for the first time since I visited my sister in Honduras in 2003 makes me exhilarated, though. It’s so beautiful, all those pretty colors! It reinforces the fantastic feeling: I’ve escaped! Even if I can’t go anywhere until this blasted wind stops blowing.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Big Galliot Cay, Exumas, Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: NE-E 20-29 knots, gusting above 45
Seas: Building to 8-12 feet offshore in Exuma Sound, breakers visible in cut
I don’t know why the spiritual meaning of my adventure keeps eluding me, but it does. Today the wind hit in earnest, at least 25-30 knots, with gusts well above 40. We’re getting the forecast now, but it’s not cheering. It’s pretty depressing when they give the whole week in one lump, and it’s all above 25 knots. What’s worse is that we need to wait for the swell to abate and north of east or west winds, and once the swell abates the wind’ll be back out of the southeast, exactly the direction in which we need to go. Big surprise.
So I have nothing to do but sit around and justify my existence or debate with Karl about boat projects. He’s gotten all ambitious about building new cabinets and reorganization, instead of going with my plan to do nothing but play cards and read Ulysses for a week.
I’m making progress on Ulysses, at least. Only two chapters left! Maybe it’s that that has my spiritual imagination at work. James Joyce believes in the power of literature--he wrote a book, thinking it would change the world, and in some ways it did. In other ways it did little except force ex-literary scholars like myself to wade their way through virtually unreadable prose. The book’s still laugh-out-loud funny at some points, and often violently obscene, even for someone exposed to contemporary American television and cinema, but how much can a book change the world if no one can read it?
After all, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing, while Karl reorganizes the quarter-berth and rewires the boat. Writing the great American novel, that will fund our adventures into perpetuity. I have to believe that the blog counts for something, that just getting the raw mass of my experience down will help in future literary endeavors, fictional or nonfiction.
Why am I really doing this adventuring? I believe in experiencing other cultures, being a disciple of sorts, showing love, but is that really what I’m doing? I can journal about it all day long, but having some Bahamian fishermen give us a conch isn’t the same as being a missionary. Without deciding to remain connected to a locale, to stay put, we can’t really make a difference in a community. Does adventure itself have spiritual importance? Or do I need to find that, like James Joyce, in art? If so, how in the world do I discipline myself to become an artist?
These are the questions that swirl around in my head and which I now inflict on you. Our friend in the open catamaran, Ted, laughed at the question: adventure, to him, was the all-important and only spiritual quest. Karl questions why I need to justify my existence at all? Isn’t it enough to merely live?
I suppose these are the questions that haunt us all, whether we’re at a helm or a desk, on a boat or on land, whether we’re explorers or martyrs or poets. Does what I’m doing matter? Does it? Does it? It’s the eternal question, maybe the only question. I can’t expect to answer it while one measly cold front passes overhead.
Wind: NE-E 20-29 knots, gusting above 45
Seas: Building to 8-12 feet offshore in Exuma Sound, breakers visible in cut
I don’t know why the spiritual meaning of my adventure keeps eluding me, but it does. Today the wind hit in earnest, at least 25-30 knots, with gusts well above 40. We’re getting the forecast now, but it’s not cheering. It’s pretty depressing when they give the whole week in one lump, and it’s all above 25 knots. What’s worse is that we need to wait for the swell to abate and north of east or west winds, and once the swell abates the wind’ll be back out of the southeast, exactly the direction in which we need to go. Big surprise.
So I have nothing to do but sit around and justify my existence or debate with Karl about boat projects. He’s gotten all ambitious about building new cabinets and reorganization, instead of going with my plan to do nothing but play cards and read Ulysses for a week.
I’m making progress on Ulysses, at least. Only two chapters left! Maybe it’s that that has my spiritual imagination at work. James Joyce believes in the power of literature--he wrote a book, thinking it would change the world, and in some ways it did. In other ways it did little except force ex-literary scholars like myself to wade their way through virtually unreadable prose. The book’s still laugh-out-loud funny at some points, and often violently obscene, even for someone exposed to contemporary American television and cinema, but how much can a book change the world if no one can read it?
After all, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing, while Karl reorganizes the quarter-berth and rewires the boat. Writing the great American novel, that will fund our adventures into perpetuity. I have to believe that the blog counts for something, that just getting the raw mass of my experience down will help in future literary endeavors, fictional or nonfiction.
Why am I really doing this adventuring? I believe in experiencing other cultures, being a disciple of sorts, showing love, but is that really what I’m doing? I can journal about it all day long, but having some Bahamian fishermen give us a conch isn’t the same as being a missionary. Without deciding to remain connected to a locale, to stay put, we can’t really make a difference in a community. Does adventure itself have spiritual importance? Or do I need to find that, like James Joyce, in art? If so, how in the world do I discipline myself to become an artist?
These are the questions that swirl around in my head and which I now inflict on you. Our friend in the open catamaran, Ted, laughed at the question: adventure, to him, was the all-important and only spiritual quest. Karl questions why I need to justify my existence at all? Isn’t it enough to merely live?
I suppose these are the questions that haunt us all, whether we’re at a helm or a desk, on a boat or on land, whether we’re explorers or martyrs or poets. Does what I’m doing matter? Does it? Does it? It’s the eternal question, maybe the only question. I can’t expect to answer it while one measly cold front passes overhead.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Big Galliot Cay, Exumas, Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: NE 10-15 knots
The weather is shaping up to be really awful. Our friends on Pegasus left today at one for a marina thirty miles away, but with an unreliable engine we didn’t think we could make it if we left that late. If we had woken up at dawn we could have made it, but we didn’t get the weather forecast yesterday so we didn’t know that we would have a window today. Argh. We’re going to miss weather windows right and left if we can’t end up with reliable forecasting.
We finally got weather this morning on the VHF radio--we’d missed the last two days--and it looks disgusting. Above 25 knots for the next week. We may end up stuck here for that long.
So much for all my grand spiritual ambition from yesterday. Pegasus left us with their entire book of DVDs, hundreds of hours of craptastic cinematic entertainment, so we’ll probably end up wasting all our time with movies rather than esoteric spiritual pursuits. Today we watched the contemporary masterpiece that is Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Brilliant.
What’s worse is that with overcast skies and not having run our engine a lot lately, our batteries are being taxed severely. We ran the engine for an hour tonight to recharge them, but if we keep watching two movies a day on the computer, even that’s not going to keep them charged.
As always, I hate running the diesel. It’s not just an inconvenience or a matter of aesthetics (the thing’s bloody loud), but I believe morally in not using fossil fuels. Hiking we had a bodily connection to the earth, something utterly lacking when we motor but physically present when we sail. It’s a philosophical difference.
I envy our Australian friends, both because they left today and because they haven’t even connected their alternator yet. They meet all their electrical needs with two big solar panels and a wind generator, and that provides the electricity for a refrigerator and a water-maker. They also use their solar panels to collect water: they just angle the things and put a bucket under the corner. Yesterday they caught forty gallons, our entire carrying capacity. Craziness.
Then again, they don’t have our famed intimacy with the locals, that a lack of gigantic solar panels and a windmill provides. It’s not just that we’re poor, we look poor, our boat lacking the bristling modern trappings that most cruising boats have. I’m not sure our local friendships matter much, though, when we’re trapped on the boat for a week without any electricity to watch DVDs.
Wind: NE 10-15 knots
The weather is shaping up to be really awful. Our friends on Pegasus left today at one for a marina thirty miles away, but with an unreliable engine we didn’t think we could make it if we left that late. If we had woken up at dawn we could have made it, but we didn’t get the weather forecast yesterday so we didn’t know that we would have a window today. Argh. We’re going to miss weather windows right and left if we can’t end up with reliable forecasting.
We finally got weather this morning on the VHF radio--we’d missed the last two days--and it looks disgusting. Above 25 knots for the next week. We may end up stuck here for that long.
So much for all my grand spiritual ambition from yesterday. Pegasus left us with their entire book of DVDs, hundreds of hours of craptastic cinematic entertainment, so we’ll probably end up wasting all our time with movies rather than esoteric spiritual pursuits. Today we watched the contemporary masterpiece that is Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Brilliant.
What’s worse is that with overcast skies and not having run our engine a lot lately, our batteries are being taxed severely. We ran the engine for an hour tonight to recharge them, but if we keep watching two movies a day on the computer, even that’s not going to keep them charged.
As always, I hate running the diesel. It’s not just an inconvenience or a matter of aesthetics (the thing’s bloody loud), but I believe morally in not using fossil fuels. Hiking we had a bodily connection to the earth, something utterly lacking when we motor but physically present when we sail. It’s a philosophical difference.
I envy our Australian friends, both because they left today and because they haven’t even connected their alternator yet. They meet all their electrical needs with two big solar panels and a wind generator, and that provides the electricity for a refrigerator and a water-maker. They also use their solar panels to collect water: they just angle the things and put a bucket under the corner. Yesterday they caught forty gallons, our entire carrying capacity. Craziness.
Then again, they don’t have our famed intimacy with the locals, that a lack of gigantic solar panels and a windmill provides. It’s not just that we’re poor, we look poor, our boat lacking the bristling modern trappings that most cruising boats have. I’m not sure our local friendships matter much, though, when we’re trapped on the boat for a week without any electricity to watch DVDs.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Big Galliot Cay, Exumas, Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: SE 15 knots
Karl’s fishermen friends from Farmers Cay showed up this morning to say hi, waking us up. They had a huge pile of conch in the boat, beautiful, pink, and wide-lipped, and gave us one for dinner. It was fantastic--sautĂ©ed in some garlic and olive oil, and then mixed up into Joy of Cooking Caribbean-style fritters with allspice and cayenne pepper. We used the spare hard bits as bait for bottom fish and ended up with a little snapper-like fish tonight, perfect for lunch for two tomorrow, and only our second fish kept on the boat. Exciting! I could get used to this seafood thing.
It’s great, too, to feel so connected with the locals. Our Australian friends on Pegasus anchored a fair ways away, but even though their boat is modest for a cruiser, it doesn’t inspire the immediate intimacy that our ratty small boat does. It’s either that or Karl’s tattoos, straw hat, and Jesus beard. He’s taken to brushing it straight out and calling himself Captain Weirdbeard. He may be going stir-crazy.
Karl even told them, honestly, how much we paid for our boat. Because Bahamian dollars are worth as much as US dollars, they understood that it’s cheap even by Bahamian standards. Our fisherman friend paid more than that for his brand new open fishing boat with 150-HP outboard. He’s supposed to come by one morning and take me diving and spear-fishing if the weather’s good, but the forecast’s atrocious, so I don’t know if that will happen.
I keep returning to this verse, what Christians call the Great Commission: “Go into all the world and teach the good news...” (my paraphrase.) My grandfather, the Greek exegete, has translated the verb in the active tense (the Greeks are all about verb tense), which would make it, “As you’re going into all the world...” I’ve always liked that interpretation of the missionary dictum. As you follow your path, laid out for you by the Spirit, teach those whom you meet the Good News.
I’m obviously not a textbook missionary, let alone a textbook Christian, but I keep thinking about the spiritual purpose of my journey wrapped up in that verse. These fishermen are a start. Not that I want to think of them with an ulterior motive, as I fear many missionaries do. I want to befriend them, to share the good news as I understand it: the possibility of a life like that of the lilies of the field, an escape from the pursuit of material goods, and a continued pilgrimage towards spiritual truth. I want to learn from them, too--the unexpressed half of the Great Commission. I don’t want to come thinking I have all the answers. I may have none. What I want for my journey is humility, openness, and truth.
Wind: SE 15 knots
Karl’s fishermen friends from Farmers Cay showed up this morning to say hi, waking us up. They had a huge pile of conch in the boat, beautiful, pink, and wide-lipped, and gave us one for dinner. It was fantastic--sautĂ©ed in some garlic and olive oil, and then mixed up into Joy of Cooking Caribbean-style fritters with allspice and cayenne pepper. We used the spare hard bits as bait for bottom fish and ended up with a little snapper-like fish tonight, perfect for lunch for two tomorrow, and only our second fish kept on the boat. Exciting! I could get used to this seafood thing.
It’s great, too, to feel so connected with the locals. Our Australian friends on Pegasus anchored a fair ways away, but even though their boat is modest for a cruiser, it doesn’t inspire the immediate intimacy that our ratty small boat does. It’s either that or Karl’s tattoos, straw hat, and Jesus beard. He’s taken to brushing it straight out and calling himself Captain Weirdbeard. He may be going stir-crazy.
Karl even told them, honestly, how much we paid for our boat. Because Bahamian dollars are worth as much as US dollars, they understood that it’s cheap even by Bahamian standards. Our fisherman friend paid more than that for his brand new open fishing boat with 150-HP outboard. He’s supposed to come by one morning and take me diving and spear-fishing if the weather’s good, but the forecast’s atrocious, so I don’t know if that will happen.
I keep returning to this verse, what Christians call the Great Commission: “Go into all the world and teach the good news...” (my paraphrase.) My grandfather, the Greek exegete, has translated the verb in the active tense (the Greeks are all about verb tense), which would make it, “As you’re going into all the world...” I’ve always liked that interpretation of the missionary dictum. As you follow your path, laid out for you by the Spirit, teach those whom you meet the Good News.
I’m obviously not a textbook missionary, let alone a textbook Christian, but I keep thinking about the spiritual purpose of my journey wrapped up in that verse. These fishermen are a start. Not that I want to think of them with an ulterior motive, as I fear many missionaries do. I want to befriend them, to share the good news as I understand it: the possibility of a life like that of the lilies of the field, an escape from the pursuit of material goods, and a continued pilgrimage towards spiritual truth. I want to learn from them, too--the unexpressed half of the Great Commission. I don’t want to come thinking I have all the answers. I may have none. What I want for my journey is humility, openness, and truth.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Little Farmers to Big Galliot Cays, Exumas, Bahamas
4.8 nm
Wind: E-SE 10-15 knots, heavy cloud cover and rain
Latitude: 23°55.42’N
Longitude: 076°17.31’W
Maximum speed: 4.4 knots (under sail)
Average speed: 3.1 knots
Our struggle to be better sailors continues every day, even today, wrestling only five miles to windward, and having our third race with the folk on Pegasus. Our main was still reefed from the storm we got into the other day, so we left it reefed, and tried to sail with a furled jib. Our sails are extremely old, which means they’re baggy and not well-shaped, which makes it hard for us to be good sailors. You can’t be very effective when you can’t sail well reefed.
Coming into harbor, rather than short-tack, something that Karl hates to do because he has to do most of the hard work, we gave up and started motor-sailing. The ketch-rigged Pegasus, under full sail, executed gorgeous arcs and tacks, angling right into harbor and anchoring under sail. Come to find out they thought we were sailing that whole time too, although how in the world they thought we were getting that kind of speed under only a reefed main I have no idea. We anchored directly on the anchor marked by the Explorer charts, in the northeast lee of a little island called Big Galliot Cay, right off its beach.
A gigantic powerboat was anchored right near us, full of bikini-clad youngsters, with the captain on deck with arms folded while we motored by. I waved and he didn’t wave back. Methinks he wasn’t too excited about us anchoring nearby, although with a nor’easter blowing in he can only expect everyone to get us much shelter as they can, and we anchored a perfectly respectable distance away. If he has asked us to move, we would have, but instead he and his guests upped anchor and motored away. Karl guessed that it was David Copperfield’s kids and entourage out in daddy’s boat for the day, wanting an island all to themselves. David Copperfield’s island is supposed to be the next one over--maybe we’ll have to wander over there and see if we can find the fountain of youth.
So we’re anchored by ourselves off a beautiful little beach (Pegasus found a different spot, not liking the current here), and there are caves right around the corner and allegedly great fishing, with yellowtail snapper swarming the place. It should be a good place to wait out a northeast blow. Although the engine-less dinghy does hinder our exploration. It’s frustrating to be stuck a place, as we were at Black Point, for days and be unable to leave the boat because of currents, strong wind, and swell.
Wind: E-SE 10-15 knots, heavy cloud cover and rain
Latitude: 23°55.42’N
Longitude: 076°17.31’W
Maximum speed: 4.4 knots (under sail)
Average speed: 3.1 knots
Our struggle to be better sailors continues every day, even today, wrestling only five miles to windward, and having our third race with the folk on Pegasus. Our main was still reefed from the storm we got into the other day, so we left it reefed, and tried to sail with a furled jib. Our sails are extremely old, which means they’re baggy and not well-shaped, which makes it hard for us to be good sailors. You can’t be very effective when you can’t sail well reefed.
Coming into harbor, rather than short-tack, something that Karl hates to do because he has to do most of the hard work, we gave up and started motor-sailing. The ketch-rigged Pegasus, under full sail, executed gorgeous arcs and tacks, angling right into harbor and anchoring under sail. Come to find out they thought we were sailing that whole time too, although how in the world they thought we were getting that kind of speed under only a reefed main I have no idea. We anchored directly on the anchor marked by the Explorer charts, in the northeast lee of a little island called Big Galliot Cay, right off its beach.
A gigantic powerboat was anchored right near us, full of bikini-clad youngsters, with the captain on deck with arms folded while we motored by. I waved and he didn’t wave back. Methinks he wasn’t too excited about us anchoring nearby, although with a nor’easter blowing in he can only expect everyone to get us much shelter as they can, and we anchored a perfectly respectable distance away. If he has asked us to move, we would have, but instead he and his guests upped anchor and motored away. Karl guessed that it was David Copperfield’s kids and entourage out in daddy’s boat for the day, wanting an island all to themselves. David Copperfield’s island is supposed to be the next one over--maybe we’ll have to wander over there and see if we can find the fountain of youth.
So we’re anchored by ourselves off a beautiful little beach (Pegasus found a different spot, not liking the current here), and there are caves right around the corner and allegedly great fishing, with yellowtail snapper swarming the place. It should be a good place to wait out a northeast blow. Although the engine-less dinghy does hinder our exploration. It’s frustrating to be stuck a place, as we were at Black Point, for days and be unable to leave the boat because of currents, strong wind, and swell.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Little Farmers Cay, Exumas, Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: NE-E 5-10 knots, gusting over fifteen in the occasional thunderstorm
We ended up going ashore again yesterday afternoon with our new Australian friends on Pegasus, the couple from the ketch that we met racing in almost no wind. It feels great to actually have some social interaction again. Today we went over to their boat for breakfast and ended up hanging out for much of the day, talking and watching a movie. One thing that makes their boat so comfortable is their awning--something we don’t have!
It also gives us an excuse to go to land and mix with the Bahamians while, for me, at least, feeling like I have another girl to hang out with. Karl can mix with the big gangs of Bahamian men that seem to hang out at the docks, but it’s harder for me as a female. There’s a different dynamic. Especially in these towns where there’s a lot of divers and fishermen and construction workers building the estates on the neighboring cays and there’s not a lot of women around. We found out later the town had fifty inhabitants, ten of which were women.
But we had a great time. Dee, my new Australian friend, and I hung out at the Ocean Cabin restaurant with two schoolgirls and exchanged e-mail addresses. (Chavelle, shout out, if you’re reading this.) Then we wandered down to the local hangout place in front of the grocery store and ended up being taught to play dominoes. Delroy, one of the Bahamian men, was an old fisherman, and was teaching us what we could do with fish--how to cook a ray or a barracuda, which kinds of shark are good to eat--and ended up showing us the game. It seems to be the national game of the Bahamas. Guys in Black Point were always trying to get Karl to play. At first I thought an attempt was going to be made to hustle me out of some hard-earned cash, but it ended up just being a friendly, if uber-competitive game, with different levels of strategy none of which I fully grasped. I was just beginning to get good when we quit.
They put on some Bahamian music, and everyone was excited that I knew about rake and scrape, and had favorite Bahamian songs from listening to the Radio Bahamas. They even showed me the rake and scrape dance, which I participated in enthusiastically, although they didn’t want to teach Karl to play a washboard. My favorite song is “Mama Don’t Want No Rakin-and-Scrapin in Here,” which is evidently played by the band CBS. I hope I can find a CD before we leave the Bahamas.
All in all, though, it was the best experience we’ve had actually hanging out with Bahamians so far. They welcomed us with open arms, and I felt like an equal. The community’s a very isolated island one, so just having visitors of any kind is probably exciting to the town. I think everyone in the village was hanging out with us on the porch. And the construction workers make $130 a day to build the huge resorts and houses on neighboring islands. A group of them is working on building David Copperfield’s house, which is actually on a cay farther south, and another group is building a house for Faith Hill and Tim McGraw. Kevin Costner’s also supposed to have a house around here, and we met someone who had worked on the house we had anchored off the other day, owned by a rich Austrian. I’d be happy if we could make that kind of money for a couple of months.
A group of fishermen took Karl out with them to gather his fish traps this afternoon, after he put another layer of fiberglass on our dinghy with the help of James, one of our friends from the night before. Karl still gets a different level of entry into the culture because of his gender, but I’m happy that I was able to break in a little. I do realize that we’d have to stay in one of these areas for at least a month or two in order to really get to know people. What’s cool is that we could, if Karl could get work doing construction or fishing. I would have loved to tutor those girls or help them with their schoolwork or just work on my own writing. They had mangroves on the island, and they were convinced that they could even help us haul our boat so we could do the bottom work we need to. It’s nice to know that we could stop in any of these villages and become functioning members of the community, at least to some degree. I was tempted to stop right there. But Georgetown beckons, and the trade winds draw us south, ever south. How can we stop when the wind is blowing?
Wind: NE-E 5-10 knots, gusting over fifteen in the occasional thunderstorm
We ended up going ashore again yesterday afternoon with our new Australian friends on Pegasus, the couple from the ketch that we met racing in almost no wind. It feels great to actually have some social interaction again. Today we went over to their boat for breakfast and ended up hanging out for much of the day, talking and watching a movie. One thing that makes their boat so comfortable is their awning--something we don’t have!
It also gives us an excuse to go to land and mix with the Bahamians while, for me, at least, feeling like I have another girl to hang out with. Karl can mix with the big gangs of Bahamian men that seem to hang out at the docks, but it’s harder for me as a female. There’s a different dynamic. Especially in these towns where there’s a lot of divers and fishermen and construction workers building the estates on the neighboring cays and there’s not a lot of women around. We found out later the town had fifty inhabitants, ten of which were women.
But we had a great time. Dee, my new Australian friend, and I hung out at the Ocean Cabin restaurant with two schoolgirls and exchanged e-mail addresses. (Chavelle, shout out, if you’re reading this.) Then we wandered down to the local hangout place in front of the grocery store and ended up being taught to play dominoes. Delroy, one of the Bahamian men, was an old fisherman, and was teaching us what we could do with fish--how to cook a ray or a barracuda, which kinds of shark are good to eat--and ended up showing us the game. It seems to be the national game of the Bahamas. Guys in Black Point were always trying to get Karl to play. At first I thought an attempt was going to be made to hustle me out of some hard-earned cash, but it ended up just being a friendly, if uber-competitive game, with different levels of strategy none of which I fully grasped. I was just beginning to get good when we quit.
They put on some Bahamian music, and everyone was excited that I knew about rake and scrape, and had favorite Bahamian songs from listening to the Radio Bahamas. They even showed me the rake and scrape dance, which I participated in enthusiastically, although they didn’t want to teach Karl to play a washboard. My favorite song is “Mama Don’t Want No Rakin-and-Scrapin in Here,” which is evidently played by the band CBS. I hope I can find a CD before we leave the Bahamas.
All in all, though, it was the best experience we’ve had actually hanging out with Bahamians so far. They welcomed us with open arms, and I felt like an equal. The community’s a very isolated island one, so just having visitors of any kind is probably exciting to the town. I think everyone in the village was hanging out with us on the porch. And the construction workers make $130 a day to build the huge resorts and houses on neighboring islands. A group of them is working on building David Copperfield’s house, which is actually on a cay farther south, and another group is building a house for Faith Hill and Tim McGraw. Kevin Costner’s also supposed to have a house around here, and we met someone who had worked on the house we had anchored off the other day, owned by a rich Austrian. I’d be happy if we could make that kind of money for a couple of months.
A group of fishermen took Karl out with them to gather his fish traps this afternoon, after he put another layer of fiberglass on our dinghy with the help of James, one of our friends from the night before. Karl still gets a different level of entry into the culture because of his gender, but I’m happy that I was able to break in a little. I do realize that we’d have to stay in one of these areas for at least a month or two in order to really get to know people. What’s cool is that we could, if Karl could get work doing construction or fishing. I would have loved to tutor those girls or help them with their schoolwork or just work on my own writing. They had mangroves on the island, and they were convinced that they could even help us haul our boat so we could do the bottom work we need to. It’s nice to know that we could stop in any of these villages and become functioning members of the community, at least to some degree. I was tempted to stop right there. But Georgetown beckons, and the trade winds draw us south, ever south. How can we stop when the wind is blowing?
Friday, May 18, 2007
Black Point to Little Farmers Cay, Exumas, Bahamas
13.8 nm
Wind: WSW 10-15 knots, gusting to about 30 in a brief thunderstorm
Seas: Two-foot swell
Latitude: 23°57.25’N
Longitude: 076°19.57’W
Maximum speed: 6.1 knots (under sail)
Average speed: 3.5 knots
Yesterday afternoon, I was interrupted in my writing when a Karl called me to the companionway to look through our binoculars. “Look,” he said. “It’s an open catamaran with a batwing junk sail.” And sure enough, there was a little dude and a dog on a catamaran made from inflatable pontoons coming into the harbor. He had a red Chinese-style sail and a little bimini that covered the deck of his boat where stuff was lashed down. Karl said, “I have to meet this guy.” He’s always saying that if he were alone he’d be in an under-twenty-foot open boat where he’d camp on the beach and eat ramen every night from his trail kit.
So he rowed across the wind and waves in our little dinghy, even though the weather was still fairly awful, and took our camera. He ended up wandering around and hanging out with this guy for a couple of hours, and then inviting him back to the boat. (I spent the afternoon baking a really delicious rosemary boule and cleaning the head, which is a different story.) So he sailed over after the storm blew by--he doesn’t have an engine--and visited our boat. He calls his boat Flubber IV--it’s the fourth version of a lashed-together open catamaran that he’s designed. He’d sailed down the Baja coast in a Hobie 14, and up from Washington to Alaska in a Hobie 16 the following year. He had been a long-distance kayaker and a wind surfer and a kite boarder and he and Karl discussed their extreme-sports fascination--how fast one can get nature and a board to move one--while I fiddled with my bread.
He also told us about discussing an ancient martial art that he tries to follow named sadu. A sadu attempts to live a purely ascetic life, cutting out everything that one cannot hunt or gather oneself. He lived on nothing but a forty-pound bag of organic brown rice and what he could dive for from the ocean. Three days before he had been attacked by a nine-foot shark for the grouper he had speared. Not that we’re that hardcore, but we definitely felt much more kindred to this guy than we have to a lot of the cruisers with more money. We’re doing this on a hair and a shoestring, living at the edge, as we go through the extremely steep learning curve of sailing and cruising and meteorology and all of those other things that we’re being forced to learn quickly. This guy has nothing but a seventeen-foot-long sail, a spear, and a dog. It put our adventure in a different perspective.
It also made me miss the trail life. I wish we could pull our boat up on the beach and have a barbecue. You can interact with locals on a whole different level when each day you’re camping among them. He was a crazy guy, someone who had spent a little too much time in the woods to be able to have completely normal social interactions, but someone that a lot of people could learn a lot from. I know that my ideas about sailing have been changed when I think of it as sadu, as art. His point of view affected our sailing today, even. We raced our friends in the ketch again today, this time for real. We met them in person when they came into our anchorage yesterday, and we agreed over the radio to have an informal race to Farmers Cay. We both got waylaid by a brief but threatening thunderstorm that blew over--they had to run behind it, and we tacked across to the lee of land and anchored in a hurry. They got to the designated anchorage first, but we got to the island first, so we called it a tie.
But both Karl and I were sadu in our sailing today. We close-reached along the islands, and then even committed to beating back out and then running into a safer anchorage. Sailing is really about committing to it, to deciding that the engine is not an option, because 95% of situations can be sailed out of if you commit to them. Even running away from that storm, I felt safer because we were under sail. We reefed fast, faster than we have before, in about ten minutes, and furled the jib into a handkerchief. Because we had been sailing, we were conscious of weather and wind direction instead of being caught by surprise.
So we’re not sailing across oceans in an open boat, and we’re not kayaking thousands of miles, but we’re becoming better sailors by the day. We’re learning to be earth and the wind and the sea.
Wind: WSW 10-15 knots, gusting to about 30 in a brief thunderstorm
Seas: Two-foot swell
Latitude: 23°57.25’N
Longitude: 076°19.57’W
Maximum speed: 6.1 knots (under sail)
Average speed: 3.5 knots
Yesterday afternoon, I was interrupted in my writing when a Karl called me to the companionway to look through our binoculars. “Look,” he said. “It’s an open catamaran with a batwing junk sail.” And sure enough, there was a little dude and a dog on a catamaran made from inflatable pontoons coming into the harbor. He had a red Chinese-style sail and a little bimini that covered the deck of his boat where stuff was lashed down. Karl said, “I have to meet this guy.” He’s always saying that if he were alone he’d be in an under-twenty-foot open boat where he’d camp on the beach and eat ramen every night from his trail kit.
So he rowed across the wind and waves in our little dinghy, even though the weather was still fairly awful, and took our camera. He ended up wandering around and hanging out with this guy for a couple of hours, and then inviting him back to the boat. (I spent the afternoon baking a really delicious rosemary boule and cleaning the head, which is a different story.) So he sailed over after the storm blew by--he doesn’t have an engine--and visited our boat. He calls his boat Flubber IV--it’s the fourth version of a lashed-together open catamaran that he’s designed. He’d sailed down the Baja coast in a Hobie 14, and up from Washington to Alaska in a Hobie 16 the following year. He had been a long-distance kayaker and a wind surfer and a kite boarder and he and Karl discussed their extreme-sports fascination--how fast one can get nature and a board to move one--while I fiddled with my bread.
He also told us about discussing an ancient martial art that he tries to follow named sadu. A sadu attempts to live a purely ascetic life, cutting out everything that one cannot hunt or gather oneself. He lived on nothing but a forty-pound bag of organic brown rice and what he could dive for from the ocean. Three days before he had been attacked by a nine-foot shark for the grouper he had speared. Not that we’re that hardcore, but we definitely felt much more kindred to this guy than we have to a lot of the cruisers with more money. We’re doing this on a hair and a shoestring, living at the edge, as we go through the extremely steep learning curve of sailing and cruising and meteorology and all of those other things that we’re being forced to learn quickly. This guy has nothing but a seventeen-foot-long sail, a spear, and a dog. It put our adventure in a different perspective.
It also made me miss the trail life. I wish we could pull our boat up on the beach and have a barbecue. You can interact with locals on a whole different level when each day you’re camping among them. He was a crazy guy, someone who had spent a little too much time in the woods to be able to have completely normal social interactions, but someone that a lot of people could learn a lot from. I know that my ideas about sailing have been changed when I think of it as sadu, as art. His point of view affected our sailing today, even. We raced our friends in the ketch again today, this time for real. We met them in person when they came into our anchorage yesterday, and we agreed over the radio to have an informal race to Farmers Cay. We both got waylaid by a brief but threatening thunderstorm that blew over--they had to run behind it, and we tacked across to the lee of land and anchored in a hurry. They got to the designated anchorage first, but we got to the island first, so we called it a tie.
But both Karl and I were sadu in our sailing today. We close-reached along the islands, and then even committed to beating back out and then running into a safer anchorage. Sailing is really about committing to it, to deciding that the engine is not an option, because 95% of situations can be sailed out of if you commit to them. Even running away from that storm, I felt safer because we were under sail. We reefed fast, faster than we have before, in about ten minutes, and furled the jib into a handkerchief. Because we had been sailing, we were conscious of weather and wind direction instead of being caught by surprise.
So we’re not sailing across oceans in an open boat, and we’re not kayaking thousands of miles, but we’re becoming better sailors by the day. We’re learning to be earth and the wind and the sea.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Black Point, Exumas, Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: SE 10-15, shifting to SW in the afternoon
Last night, at sunset, we saw a waterspout. An actual, live, upside-down, twirling drain of water, coming up out of the ocean and ending in the clouds, like revolving staircase to heaven. I shouldn’t have made that crack about the Wizard of Oz. It’s inconceivable to me that such a natural phenomenon even exists, that air pressure could be so low that water could be sucked by the atmosphere out of the ocean and up into the sky.
Someone on the radio warned us, and we looked out of the cockpit to see first a disturbance in the water, a lot of spray, and then this thin thread of water winding up and disappearing into the clouds, and moving in our direction. Karl and I battened down the hatches, as much as they could be battened, and then watched helplessly.
I wanted to start the engine, to put out another anchor, anything, but we couldn’t run away fast enough to escape something like that. Nor would another anchor have helped. If we get hit by a waterspout, a virtual tornado of water, we’re dead. That’s it. End of story.
It was a big siren, a wake-up call, an alarm. Something. Eventually it dissipated and disappeared. There’s nothing to be done, though. We’re here now, in these latitudes, at this time of year, where the weather has gone all to hell in the last ten years, and we have to deal with it. Those are the facts. All we can do is manage them.
What’s crazy is that the people here live with it all the time, year after year, just like people in the north live with snowstorms. Here, tangibly, you can feel and see the effects of global warming, the actual changes in weather patterns. Today on the radio we got the statistics: nineteen named storms (Andrea was the first) forecast for this year, when nine is normal. Nine hurricanes forecast, when six is the norm. And five high-intensity hurricanes predicted (that’s category three, winds of 111 mph, or higher) when two is normal.
That’s insane. It makes me wonder why no one’s done anything about the weather yet. Isn’t it obvious that it’s changing? How much more apparent does it have to be? The reason no one’s done anything about it is that the people who see it are those that have no power to change it. The people who live in the tropics, where the weather is being overwhelmingly affected, are poor. Even though they use the least carbon-producing products, and they’re the ones who are least responsible for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, they’re the ones who will suffer the most, in storms, tornadoes, floods, and famine.
We’ve seen it already in Hurricane Katrina, in the tsunami of 2004. I just read a huge article on it in a Newsweek left in a laundromat in Florida. It’s hard to believe that all of our overuse of fossil fuels aren’t causing the climate crisis. I just don’t know how you can argue that anymore. And it’s hard to argue that those effects can’t be seen right now, right here. It’s hard to argue with those pictures of melting icebergs. Being down here makes it next to impossible.
Our friend Booboo, from the Appalachian Trail, made the joke back in Miami that if we encounter people who are poor, and they question our guilt in their oppression, we can at least say that we’ve reduced our carbon footprint. That’s ludicrous, in a way, but the more I watch the weather the more I’m convinced that our choice to live differently than the majority of Americans would mean something to them. They know the weather’s changing, and they know who’s to blame.
Think about Future, Karl’s new Bahamian friend at the dock. He can walk to family members’ houses. He doesn’t own a car, but uses a golf cart to get around the island. His village has a big generator that runs a couple of lousy streetlights and some radios and televisions. He doesn’t heat or cool his house. His lamb chops come from the next island, not New Zealand. He eats wild fish, not food items that come from eight different countries. He watches as the Americans race by in their $800,000 motorboats, that have 1000-horsepower engines, and overfish his fish.
So maybe what we do will matter to them. At least we’re living differently. At least we’re trying. We’re not doing much, but we’re doing something. I can’t force Americans to give up their SUVs, or their Chilean sea bass, or their big-screen televisions. All I can do is do what I think is right.
Wind: SE 10-15, shifting to SW in the afternoon
Last night, at sunset, we saw a waterspout. An actual, live, upside-down, twirling drain of water, coming up out of the ocean and ending in the clouds, like revolving staircase to heaven. I shouldn’t have made that crack about the Wizard of Oz. It’s inconceivable to me that such a natural phenomenon even exists, that air pressure could be so low that water could be sucked by the atmosphere out of the ocean and up into the sky.
Someone on the radio warned us, and we looked out of the cockpit to see first a disturbance in the water, a lot of spray, and then this thin thread of water winding up and disappearing into the clouds, and moving in our direction. Karl and I battened down the hatches, as much as they could be battened, and then watched helplessly.
I wanted to start the engine, to put out another anchor, anything, but we couldn’t run away fast enough to escape something like that. Nor would another anchor have helped. If we get hit by a waterspout, a virtual tornado of water, we’re dead. That’s it. End of story.
It was a big siren, a wake-up call, an alarm. Something. Eventually it dissipated and disappeared. There’s nothing to be done, though. We’re here now, in these latitudes, at this time of year, where the weather has gone all to hell in the last ten years, and we have to deal with it. Those are the facts. All we can do is manage them.
What’s crazy is that the people here live with it all the time, year after year, just like people in the north live with snowstorms. Here, tangibly, you can feel and see the effects of global warming, the actual changes in weather patterns. Today on the radio we got the statistics: nineteen named storms (Andrea was the first) forecast for this year, when nine is normal. Nine hurricanes forecast, when six is the norm. And five high-intensity hurricanes predicted (that’s category three, winds of 111 mph, or higher) when two is normal.
That’s insane. It makes me wonder why no one’s done anything about the weather yet. Isn’t it obvious that it’s changing? How much more apparent does it have to be? The reason no one’s done anything about it is that the people who see it are those that have no power to change it. The people who live in the tropics, where the weather is being overwhelmingly affected, are poor. Even though they use the least carbon-producing products, and they’re the ones who are least responsible for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, they’re the ones who will suffer the most, in storms, tornadoes, floods, and famine.
We’ve seen it already in Hurricane Katrina, in the tsunami of 2004. I just read a huge article on it in a Newsweek left in a laundromat in Florida. It’s hard to believe that all of our overuse of fossil fuels aren’t causing the climate crisis. I just don’t know how you can argue that anymore. And it’s hard to argue that those effects can’t be seen right now, right here. It’s hard to argue with those pictures of melting icebergs. Being down here makes it next to impossible.
Our friend Booboo, from the Appalachian Trail, made the joke back in Miami that if we encounter people who are poor, and they question our guilt in their oppression, we can at least say that we’ve reduced our carbon footprint. That’s ludicrous, in a way, but the more I watch the weather the more I’m convinced that our choice to live differently than the majority of Americans would mean something to them. They know the weather’s changing, and they know who’s to blame.
Think about Future, Karl’s new Bahamian friend at the dock. He can walk to family members’ houses. He doesn’t own a car, but uses a golf cart to get around the island. His village has a big generator that runs a couple of lousy streetlights and some radios and televisions. He doesn’t heat or cool his house. His lamb chops come from the next island, not New Zealand. He eats wild fish, not food items that come from eight different countries. He watches as the Americans race by in their $800,000 motorboats, that have 1000-horsepower engines, and overfish his fish.
So maybe what we do will matter to them. At least we’re living differently. At least we’re trying. We’re not doing much, but we’re doing something. I can’t force Americans to give up their SUVs, or their Chilean sea bass, or their big-screen televisions. All I can do is do what I think is right.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Black Point, Exumas, Bahamas
0.5 nm
Wind: E-ESE 20-25 knots, gusting above 30 in the morning, dying to under 15
Seas: Extreme chop in anchorage in the morning
Latitude: 24°06.10’N
Longitude: 076°24.04’W
More bad weather. Or so we thought when we woke up this morning. We slept like rocks through the squalls and thunderstorms that blew through last night. Now all an over-forty gust gets is a yawn, as long as we know our CQR anchor is well set. But this morning the wind seemed to be building, and the chop in the harbor was getting worse and worse.
We set a very good anchor, but we’re always a little chicken about being too close to other boats and too close to shallow spots. We need to learn how to snug in a little better, because we’re always exposing ourselves to an awful chop. We debated heading down to Little Farmers Cay, where our charts show better protection but worse holding, or heading farther down to Cave Cay, our jump-off point to Georgetown. Instead, we decided to up anchor here in harbor and move closer to land, where we’ll have protection from the low-pressure trough after trough that are forecast to be moving through the area over the next few days.
We escaped the chop, right after more boats came in to fill up the anchorage, and then Karl decided to risk a trip to the dinghy dock for fresh water and maybe some eggs and vegetables from town. Now, though, the wind seems to have died down and it’s a beautiful sunny Bahamian day. I wish we had made a break for it.
Some missionaries live on a sailboat in Black Point. We’ve eavesdropped on a couple of their radio conversations, including one with a big old ketch named Bahama Star that was loaded down with twelve college students. When we dinghied by the first night, the ketch had three cases of Bahamian Kalik beer on deck and numerous bottles of rum, were playing quarters, and became extremely rowdy as the evening progressed. I don’t know how Sarshalom, the Christian boat, got to know them, nor do I know if the missionaries are evangelizing the Bahamians or the cruisers. Maybe the cruisers, based on that experience. I don’t know how the two boats would have got to know each other otherwise.
So far, the Bahamas seems a very Christian place. Every community, even the tiniest, has at least three churches, and the grocery stores don’t sell alcohol. The Radio Bahamas, the national radio station, plays sermons and gospel music (intermingled with calypso, rake and scrape, and songs about losing one’s virginity). The locals seem to look askance at the yachties and their rum-swilling happy hours. So it seems they don’t really need missionaries, but I imagine Sarshalom could have come to do development or relief work. I’m very fascinated by them, mainly because my parents were missionaries while I was growing up, and using a sailboat as a base of operations is a fascinating idea. In some ways, I feel kindred with them, like what we’re doing is similar. They’re evidently with a group called “Maritime Discipleship,” or so they told the partiers on Bahama Star.
I half feel like hailing them, telling them about my family’s history, and inviting them over to dinner, but I know they’ll look askance at my not being married to Karl. Our unmarried status alienates all the Christians we meet, and may even alienate some Bahamians. That’s not a good reason alone to get married, but it does seem like it would make things easier. I wish Christians just could be accepting, as commanded by Christ, instead of feeling a need to categorize people as goats or sheep. Or, in our case: dirty hippies squandering their numerous talents, or good Christians doing the Lord’s work. Couldn’t we be, maybe, dirty hippies doing the Lord’s work? And isn’t it the Lord’s job to do the categorizing, anyway?
It’s hard to talk about my faith, because my family reads this journal, and writing about my innermost doubts and concerns in here seems a backhanded way to discuss it with them. But I think about it all the time. I am a Christian, even if an alternate-lifestyle one, and even if that alienates people on the other side of the fence. Karl and I read the Bible together, and pray consistently for God to guide our steps. We may not be traditional missionaries, but I do believe that we are evangelists, by the original meaning of that word. We bear witness. We at least aspire to.
I guess Karl’s doing the bearing witness today--he’s the one ashore befriending the locals. I’m just sitting in the boat, sweating, contemplating, and playing computer games. I think that may fall on the squandering talents side. Oh well. God has grace, even if I don’t.
Wind: E-ESE 20-25 knots, gusting above 30 in the morning, dying to under 15
Seas: Extreme chop in anchorage in the morning
Latitude: 24°06.10’N
Longitude: 076°24.04’W
More bad weather. Or so we thought when we woke up this morning. We slept like rocks through the squalls and thunderstorms that blew through last night. Now all an over-forty gust gets is a yawn, as long as we know our CQR anchor is well set. But this morning the wind seemed to be building, and the chop in the harbor was getting worse and worse.
We set a very good anchor, but we’re always a little chicken about being too close to other boats and too close to shallow spots. We need to learn how to snug in a little better, because we’re always exposing ourselves to an awful chop. We debated heading down to Little Farmers Cay, where our charts show better protection but worse holding, or heading farther down to Cave Cay, our jump-off point to Georgetown. Instead, we decided to up anchor here in harbor and move closer to land, where we’ll have protection from the low-pressure trough after trough that are forecast to be moving through the area over the next few days.
We escaped the chop, right after more boats came in to fill up the anchorage, and then Karl decided to risk a trip to the dinghy dock for fresh water and maybe some eggs and vegetables from town. Now, though, the wind seems to have died down and it’s a beautiful sunny Bahamian day. I wish we had made a break for it.
Some missionaries live on a sailboat in Black Point. We’ve eavesdropped on a couple of their radio conversations, including one with a big old ketch named Bahama Star that was loaded down with twelve college students. When we dinghied by the first night, the ketch had three cases of Bahamian Kalik beer on deck and numerous bottles of rum, were playing quarters, and became extremely rowdy as the evening progressed. I don’t know how Sarshalom, the Christian boat, got to know them, nor do I know if the missionaries are evangelizing the Bahamians or the cruisers. Maybe the cruisers, based on that experience. I don’t know how the two boats would have got to know each other otherwise.
So far, the Bahamas seems a very Christian place. Every community, even the tiniest, has at least three churches, and the grocery stores don’t sell alcohol. The Radio Bahamas, the national radio station, plays sermons and gospel music (intermingled with calypso, rake and scrape, and songs about losing one’s virginity). The locals seem to look askance at the yachties and their rum-swilling happy hours. So it seems they don’t really need missionaries, but I imagine Sarshalom could have come to do development or relief work. I’m very fascinated by them, mainly because my parents were missionaries while I was growing up, and using a sailboat as a base of operations is a fascinating idea. In some ways, I feel kindred with them, like what we’re doing is similar. They’re evidently with a group called “Maritime Discipleship,” or so they told the partiers on Bahama Star.
I half feel like hailing them, telling them about my family’s history, and inviting them over to dinner, but I know they’ll look askance at my not being married to Karl. Our unmarried status alienates all the Christians we meet, and may even alienate some Bahamians. That’s not a good reason alone to get married, but it does seem like it would make things easier. I wish Christians just could be accepting, as commanded by Christ, instead of feeling a need to categorize people as goats or sheep. Or, in our case: dirty hippies squandering their numerous talents, or good Christians doing the Lord’s work. Couldn’t we be, maybe, dirty hippies doing the Lord’s work? And isn’t it the Lord’s job to do the categorizing, anyway?
It’s hard to talk about my faith, because my family reads this journal, and writing about my innermost doubts and concerns in here seems a backhanded way to discuss it with them. But I think about it all the time. I am a Christian, even if an alternate-lifestyle one, and even if that alienates people on the other side of the fence. Karl and I read the Bible together, and pray consistently for God to guide our steps. We may not be traditional missionaries, but I do believe that we are evangelists, by the original meaning of that word. We bear witness. We at least aspire to.
I guess Karl’s doing the bearing witness today--he’s the one ashore befriending the locals. I’m just sitting in the boat, sweating, contemplating, and playing computer games. I think that may fall on the squandering talents side. Oh well. God has grace, even if I don’t.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Black Point, Exumas Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: NE-E 20-25 knots, gusting to above 30
I’ve been hacking away at Ulysses all day today, and instead of thinking like a normal person now all I can do is enumerate my every thought: Potato. Robots. Rum. The banging door led athwartships while howling wind shook the rigging. A tattooed young man with Artaxerxes beard sat in the companionway, rubbed his face, and sighed. Scratched his sunburnt ribs and twirled an index in an ear. Bloo-choo. A cough.
So that gets old real fast. My other occupation for the day was baking bread--my last couple of loaves have turned out abysmally, mainly because of my leaving the dough unrefrigerated overnight and allowing it to dissolve and ferment. So today I followed the recipe from the Joy of Cooking down to the letter. No substitutions. I even shaped the loaf into a French boule, scored the top with a serrated knife (six times--no more, no less), and put a pan full of ocean water on the oven floor to create a steam bath for a crispy crust.
What did I end up with? The most perfect loaf of bread I have ever baked. Even the crust is delicious. Generally I’m the kind of person who eats crusts first to get them out of the way, but this crust is like candy. The loaf, and Karl-created beef stew with a drop of Dave’s Insanity Sauce in it, made a fantastic dinner.
We’ve been stuck here all day, unable to even go to town, by a cold front moving through, the unstable air mass that used to be subtropical storm Andrea. Squalls keep blowing by. We’re becoming accustomed to above-forty gusts and tropical rain. Right now, looming on the horizon, is a gray-green thunderhead that looks like it came from The Wizard of Oz. I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore. Everyone on the radio says that this is an atypical May, and it seems so to me, too. I hope we get a break in the weather to head to Georgetown.
Wind: NE-E 20-25 knots, gusting to above 30
I’ve been hacking away at Ulysses all day today, and instead of thinking like a normal person now all I can do is enumerate my every thought: Potato. Robots. Rum. The banging door led athwartships while howling wind shook the rigging. A tattooed young man with Artaxerxes beard sat in the companionway, rubbed his face, and sighed. Scratched his sunburnt ribs and twirled an index in an ear. Bloo-choo. A cough.
So that gets old real fast. My other occupation for the day was baking bread--my last couple of loaves have turned out abysmally, mainly because of my leaving the dough unrefrigerated overnight and allowing it to dissolve and ferment. So today I followed the recipe from the Joy of Cooking down to the letter. No substitutions. I even shaped the loaf into a French boule, scored the top with a serrated knife (six times--no more, no less), and put a pan full of ocean water on the oven floor to create a steam bath for a crispy crust.
What did I end up with? The most perfect loaf of bread I have ever baked. Even the crust is delicious. Generally I’m the kind of person who eats crusts first to get them out of the way, but this crust is like candy. The loaf, and Karl-created beef stew with a drop of Dave’s Insanity Sauce in it, made a fantastic dinner.
We’ve been stuck here all day, unable to even go to town, by a cold front moving through, the unstable air mass that used to be subtropical storm Andrea. Squalls keep blowing by. We’re becoming accustomed to above-forty gusts and tropical rain. Right now, looming on the horizon, is a gray-green thunderhead that looks like it came from The Wizard of Oz. I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore. Everyone on the radio says that this is an atypical May, and it seems so to me, too. I hope we get a break in the weather to head to Georgetown.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Bell Island to Black Point, Exumas, Bahamas
18.5 nm
Wind: E-NE 5-10 knots, building to SE 15
Seas: Building to one foot
Latitude: 24°06.03’N
Longitude: 076°24.32’W
Maximum speed: 5.3 knots (under sail)
Average speed: 3.0 knots
We had some conflict today about destination. The same debate continues between the two of us: Karl wants to race to Georgetown, and I want to stop and enjoy the Exumas. As we sailed past cay after cay today, I enumerated in my mind all the things we were missing: snorkeling the Sea Aquarium in the Exuma Land and Sea Park, visiting the Rocky Dundas caves with stalagmite and stalactite formations, the Friday night chicken barbecue at the Thunderball Club, the site where the movie “Splash” was filmed, etc.
But a decision had to be made, and Karl made it, and it’s probably for the best. I could have spent another two weeks in the last eighteen miles. And probably about $200. So even though I had a depressing day, watching everything go by, it seems mean-spirited to dwell on it. At least we had a glorious sail, close-reaching down the string of islands, in about ten knots of wind, at about four knots, eventually beating into the harbor. We sailed virtually the whole day, only using the engine for a little boost when we were anchoring.
We’re also getting better and better at using the Master, our autopilot, to steer, even while sailing. It’s crazy to me that this technology from the sixties is still functioning, and seems better than any electronic autopilot that we’ve heard about to this point. It can’t counteract bad weather helm or heavy seas, but I haven’t heard about any autopilot, other than wind-vanes, that can. It’s a little weird to have all the natural sounds of wind and sea and then the little whirring of the electronic Master, but it’s still far better than the dull throb of the diesel. I know I can seem a little old-fashioned, but I’m not a Luddite. I love my computer, for instance. And I love the Master. Using electricity isn’t bad--we can even generate our own with our solar panel. Lately Karl’s been talking about getting rid of the engine again, replacing it with a little outboard that we can use both for our dinghy and for the boat. It’s not a bad idea, actually.
The key thing with the Master is learning to balance the helm, something we’re getting better and better at. All we really needed was good weather and open water for sailing. Lately all we do is read our sailing books, watch the telltales, and trim the sails, trying to find the absolute fastest and most efficient point of sail. When we do that, the tiller hovers right in the center of the cockpit, and the Master doesn’t have to work at all. As we’ve read, the well-designed sailboat trimmed perfectly doesn’t need to be steered at all. It will steer itself.
We still eavesdrop on the VHF, and today we heard two other cruising sailboats that had spent years cruising around the Caribbean. Both of them said they had tried to sail and weren’t able to today. Neither had any sail out, not even the main up to give them some lift. It blows me away. These people have spent years in the Caribbean, and they can’t sail in ten knots of wind? It makes me really happy that we have a light race-boat, which can blister along in light wind. Either that, or happy that we’re content averaging three knots, instead of thinking that we’re becalmed if we’re going less than six knots. We never go six knots. Not even motoring. I don’t know where these people are going that they think they have to get there so fast. Most of them seem to go about ten miles and then anchor again.
We went to town today, for the first time since Bimini, another tiny Bahamian village named Black Point Settlement. There wasn’t much there, a couple of little restaurants and a little store, but they did have trash disposal and fresh water and phone booths. We were able to call our parents for the first time since Bimini, which was nice. If the weather’s bad, we might go back over tomorrow and try to buy a couple of things from the store. They don’t have a big selection, but it might be nice to have some fresh eggs and tomatoes. Or we might just hold out until Georgetown.
Wind: E-NE 5-10 knots, building to SE 15
Seas: Building to one foot
Latitude: 24°06.03’N
Longitude: 076°24.32’W
Maximum speed: 5.3 knots (under sail)
Average speed: 3.0 knots
We had some conflict today about destination. The same debate continues between the two of us: Karl wants to race to Georgetown, and I want to stop and enjoy the Exumas. As we sailed past cay after cay today, I enumerated in my mind all the things we were missing: snorkeling the Sea Aquarium in the Exuma Land and Sea Park, visiting the Rocky Dundas caves with stalagmite and stalactite formations, the Friday night chicken barbecue at the Thunderball Club, the site where the movie “Splash” was filmed, etc.
But a decision had to be made, and Karl made it, and it’s probably for the best. I could have spent another two weeks in the last eighteen miles. And probably about $200. So even though I had a depressing day, watching everything go by, it seems mean-spirited to dwell on it. At least we had a glorious sail, close-reaching down the string of islands, in about ten knots of wind, at about four knots, eventually beating into the harbor. We sailed virtually the whole day, only using the engine for a little boost when we were anchoring.
We’re also getting better and better at using the Master, our autopilot, to steer, even while sailing. It’s crazy to me that this technology from the sixties is still functioning, and seems better than any electronic autopilot that we’ve heard about to this point. It can’t counteract bad weather helm or heavy seas, but I haven’t heard about any autopilot, other than wind-vanes, that can. It’s a little weird to have all the natural sounds of wind and sea and then the little whirring of the electronic Master, but it’s still far better than the dull throb of the diesel. I know I can seem a little old-fashioned, but I’m not a Luddite. I love my computer, for instance. And I love the Master. Using electricity isn’t bad--we can even generate our own with our solar panel. Lately Karl’s been talking about getting rid of the engine again, replacing it with a little outboard that we can use both for our dinghy and for the boat. It’s not a bad idea, actually.
The key thing with the Master is learning to balance the helm, something we’re getting better and better at. All we really needed was good weather and open water for sailing. Lately all we do is read our sailing books, watch the telltales, and trim the sails, trying to find the absolute fastest and most efficient point of sail. When we do that, the tiller hovers right in the center of the cockpit, and the Master doesn’t have to work at all. As we’ve read, the well-designed sailboat trimmed perfectly doesn’t need to be steered at all. It will steer itself.
We still eavesdrop on the VHF, and today we heard two other cruising sailboats that had spent years cruising around the Caribbean. Both of them said they had tried to sail and weren’t able to today. Neither had any sail out, not even the main up to give them some lift. It blows me away. These people have spent years in the Caribbean, and they can’t sail in ten knots of wind? It makes me really happy that we have a light race-boat, which can blister along in light wind. Either that, or happy that we’re content averaging three knots, instead of thinking that we’re becalmed if we’re going less than six knots. We never go six knots. Not even motoring. I don’t know where these people are going that they think they have to get there so fast. Most of them seem to go about ten miles and then anchor again.
We went to town today, for the first time since Bimini, another tiny Bahamian village named Black Point Settlement. There wasn’t much there, a couple of little restaurants and a little store, but they did have trash disposal and fresh water and phone booths. We were able to call our parents for the first time since Bimini, which was nice. If the weather’s bad, we might go back over tomorrow and try to buy a couple of things from the store. They don’t have a big selection, but it might be nice to have some fresh eggs and tomatoes. Or we might just hold out until Georgetown.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Mother’s Day
Emerald Rock to Bell Island, Exumas, Bahamas
10.6 nm
Wind: NW-W 5-10 knots, dying as thunderstorms approached
Seas: Residual swell of 1-2 feet
Latitude: 24°18.14’N
Longitude: 076°33.76’W
Maximum speed: 4.7 knots
Maximum speed under sail: 4.1 knots
Average speed: 3.2 knots
Karl and I had a miserable night last night. At about 1:30, a squall blew over, and our anchorage of last night was not exactly well protected. The tarp we use as a cockpit cover and had left up for the night started screeching and hollering outside, as did everything else in the boat--the lazy-jacks, the halyards slapping against the mast, the pans in the oven, the dirty pots in the sink and on the stove. We both got up and tried to make the boat shipshape, which usually doesn’t happen until we’re ready to sail, but every time we got back in bed, something else would start rattling and shaking around.
The swell was awful, because we were basically in the open ocean, and didn’t abate for the next four hours. In the meantime, I laid awake, trying to relax all my muscles as I rocked back and forth, back and forth, with nothing on my mind but sleep for two hours. It seems like the feeling would be pleasurable, like rocking in a cradle, but it’s not. At least not yet. They say old salts get to like the feeling, but rolling at anchor is not comforting to me yet. Underway, it is a little soothing, but wind bashing against current as your boat tries to hold itself straight is not fun.
So we were fairly exhausted and miserable this morning, but still knew we had to get back and move. I wasn’t staying there another night, that was for sure, especially because it’s supposed to blow hard tomorrow. The good thing is that we have to wake up at 7:30 these days to listen to the weather when it’s broadcast over the VHF by kind locals. So I rolled out of bed, bleary-eyed and miserable, and someone informed the collected assembly that the wind last night had hit 51 knots. Over fifty knots! That’s our worst recorded weather ever. Although Karl still has a sneaky suspicion that a couple of our Chesapeake Bay gales hit sixty. We’ll never know, I suppose.
We didn’t get going until noon or so, making the most use possible of our 24-hour internet access, and when we did, more thunderstorms loomed on the horizon. We were sailing, trying to spare the engine wear and tear, until the wind died and we had to motor-sail. Karl had grand ambitions, but I wanted to tuck in at the first safe anchorage and get some rest. As the thunderstorms threatened more and more, Karl came around to my perspective. We’re snugged in tonight behind the highest land we could find, an island that happens to be private. It was a little strange to pull in to a millionaire’s backyard and throw down a hook, but that’s exactly what we did. This little bay is marked as an anchorage on the chart, so an anchorage it is.
I actually think we’re anchored off the servants’ quarters. We’ve seen people walking around working on boats, and the living facilities don’t look too grand. The ones on the high points of the island, however, are different altogether--low-slung, huge, arch-modern, and luxurious, like something out of Architectural Digest. We had heard rumors that one of the islands out here rents for $35,000 a day, and we’re not sure it’s this one, but I wouldn’t be surprised. What kind of person has that kind of money, I have no idea.
Then again, this might be David Copperfield’s island. He has an estate out here as well, to which he’s importing lions and tigers, and on which he allegedly discovered the fountain of youth. Maybe we can sneak ashore and drink some.
Maybe he should be thinking about importing some spiders, though, or something that eats mosquitoes. They’re out tonight with a vengeance, and though we’re burning our convenient mosquito coil, we’ve had to close up the boat to keep them out.
Still, though, it was a lovely day. We’re still on the grounds of the Land and Sea Park, so the fish out here are outstanding to snorkel around, and I saw three grouper. My first! Unfortunately, however, I can’t spear them, not that my attempts would be successful. I was also scared back to the boat just about sunset by a twelve-foot bull shark. Yikes. They’re not supposed to attack unless you’re injured, but somehow just marching on up to a shark twice your size and saying howdy doesn’t seem like the smartest idea.
10.6 nm
Wind: NW-W 5-10 knots, dying as thunderstorms approached
Seas: Residual swell of 1-2 feet
Latitude: 24°18.14’N
Longitude: 076°33.76’W
Maximum speed: 4.7 knots
Maximum speed under sail: 4.1 knots
Average speed: 3.2 knots
Karl and I had a miserable night last night. At about 1:30, a squall blew over, and our anchorage of last night was not exactly well protected. The tarp we use as a cockpit cover and had left up for the night started screeching and hollering outside, as did everything else in the boat--the lazy-jacks, the halyards slapping against the mast, the pans in the oven, the dirty pots in the sink and on the stove. We both got up and tried to make the boat shipshape, which usually doesn’t happen until we’re ready to sail, but every time we got back in bed, something else would start rattling and shaking around.
The swell was awful, because we were basically in the open ocean, and didn’t abate for the next four hours. In the meantime, I laid awake, trying to relax all my muscles as I rocked back and forth, back and forth, with nothing on my mind but sleep for two hours. It seems like the feeling would be pleasurable, like rocking in a cradle, but it’s not. At least not yet. They say old salts get to like the feeling, but rolling at anchor is not comforting to me yet. Underway, it is a little soothing, but wind bashing against current as your boat tries to hold itself straight is not fun.
So we were fairly exhausted and miserable this morning, but still knew we had to get back and move. I wasn’t staying there another night, that was for sure, especially because it’s supposed to blow hard tomorrow. The good thing is that we have to wake up at 7:30 these days to listen to the weather when it’s broadcast over the VHF by kind locals. So I rolled out of bed, bleary-eyed and miserable, and someone informed the collected assembly that the wind last night had hit 51 knots. Over fifty knots! That’s our worst recorded weather ever. Although Karl still has a sneaky suspicion that a couple of our Chesapeake Bay gales hit sixty. We’ll never know, I suppose.
We didn’t get going until noon or so, making the most use possible of our 24-hour internet access, and when we did, more thunderstorms loomed on the horizon. We were sailing, trying to spare the engine wear and tear, until the wind died and we had to motor-sail. Karl had grand ambitions, but I wanted to tuck in at the first safe anchorage and get some rest. As the thunderstorms threatened more and more, Karl came around to my perspective. We’re snugged in tonight behind the highest land we could find, an island that happens to be private. It was a little strange to pull in to a millionaire’s backyard and throw down a hook, but that’s exactly what we did. This little bay is marked as an anchorage on the chart, so an anchorage it is.
I actually think we’re anchored off the servants’ quarters. We’ve seen people walking around working on boats, and the living facilities don’t look too grand. The ones on the high points of the island, however, are different altogether--low-slung, huge, arch-modern, and luxurious, like something out of Architectural Digest. We had heard rumors that one of the islands out here rents for $35,000 a day, and we’re not sure it’s this one, but I wouldn’t be surprised. What kind of person has that kind of money, I have no idea.
Then again, this might be David Copperfield’s island. He has an estate out here as well, to which he’s importing lions and tigers, and on which he allegedly discovered the fountain of youth. Maybe we can sneak ashore and drink some.
Maybe he should be thinking about importing some spiders, though, or something that eats mosquitoes. They’re out tonight with a vengeance, and though we’re burning our convenient mosquito coil, we’ve had to close up the boat to keep them out.
Still, though, it was a lovely day. We’re still on the grounds of the Land and Sea Park, so the fish out here are outstanding to snorkel around, and I saw three grouper. My first! Unfortunately, however, I can’t spear them, not that my attempts would be successful. I was also scared back to the boat just about sunset by a twelve-foot bull shark. Yikes. They’re not supposed to attack unless you’re injured, but somehow just marching on up to a shark twice your size and saying howdy doesn’t seem like the smartest idea.
Emerald Rock, Exumas, Bahamas
I'm sitting at the porch of the Exuma Land & Seas Park, where they have (very slow) wireless internet. I've been updating the blog for the last two hours, while reading a book stolen from the book exchange. We're anchored around the corner instead of taking one of the moorings here, and we're probably three decades younger than anyone else we've seen, and we have a cheap little boat instead of all the big expensive sailboats and trawlers in here. I feel very out of place. Our little rowing dinghy doesn't belong at the dinghy dock, and we can't stay for the cruisers' bring-your-own happy hour, because we have to ride the tide back out to our boat. Nor do we have anything to bring.
Still, I feel very loved by everyone's comments on the website. I'm glad that everyone was worried about us and missed us, and I hope I've done the last several weeks justice. I wish we could really stop to enjoy this gorgeous park the way the other people chatting on the park have been able to do, to go snorkeling with the giant lobsters and take the kayaks out, to go hiking on the trails to the top of Boo Boo Hill and leave something that represents our boat, to dinghy out to Rachel's Bath and the grottoes of the Rocky Dundas, to have the best crack conch in the Exumas at the Farmers Cay Yacht Club. But we'll probably head out again tomorrow, limping along with our wounded engine, drinking our rain water and eating our sausages. We'll have a good time in our own way. But I do feel a little bit of displacement.
They don't have much of the stuff we need here--a phone, or water, or trash disposal--but they have internet, which is what we needed. Hopefully we can get it back at the boat when we ride the tide back, so we can do some research on our engine problem. All our love to families and friends--we miss you, and hope everything's well. Our open invitation remains: there are flights into Georgetown. Come visit!
Still, I feel very loved by everyone's comments on the website. I'm glad that everyone was worried about us and missed us, and I hope I've done the last several weeks justice. I wish we could really stop to enjoy this gorgeous park the way the other people chatting on the park have been able to do, to go snorkeling with the giant lobsters and take the kayaks out, to go hiking on the trails to the top of Boo Boo Hill and leave something that represents our boat, to dinghy out to Rachel's Bath and the grottoes of the Rocky Dundas, to have the best crack conch in the Exumas at the Farmers Cay Yacht Club. But we'll probably head out again tomorrow, limping along with our wounded engine, drinking our rain water and eating our sausages. We'll have a good time in our own way. But I do feel a little bit of displacement.
They don't have much of the stuff we need here--a phone, or water, or trash disposal--but they have internet, which is what we needed. Hopefully we can get it back at the boat when we ride the tide back, so we can do some research on our engine problem. All our love to families and friends--we miss you, and hope everything's well. Our open invitation remains: there are flights into Georgetown. Come visit!
Friday, May 11, 2007
Normans Cay to Emerald Rock, Exumas, Bahamas
21.8 nm
Wind: SW 10 knots dying to calm
Seas: Flat
Latitude: 24°23.00’N
Longitude: 076°38.01’W
Maximum speed: 4.5 knots (under sail)
Average speed: 3.0 knots
Our sail today was gorgeous--close-hauled, with a bare ten knots forwards of the beam, Secret chortling along at close to four knots, the bright sun just warm enough, the breeze just cool enough, hazy white clouds blooming on the blue horizon like flowers.
We had a nice little race with a beautiful ketch we didn’t know. We’re not much of racers, but it’s extremely fun to see you’re gaining on another cruising boat. We’ve felt a little competitive with some of the other boats we’ve seen on our same tack in the States, but it’s a different thing here, where every boat you track with is also carrying fifty gallons of water and hundreds of pounds of canned goods. It’s especially fun to see you’re winning against a bigger boat with more sail area. Secret is a racer at heart, after all.
Eventually the wind died and we motor-sailed a bit, until our engine made its bad noise and we ended up sailing into our little anchorage in very light wind and then anchoring without an engine. That’s always exhilarating. I felt a little like a showoff--the ketch that we’d been racing all day, who had already motored in and anchored, watched as we flew in and dropped our wings. Still, if we can do it, why not?
We’ve had a lovely peaceful night, reading and talking. I pulled out my start chart and found the North Star for the first time ever. It’s close to the new moon, and there’s no ambient light, so the stars are brilliant. Karl saw the Milky Way the other night, but low, low on the horizon, much lower than he’s used to.
Starlight is almost tingly on the skin, it’s such a peculiar kind of light. So old and silver. It doesn’t look like stars should give off enough light to reflect off the ocean, but they do, and the light they reflect seems brighter than the stars themselves. It makes me think about old stories of ancient mariners, Odysseus, and Coleridge, and Columbus.
These are the days, though, that cruising is all about. A perfect sail, a perfect anchorage, and perfect stars.
Wind: SW 10 knots dying to calm
Seas: Flat
Latitude: 24°23.00’N
Longitude: 076°38.01’W
Maximum speed: 4.5 knots (under sail)
Average speed: 3.0 knots
Our sail today was gorgeous--close-hauled, with a bare ten knots forwards of the beam, Secret chortling along at close to four knots, the bright sun just warm enough, the breeze just cool enough, hazy white clouds blooming on the blue horizon like flowers.
We had a nice little race with a beautiful ketch we didn’t know. We’re not much of racers, but it’s extremely fun to see you’re gaining on another cruising boat. We’ve felt a little competitive with some of the other boats we’ve seen on our same tack in the States, but it’s a different thing here, where every boat you track with is also carrying fifty gallons of water and hundreds of pounds of canned goods. It’s especially fun to see you’re winning against a bigger boat with more sail area. Secret is a racer at heart, after all.
Eventually the wind died and we motor-sailed a bit, until our engine made its bad noise and we ended up sailing into our little anchorage in very light wind and then anchoring without an engine. That’s always exhilarating. I felt a little like a showoff--the ketch that we’d been racing all day, who had already motored in and anchored, watched as we flew in and dropped our wings. Still, if we can do it, why not?
We’ve had a lovely peaceful night, reading and talking. I pulled out my start chart and found the North Star for the first time ever. It’s close to the new moon, and there’s no ambient light, so the stars are brilliant. Karl saw the Milky Way the other night, but low, low on the horizon, much lower than he’s used to.
Starlight is almost tingly on the skin, it’s such a peculiar kind of light. So old and silver. It doesn’t look like stars should give off enough light to reflect off the ocean, but they do, and the light they reflect seems brighter than the stars themselves. It makes me think about old stories of ancient mariners, Odysseus, and Coleridge, and Columbus.
These are the days, though, that cruising is all about. A perfect sail, a perfect anchorage, and perfect stars.
Normans Cay to Emerald Rock, Exumas, Bahamas
21.8 nm
Wind: SW 10 knots dying to calm
Seas: Flat
Latitude: 24°23.00’N
Longitude: 076°38.01’W
Maximum speed: 4.5 knots (under sail)
Average speed: 3.0 knots
Our sail today was gorgeous--close-hauled, with a bare ten knots forwards of the beam, Secret chortling along at close to four knots, the bright sun just warm enough, the breeze just cool enough, hazy white clouds blooming on the blue horizon like flowers.
We had a nice little race with a beautiful ketch we didn’t know. We’re not much of racers, but it’s extremely fun to see you’re gaining on another cruising boat. We’ve felt a little competitive with some of the other boats we’ve seen on our same tack in the States, but it’s a different thing here, where every boat you track with is also carrying fifty gallons of water and hundreds of pounds of canned goods. It’s especially fun to seee you’re winning against a bigger boat with more sail area. Secret is a racer at heart, after all.
Eventually the wind died and we motor-sailed a bit, until our engine made its bad noise and we ended up sailing into our little anchorage in very light wind and then anchoring without an engine. That’s always exhilarating. I felt a little like a showoff--the ketch that we’d been racing all day, who had already motored in and anchored, watched as we flew in and dropped our wings. Still, if we can do it, why not?
We’ve had a lovely peaceful night, reading and talking. I pulled out my start chart and found the North Star for the first time ever. It’s close to the new moon, and there’s no ambient light, so the stars are brilliant. Karl saw the Milky Way the other night, but low, low on the horizon, much lower than he’s used to.
Starlight is almost tingly on the skin, it’s such a peculiar kind of light. So old and silver. It doesn’t look like stars should give off enough light to reflect off the ocean, but they do, and the light they reflect seems brighter than the stars themselves. It makes me think about old stories of ancient mariners, Odysseus, and Coleridge, and Columbus.
These are the days, though, that crusing is all about. A perfect sail, a perfect anchorage, and perfect stars.
Wind: SW 10 knots dying to calm
Seas: Flat
Latitude: 24°23.00’N
Longitude: 076°38.01’W
Maximum speed: 4.5 knots (under sail)
Average speed: 3.0 knots
Our sail today was gorgeous--close-hauled, with a bare ten knots forwards of the beam, Secret chortling along at close to four knots, the bright sun just warm enough, the breeze just cool enough, hazy white clouds blooming on the blue horizon like flowers.
We had a nice little race with a beautiful ketch we didn’t know. We’re not much of racers, but it’s extremely fun to see you’re gaining on another cruising boat. We’ve felt a little competitive with some of the other boats we’ve seen on our same tack in the States, but it’s a different thing here, where every boat you track with is also carrying fifty gallons of water and hundreds of pounds of canned goods. It’s especially fun to seee you’re winning against a bigger boat with more sail area. Secret is a racer at heart, after all.
Eventually the wind died and we motor-sailed a bit, until our engine made its bad noise and we ended up sailing into our little anchorage in very light wind and then anchoring without an engine. That’s always exhilarating. I felt a little like a showoff--the ketch that we’d been racing all day, who had already motored in and anchored, watched as we flew in and dropped our wings. Still, if we can do it, why not?
We’ve had a lovely peaceful night, reading and talking. I pulled out my start chart and found the North Star for the first time ever. It’s close to the new moon, and there’s no ambient light, so the stars are brilliant. Karl saw the Milky Way the other night, but low, low on the horizon, much lower than he’s used to.
Starlight is almost tingly on the skin, it’s such a peculiar kind of light. So old and silver. It doesn’t look like stars should give off enough light to reflect off the ocean, but they do, and the light they reflect seems brighter than the stars themselves. It makes me think about old stories of ancient mariners, Odysseus, and Coleridge, and Columbus.
These are the days, though, that crusing is all about. A perfect sail, a perfect anchorage, and perfect stars.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Normans Cay, Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: N-NE 5-10 knots, with gusts up to 30 during squall in morning
We woke up this morning at dawn, ready to sail all the way to the Exuma Park without our engine, only to have the skies open and a squall break loose. Someone on the VHF was out in it and saw gusts above thirty knots. So we had little else to do all morning but eavesdrop on other people on the radio, trying to glean information from those who have radar.
The big shocker is that the first named storm of the year, Andrea, hit off the coast of Florida. It was a sub-tropical storm with sustained winds of 35 knots, which seems fairly ridiculous considering we spent all winter dodging storms far bigger than that. It’s also a little flabbergasting. A named storm? In May? Maybe we do need to spend hurricane season in Georgetown.
We spent all morning debating whether to go or leave, while the rain kept pouring down and Karl collected it. He ended up gathering more than twenty gallons fo delicious, fresh, sweet rainwater, basically filling up our supply. He just spread our tarp in the cockpit and scooped it out after it collected--I couldn’t believe how well it worked.
When Calliste, a boat we had made a passing acquaintance with in Bimini, pulled in, we decided to stay in Normans Cay for the afternoon. We even risked a row against the diabolical current to land, just to stretch our legs and escape the claustrophobia of the boat. Karl was soaked in sweat by the time we made it, but it was worth it. At least for me. The cay was crazy--abandoned vehicles, unlocked, all over the place, buildings and villas overgrown with weeds but perfectly intact, a huge dump with washing machines, toilets, upended trucks, and dishwashers scattered along the path, and the tiniest airport I’ve ever seen, nothing more than a rutted concrete strip and a “Welcome to Normans Cay” sign. We thought the island was basically deserted, so it was a bit of a shock to round a corner and see two gentlemen, barefoot and shirtless, roaming around in a golf cart. They told us there was a yacht club , with generator and ice, on the island. Who knew? All this time we’ve been next door to civilization!
Later on, after collecting some coconuts and wood for a fender board, we drifted back to our boat with the tide, past the wrecked cargo plane from the fifties rusing in the anchorage. Then we drifted by our friends’ boat, Calliste, and Laidley and Shane invited us up for some ginger beer and companionship. Wwe were hungrier for the latter more than anything, and they showed us around their gorgeous teak-drenched Tayana 37 and told us stories about their sailing days. They were both sail instructors for Outward Bound and gave us sailing advice, and he had spent time in both the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, so gave us recommendations for where to find safe hurricane holes and work.
They’re heading back the opposite way, back to a home in Maine after twelve years on a boat, back to start a little farm and settle down. It’s weird to cross paths with a couple so like ourselves, in some ways, who are making a different set of decisions: stability instead of transience. It was good, too, because both of us are content in our decisions.
Shane also told us a crazy story about the island--we had read in our guidebook that a drug runner had made it his hideout, but he knew that the drug lord was the character from the movie “Blow,” who beats up Johnny Depp in the end, and that this cay was exactly where that had happened. No drug smugglers running around anymore I hope, but we’re walking in the footsteps of history. Hollywood history, at least.
We rowed comfortably back to our boat with the tide for a dinner of cabbage and rice. Calliste’s heading south for a little while with her parents, so we may cross paths again. It was nice to feel not so alone out here, at least for a little while.
Wind: N-NE 5-10 knots, with gusts up to 30 during squall in morning
We woke up this morning at dawn, ready to sail all the way to the Exuma Park without our engine, only to have the skies open and a squall break loose. Someone on the VHF was out in it and saw gusts above thirty knots. So we had little else to do all morning but eavesdrop on other people on the radio, trying to glean information from those who have radar.
The big shocker is that the first named storm of the year, Andrea, hit off the coast of Florida. It was a sub-tropical storm with sustained winds of 35 knots, which seems fairly ridiculous considering we spent all winter dodging storms far bigger than that. It’s also a little flabbergasting. A named storm? In May? Maybe we do need to spend hurricane season in Georgetown.
We spent all morning debating whether to go or leave, while the rain kept pouring down and Karl collected it. He ended up gathering more than twenty gallons fo delicious, fresh, sweet rainwater, basically filling up our supply. He just spread our tarp in the cockpit and scooped it out after it collected--I couldn’t believe how well it worked.
When Calliste, a boat we had made a passing acquaintance with in Bimini, pulled in, we decided to stay in Normans Cay for the afternoon. We even risked a row against the diabolical current to land, just to stretch our legs and escape the claustrophobia of the boat. Karl was soaked in sweat by the time we made it, but it was worth it. At least for me. The cay was crazy--abandoned vehicles, unlocked, all over the place, buildings and villas overgrown with weeds but perfectly intact, a huge dump with washing machines, toilets, upended trucks, and dishwashers scattered along the path, and the tiniest airport I’ve ever seen, nothing more than a rutted concrete strip and a “Welcome to Normans Cay” sign. We thought the island was basically deserted, so it was a bit of a shock to round a corner and see two gentlemen, barefoot and shirtless, roaming around in a golf cart. They told us there was a yacht club , with generator and ice, on the island. Who knew? All this time we’ve been next door to civilization!
Later on, after collecting some coconuts and wood for a fender board, we drifted back to our boat with the tide, past the wrecked cargo plane from the fifties rusing in the anchorage. Then we drifted by our friends’ boat, Calliste, and Laidley and Shane invited us up for some ginger beer and companionship. Wwe were hungrier for the latter more than anything, and they showed us around their gorgeous teak-drenched Tayana 37 and told us stories about their sailing days. They were both sail instructors for Outward Bound and gave us sailing advice, and he had spent time in both the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, so gave us recommendations for where to find safe hurricane holes and work.
They’re heading back the opposite way, back to a home in Maine after twelve years on a boat, back to start a little farm and settle down. It’s weird to cross paths with a couple so like ourselves, in some ways, who are making a different set of decisions: stability instead of transience. It was good, too, because both of us are content in our decisions.
Shane also told us a crazy story about the island--we had read in our guidebook that a drug runner had made it his hideout, but he knew that the drug lord was the character from the movie “Blow,” who beats up Johnny Depp in the end, and that this cay was exactly where that had happened. No drug smugglers running around anymore I hope, but we’re walking in the footsteps of history. Hollywood history, at least.
We rowed comfortably back to our boat with the tide for a dinner of cabbage and rice. Calliste’s heading south for a little while with her parents, so we may cross paths again. It was nice to feel not so alone out here, at least for a little while.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Normans Cay, Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: S-SW 5 knots to calm
It’s my sister’s birthday today, it was my brother’s five days ago, and my dad’s three days from now, not to mention Mother’s Day, which I’m not exactly sure when it is. I’m beginning to feel a little lonely for friends and family other than Karl--we’ve never been this isolated before. Even on the trail, we were able to use the cell phone at least once a week, and I haven’t even talked to anyone in my family since we’ve been in the Bahamas. I didn’t call from Bimini because I had just talked to them the day before.
It’s a bizarre feeling to be this isolated. No wonder Karl and I were snapping at each other. We haven’t had anyone else to talk to, except for those fishermen on the beach yesterday, for two weeks. Especially at this anchorage, where we can’t even leave the boat without risking our lives. Both Karl and I went for a swim today, both clinging desperately to our little swim line. I think he finally realized why I was so scared yesterday. Even clawing your way back up the line requires great effort.
We keep hearing radio chatter from all the other boats who have spent the winter in the Exumas together--they’re getting together for cocktails or snorkeling trips or potlucks or dinners on each other’s boats, and zipping around the anchorage on their giant Zodiacs. We’re definitely out of the social whirl. I wish we could make friends with some of the other boats, but I’m not sure how to break the ice, especially when we can’t really row anywhere and they all already know each other. We’re the odd one out in each anchorage, the scruffy little race boat with the giant barbecue and no bimini that looks like it doesn’t belong. People seem friendly when they motor on by waving, but they all have fancy $100,000 boats and they’re all a lot older than we are and they’re all heading back north for the summer.
In some ways it’s nice to not feel social obligations, but on the other hand, some social interaction would be nice. If nothing else, it’d be great to get information about the islands on down the chain, or to talk to people who have traveled even farther afield. But all that will have to wait, at least until we get to an anchorage with less current.
So Karl tore apart the engine for the third time since we’ve been in the Bahamas, testing the thermostat and the water pump as much as he was able. They seem to be fine, so my theory is still that it’s gunk in our fuel. Karl siphoned some of that out, too, and it does seem to have debris in it, but we don’t know how to get it out without tearing apart our whole deck and taking out the fuel tank altogether. It may be a blessing in disguise. We’ll just have to sail more, actually tack if we’re dead into the wind, and allow more time for getting south. I hope we can get replacement parts and advice either in one of the marinas along the way or in Georgetown.
The anchorage here is beautiful, as all of the Exumas seem to be, but without being able to go snorkeling or to any of the islands, we’re a little bored today. Still, though, the water is perfectly blue, there are palm trees and sun and white sand beaches. Every island around here seems to be covered with deserted marinas and resorts that were unable to make a go of it. The little cottages on the water are scenic, even if they are abandoned. It doesn’t seem possible that it’d be that hard to run a successful marina around here, but I guess not.
Our plan is to leave tomorrow morning at first light, and try to sail 25 miles. Tacking adds about 50% to your total mileage, so that turns 25 into 38. Still, sailing all day we should be able to make that. I just hope the Master decides to befriend us. Hand-steering all day is fun, but terrorizes your back.
Sorry I’ve been so chatty lately. I guess I don’t have anyone else to talk to, except you, loyal and faithful readers of the future. I haven’t posted in an eternity, I know, and it’ll probably be a second eternity before I can post again, so I can muse in solitude, in hopes that someone, somewhere, someday, will read my words and rejoice.
Wind: S-SW 5 knots to calm
It’s my sister’s birthday today, it was my brother’s five days ago, and my dad’s three days from now, not to mention Mother’s Day, which I’m not exactly sure when it is. I’m beginning to feel a little lonely for friends and family other than Karl--we’ve never been this isolated before. Even on the trail, we were able to use the cell phone at least once a week, and I haven’t even talked to anyone in my family since we’ve been in the Bahamas. I didn’t call from Bimini because I had just talked to them the day before.
It’s a bizarre feeling to be this isolated. No wonder Karl and I were snapping at each other. We haven’t had anyone else to talk to, except for those fishermen on the beach yesterday, for two weeks. Especially at this anchorage, where we can’t even leave the boat without risking our lives. Both Karl and I went for a swim today, both clinging desperately to our little swim line. I think he finally realized why I was so scared yesterday. Even clawing your way back up the line requires great effort.
We keep hearing radio chatter from all the other boats who have spent the winter in the Exumas together--they’re getting together for cocktails or snorkeling trips or potlucks or dinners on each other’s boats, and zipping around the anchorage on their giant Zodiacs. We’re definitely out of the social whirl. I wish we could make friends with some of the other boats, but I’m not sure how to break the ice, especially when we can’t really row anywhere and they all already know each other. We’re the odd one out in each anchorage, the scruffy little race boat with the giant barbecue and no bimini that looks like it doesn’t belong. People seem friendly when they motor on by waving, but they all have fancy $100,000 boats and they’re all a lot older than we are and they’re all heading back north for the summer.
In some ways it’s nice to not feel social obligations, but on the other hand, some social interaction would be nice. If nothing else, it’d be great to get information about the islands on down the chain, or to talk to people who have traveled even farther afield. But all that will have to wait, at least until we get to an anchorage with less current.
So Karl tore apart the engine for the third time since we’ve been in the Bahamas, testing the thermostat and the water pump as much as he was able. They seem to be fine, so my theory is still that it’s gunk in our fuel. Karl siphoned some of that out, too, and it does seem to have debris in it, but we don’t know how to get it out without tearing apart our whole deck and taking out the fuel tank altogether. It may be a blessing in disguise. We’ll just have to sail more, actually tack if we’re dead into the wind, and allow more time for getting south. I hope we can get replacement parts and advice either in one of the marinas along the way or in Georgetown.
The anchorage here is beautiful, as all of the Exumas seem to be, but without being able to go snorkeling or to any of the islands, we’re a little bored today. Still, though, the water is perfectly blue, there are palm trees and sun and white sand beaches. Every island around here seems to be covered with deserted marinas and resorts that were unable to make a go of it. The little cottages on the water are scenic, even if they are abandoned. It doesn’t seem possible that it’d be that hard to run a successful marina around here, but I guess not.
Our plan is to leave tomorrow morning at first light, and try to sail 25 miles. Tacking adds about 50% to your total mileage, so that turns 25 into 38. Still, sailing all day we should be able to make that. I just hope the Master decides to befriend us. Hand-steering all day is fun, but terrorizes your back.
Sorry I’ve been so chatty lately. I guess I don’t have anyone else to talk to, except you, loyal and faithful readers of the future. I haven’t posted in an eternity, I know, and it’ll probably be a second eternity before I can post again, so I can muse in solitude, in hopes that someone, somewhere, someday, will read my words and rejoice.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Allan’s Cay to Normans Cay, Bahamas
15.4 nm
Wind: SW 5-10 knots with frequent gusts higher
Seas: 1-2 feet
Latitude: 24°35.65’N
Longitude: 076°48.48’W
Maximum speed: 6.6 knots (under sail)
Average speed: 3.5 knots
Because we didn’t make it to the island yesterday to take pictures of the iguanas, we rowed over this morning just after a gigantic boat called “Powerboat Adventures” full of bikinied teenagers from Nassau roared away. We had to share the island with one other boat, though, a fishing boat whose crew were cleaning a bunch of fresh dorado on shore and feeding the scraps to the iguanas and birds. They offered us a ziploc full of fresh fish, which we accepted gratefully, and a fifteen-pound bag of ice. So maybe our delay this morning was worth it.
I would say it definitely was, but Karl was grumbling a little as we pulled up our anchor at one o’clock. We got into a big fight last night about our mileage in the Exumas--I think we can take our time and enjoy it a little, do about fifteen or twenty miles a day instead of the thirty to forty that we’ve been doing, and spend a day or two at each anchorage. Even at that rate, we should be to Georgetown in about two weeks. Karl thinks we should just race on down--we could also be in Georgetown in three days if we push.
We continue to have problems with our engine, though, which may be one reason he wants to push. Today it kept losing RPMs as we tried to motor dead into the wind yet again. It was doing something else crazy, though, something new, that Karl thinks might be the bearings in the water pump. Not a noise you want to hear. We were stuck with a tough decision, because of our late start, to try to tack south in light wind, or anchor someplace sketchy off coral heads on the bank.
I, as always, leaned towards sailing, since we were barely motoring at three knots anyway, and Secret flies when she’s beating, even in light winds. Since Karl was still cranky at me, I hand-steered as we tacked all the way into the anchorage at Normans Cay, eventually able to fall of the wind onto a beam reach where we hit six knots under sail, finally running into the harbor under main alone.
We were still flying, though, which was inexplicable given the relatively light wind, until we anchored and I dove in to check our spot. The current took me immediately, in the time it took me to pull my mask on, and I panicked a bit. I also hadn’t eaten since breakfast, nor had I drank much water, both things that are hard to do when you’re hand-steering. Karl threw me a line, but I still could barely make headway swimming at my full strength towards the bow of the boat. I eventually let go of the line, encouraged by Karl to use both arms, and then panicked wholesale, gasping and panting and terrified. It took me about twenty minutes of hard swimming, never more than a hundred feet fromt the boat, just to get back to the line.
I came back to the boat and huddled in my bunk, shivering and angry, until we both cooled off and apologized to each other and had a nice broiled fish dinner. Still, though, I learned the hard way that these Bahamian currents aren’t something to be taken lightly. This one was far stronger than the one that carried us away at St. Augustine. There’s no way we could row against it. The only way we could leave the boat is at slack tide. I’m beginning to understand why people have 50 horsepower motors on their dinghies.
Wind: SW 5-10 knots with frequent gusts higher
Seas: 1-2 feet
Latitude: 24°35.65’N
Longitude: 076°48.48’W
Maximum speed: 6.6 knots (under sail)
Average speed: 3.5 knots
Because we didn’t make it to the island yesterday to take pictures of the iguanas, we rowed over this morning just after a gigantic boat called “Powerboat Adventures” full of bikinied teenagers from Nassau roared away. We had to share the island with one other boat, though, a fishing boat whose crew were cleaning a bunch of fresh dorado on shore and feeding the scraps to the iguanas and birds. They offered us a ziploc full of fresh fish, which we accepted gratefully, and a fifteen-pound bag of ice. So maybe our delay this morning was worth it.
I would say it definitely was, but Karl was grumbling a little as we pulled up our anchor at one o’clock. We got into a big fight last night about our mileage in the Exumas--I think we can take our time and enjoy it a little, do about fifteen or twenty miles a day instead of the thirty to forty that we’ve been doing, and spend a day or two at each anchorage. Even at that rate, we should be to Georgetown in about two weeks. Karl thinks we should just race on down--we could also be in Georgetown in three days if we push.
We continue to have problems with our engine, though, which may be one reason he wants to push. Today it kept losing RPMs as we tried to motor dead into the wind yet again. It was doing something else crazy, though, something new, that Karl thinks might be the bearings in the water pump. Not a noise you want to hear. We were stuck with a tough decision, because of our late start, to try to tack south in light wind, or anchor someplace sketchy off coral heads on the bank.
I, as always, leaned towards sailing, since we were barely motoring at three knots anyway, and Secret flies when she’s beating, even in light winds. Since Karl was still cranky at me, I hand-steered as we tacked all the way into the anchorage at Normans Cay, eventually able to fall of the wind onto a beam reach where we hit six knots under sail, finally running into the harbor under main alone.
We were still flying, though, which was inexplicable given the relatively light wind, until we anchored and I dove in to check our spot. The current took me immediately, in the time it took me to pull my mask on, and I panicked a bit. I also hadn’t eaten since breakfast, nor had I drank much water, both things that are hard to do when you’re hand-steering. Karl threw me a line, but I still could barely make headway swimming at my full strength towards the bow of the boat. I eventually let go of the line, encouraged by Karl to use both arms, and then panicked wholesale, gasping and panting and terrified. It took me about twenty minutes of hard swimming, never more than a hundred feet fromt the boat, just to get back to the line.
I came back to the boat and huddled in my bunk, shivering and angry, until we both cooled off and apologized to each other and had a nice broiled fish dinner. Still, though, I learned the hard way that these Bahamian currents aren’t something to be taken lightly. This one was far stronger than the one that carried us away at St. Augustine. There’s no way we could row against it. The only way we could leave the boat is at slack tide. I’m beginning to understand why people have 50 horsepower motors on their dinghies.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Allan’s Cay, Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: N 25-30 knots, gusting to 35
Seas: Two-foot swell in harbor
A blow came through today, gusting to at least 37, according to the VHF radio chatter. Our first taste of the violence of the trades. It wasn’t really that bad, as far as storms go. I’m beginning to be glad for all those winter gales we waited out in harbors on the Chesapeake. We do know how to wait out storms at anchor. That is one thing we know how to do very well. I had checked our anchor yesterday and seen that it was buried up to its shank in deep sand, so we weren’t worried at all, as we watched all the trawlers scurry around the harbor, hailing the nearby marina desperately, resetting their anchors in less protected spots.
I don’t want to jinx us, because I know we’re going to see a lot worse. But it’s still good to gain comfort with a new anchoring environment, sand instead of mud, and a new kind of harbor, more open and unprotected and low to the ground than the big, tree-protected inland anchorages we’re used to. Still, though, the wind didn’t seem that much worse than what we’ve encountered previously. We’ve waited out storms of up to 45 knots, but in much more protected places, and the boat herself went through a storm of 65 at her mooring in Massachusetts.
We’re also a lot more comfortable with roll in our anchorages than we used to be. People in the harbor today were pulling up their anchors and resetting them, the absolute worst idea if your anchor’s already set in a storm, just to find a more comfortable place to lay. We’ve anchored in some very open places, where even when it’s calm your boat feels like it’s sailing, not to mention the brutal wakes on some parts of the ICW, worse than any roll I’ve encountered.
Still, though, it was bizarre looking out the boat, with the sun shining, and the brilliant, clear blue water being torn up into huge swells. The water’s color is like something from a screensaver, that hideous color of aqua that used to be so popular in home decor and fashion in the early nineties, a perfect blue-green that’s horrific if faked but perfect in nature. Like so many of the fish I see, too. All of us, in our brightly colored fashion, are just imitating imperfectly the perfect colors of nature.
Other than that, we were mainly bored. I’m still trying to make my way through Ulysses before I can move on to any of my fun books, which means I mainly sit around and try to convince Karl to play cards. We’ve also discovered the computer games on our new laptop. Yikes. This may inhibit our passage time.
Wind: N 25-30 knots, gusting to 35
Seas: Two-foot swell in harbor
A blow came through today, gusting to at least 37, according to the VHF radio chatter. Our first taste of the violence of the trades. It wasn’t really that bad, as far as storms go. I’m beginning to be glad for all those winter gales we waited out in harbors on the Chesapeake. We do know how to wait out storms at anchor. That is one thing we know how to do very well. I had checked our anchor yesterday and seen that it was buried up to its shank in deep sand, so we weren’t worried at all, as we watched all the trawlers scurry around the harbor, hailing the nearby marina desperately, resetting their anchors in less protected spots.
I don’t want to jinx us, because I know we’re going to see a lot worse. But it’s still good to gain comfort with a new anchoring environment, sand instead of mud, and a new kind of harbor, more open and unprotected and low to the ground than the big, tree-protected inland anchorages we’re used to. Still, though, the wind didn’t seem that much worse than what we’ve encountered previously. We’ve waited out storms of up to 45 knots, but in much more protected places, and the boat herself went through a storm of 65 at her mooring in Massachusetts.
We’re also a lot more comfortable with roll in our anchorages than we used to be. People in the harbor today were pulling up their anchors and resetting them, the absolute worst idea if your anchor’s already set in a storm, just to find a more comfortable place to lay. We’ve anchored in some very open places, where even when it’s calm your boat feels like it’s sailing, not to mention the brutal wakes on some parts of the ICW, worse than any roll I’ve encountered.
Still, though, it was bizarre looking out the boat, with the sun shining, and the brilliant, clear blue water being torn up into huge swells. The water’s color is like something from a screensaver, that hideous color of aqua that used to be so popular in home decor and fashion in the early nineties, a perfect blue-green that’s horrific if faked but perfect in nature. Like so many of the fish I see, too. All of us, in our brightly colored fashion, are just imitating imperfectly the perfect colors of nature.
Other than that, we were mainly bored. I’m still trying to make my way through Ulysses before I can move on to any of my fun books, which means I mainly sit around and try to convince Karl to play cards. We’ve also discovered the computer games on our new laptop. Yikes. This may inhibit our passage time.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Bottom Harbour to Allan’s Cay, Bahamas
30.2 nm
Wind: NE 5 knots, dying to calm
Seas: A gentle ripple
Latitude: 24°44.86’N
Longitude: 076°50.29’W
Maximum speed: 5.6 knots
Maximum speed under sail: 4.1 knots
Average speed: 3.5 knots
On our way out of the harbor this morning at dawn, sailing among the coral heads under main alone, we passed three other boats still lying at anchor. Later on in the morning, still dawdling along under full sail in a bare five knots of wind, as we were passed by one of the same boats under main alone and motor-sailing, Karl began to make bitter quips about our stubbornness. In these situations, he becomes sarcastic and I become oblivious, attempting to pretend that we can actually make it to our destination under sail.
It has become the dynamic of our journey thus far: to sail or to motor? That is the question. I read too much of the Pardeys before leaving. Far, far too much. I’m still, even now, tormented by the romantic vision of full sail, of actually being able to use the wind to get us somewhere, rather than pistons and turbines and petroleum.
We ended up motoring today, as even I did not relish the prospect of being stranded out on the Exuma Bank after dark, but we left all our sail up. We’re becoming far better at motor-sailing, though, actually using our sails to gain speed so we can keep our engine at a lower RPM, use less diesel, and save money. Our sails probably gave us about two knots today, and we were able to keep the diesel at barely above an idle.
The anchorage we’re in tonight, the first of the Exumas, is gorgeous. We’re anchored off Leaf Cay, a tiny island sprinkled with a handful of sand beaches. Along their edges are sun-blackened partially petrified old conch shells, and each beach is covered by hundreds of red-faced iguanas that rush you for tasty treats as soon as you set foot ashore. Up on the hill, led to by a overgrown concrete path, is an abandoned building, covered by grafitti of the cruisers who have gone before.
As usual, upon getting into harbor, the first thing I did was dive in the water to check the anchor, and then snorkel around the coral heads and rocky outcroppings. There are zillions of conch here. Sitting in the sand, I could count ten within a hand’s reach. They’re all baby ones, though, so the protection campaign must be working. People are obviously still taking them--scattered among all the live conch crawling around and making paths in the sand are little bits of crunched pink shell from the ones that have been eaten. They’re a lot cuter than I thought, their little eyes sticking out on stalks from their shells until you pick them up, and then they retreat into their shell and stare out at you with fear. I’m glad we’re not allowed to take them, even though Karl and I would have had a delicious dinner of conch salad tonight if we had. Someone warned me about cutting their little faces off while you’re cleaning them, and I admit, the idea doesn’t appeal to me. Maybe I’m just a softie.
We did catch another barracuda today, though! I pulled this one in, and let it go. A real upper body workout, let me tell you. As we get hungrier, and farther away from fresh food, I’m going to be more and more tempted to eat one of these barracudas. They can’t be that bad, right? The ciguatera’s supposed to be rare. Or at least to take some conch--as we get farther out, to the less-visited islands, if there are this many and there are some big ones, I might suppress my conscience. I understand how people can’t believe that they’re being over-fished when you see just how many of them there are. The ocean floor is crawling with them, like giant snails. But I suppose that’s exactly why they’ve been over-fished.
Wind: NE 5 knots, dying to calm
Seas: A gentle ripple
Latitude: 24°44.86’N
Longitude: 076°50.29’W
Maximum speed: 5.6 knots
Maximum speed under sail: 4.1 knots
Average speed: 3.5 knots
On our way out of the harbor this morning at dawn, sailing among the coral heads under main alone, we passed three other boats still lying at anchor. Later on in the morning, still dawdling along under full sail in a bare five knots of wind, as we were passed by one of the same boats under main alone and motor-sailing, Karl began to make bitter quips about our stubbornness. In these situations, he becomes sarcastic and I become oblivious, attempting to pretend that we can actually make it to our destination under sail.
It has become the dynamic of our journey thus far: to sail or to motor? That is the question. I read too much of the Pardeys before leaving. Far, far too much. I’m still, even now, tormented by the romantic vision of full sail, of actually being able to use the wind to get us somewhere, rather than pistons and turbines and petroleum.
We ended up motoring today, as even I did not relish the prospect of being stranded out on the Exuma Bank after dark, but we left all our sail up. We’re becoming far better at motor-sailing, though, actually using our sails to gain speed so we can keep our engine at a lower RPM, use less diesel, and save money. Our sails probably gave us about two knots today, and we were able to keep the diesel at barely above an idle.
The anchorage we’re in tonight, the first of the Exumas, is gorgeous. We’re anchored off Leaf Cay, a tiny island sprinkled with a handful of sand beaches. Along their edges are sun-blackened partially petrified old conch shells, and each beach is covered by hundreds of red-faced iguanas that rush you for tasty treats as soon as you set foot ashore. Up on the hill, led to by a overgrown concrete path, is an abandoned building, covered by grafitti of the cruisers who have gone before.
As usual, upon getting into harbor, the first thing I did was dive in the water to check the anchor, and then snorkel around the coral heads and rocky outcroppings. There are zillions of conch here. Sitting in the sand, I could count ten within a hand’s reach. They’re all baby ones, though, so the protection campaign must be working. People are obviously still taking them--scattered among all the live conch crawling around and making paths in the sand are little bits of crunched pink shell from the ones that have been eaten. They’re a lot cuter than I thought, their little eyes sticking out on stalks from their shells until you pick them up, and then they retreat into their shell and stare out at you with fear. I’m glad we’re not allowed to take them, even though Karl and I would have had a delicious dinner of conch salad tonight if we had. Someone warned me about cutting their little faces off while you’re cleaning them, and I admit, the idea doesn’t appeal to me. Maybe I’m just a softie.
We did catch another barracuda today, though! I pulled this one in, and let it go. A real upper body workout, let me tell you. As we get hungrier, and farther away from fresh food, I’m going to be more and more tempted to eat one of these barracudas. They can’t be that bad, right? The ciguatera’s supposed to be rare. Or at least to take some conch--as we get farther out, to the less-visited islands, if there are this many and there are some big ones, I might suppress my conscience. I understand how people can’t believe that they’re being over-fished when you see just how many of them there are. The ocean floor is crawling with them, like giant snails. But I suppose that’s exactly why they’ve been over-fished.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Bottom Harbor, Bahamas
.5 nm
Wind: NE 10 knots
Latitude: 25°05.00’N
Longitude: 077°12.70’W
Our stay in beautiful Bottom Harbour south of Rose Island has been marred somewhat by anchoring hassles. I dove on the anchor yesterday evening and thought that it was partially dug in, but today it became clear that it had not. I practiced my diving, making repeated attempts to pick the CQR up and dig it in, but my diving skills are not exactly up to snuff yet. I’m afraid that my buoyancy has increased over the months on the boat. I haven’t exactly kept up on my yoga, and exercise is hard to come by in these closed quarter. Finally, now, I’m able to swim, but I’m fairly out of shape.
It’s very frustrating for Karl, I’m sure--his chronic ear infections mean that he shouldn’t really get his ears under water or dive. He’s risked it a couple of times and when he does he dives easily, almost effortlessly. Of course, his body-fat percentage is a lot lower than mine. I keep agonizing about all the things I should be doing on the boat--pushups and squats, not to mention yoga and my writing, which always seems to get shoved to the bottom of the pile.
A lot of people say they have a hard time while cruising because they have the leisure, money, and time to live this kind of lifestyle while surrounded by others in such poverty in the countries they visit. I’ve had that haunt me at various times, although I don’t think we’ve actually seen people who are that poor yet. Most Bahamians seem to live a fairly good standard of living, with most of their income coming from tourism. Then again, Bimini is all that we’ve seen so far.
I keep justifying my leisure by my writing, even this little blog, thinking that if I can tell the stories of the places I go and the things I do, that that alone will be enough to provide purpose to our journey. I want to make art, too, specifically fiction--that’s been my ambition since I was a little girl. That was one of the reasons I wanted to move onto the boat, to have the time and energy to write. But so far that hasn’t happened, and I’m not sure how to make it happen.
So today, at least, I practiced my diving. I’m getting better, and I’ll continue to get better as I practice more. Already I can dive to at least touch the anchor, and when we tried to set a second anchor, our Danforth, I was able to pick it up and try to dig it in. We eventually decided, though, right at dark, that we were dragging and we moved with much trepidation to a different part of the anchorage where we hoped to have better holding. We set our anchor-drag alarm and seem to be holding, but it’s still a little freaky. I hope that all of the anchorages in the Bahamas aren’t like this.
Wind: NE 10 knots
Latitude: 25°05.00’N
Longitude: 077°12.70’W
Our stay in beautiful Bottom Harbour south of Rose Island has been marred somewhat by anchoring hassles. I dove on the anchor yesterday evening and thought that it was partially dug in, but today it became clear that it had not. I practiced my diving, making repeated attempts to pick the CQR up and dig it in, but my diving skills are not exactly up to snuff yet. I’m afraid that my buoyancy has increased over the months on the boat. I haven’t exactly kept up on my yoga, and exercise is hard to come by in these closed quarter. Finally, now, I’m able to swim, but I’m fairly out of shape.
It’s very frustrating for Karl, I’m sure--his chronic ear infections mean that he shouldn’t really get his ears under water or dive. He’s risked it a couple of times and when he does he dives easily, almost effortlessly. Of course, his body-fat percentage is a lot lower than mine. I keep agonizing about all the things I should be doing on the boat--pushups and squats, not to mention yoga and my writing, which always seems to get shoved to the bottom of the pile.
A lot of people say they have a hard time while cruising because they have the leisure, money, and time to live this kind of lifestyle while surrounded by others in such poverty in the countries they visit. I’ve had that haunt me at various times, although I don’t think we’ve actually seen people who are that poor yet. Most Bahamians seem to live a fairly good standard of living, with most of their income coming from tourism. Then again, Bimini is all that we’ve seen so far.
I keep justifying my leisure by my writing, even this little blog, thinking that if I can tell the stories of the places I go and the things I do, that that alone will be enough to provide purpose to our journey. I want to make art, too, specifically fiction--that’s been my ambition since I was a little girl. That was one of the reasons I wanted to move onto the boat, to have the time and energy to write. But so far that hasn’t happened, and I’m not sure how to make it happen.
So today, at least, I practiced my diving. I’m getting better, and I’ll continue to get better as I practice more. Already I can dive to at least touch the anchor, and when we tried to set a second anchor, our Danforth, I was able to pick it up and try to dig it in. We eventually decided, though, right at dark, that we were dragging and we moved with much trepidation to a different part of the anchorage where we hoped to have better holding. We set our anchor-drag alarm and seem to be holding, but it’s still a little freaky. I hope that all of the anchorages in the Bahamas aren’t like this.
Bottom Harbor, Bahamas
.5 nm
Wind: NE 10 knots
Latitude: 25°05.00’N
Longitude: 077°12.70’W
Our stay in beautiful Bottom Harbour south of Rose Island has been marred somewhat by anchoring hassles. I dove on the anchor yesterday evening and thought that it was partially dug in, but today it became clear that it had not. I practiced my diving, making repeated attempts to pick the CQR up and dig it in, but my diving skills are not exactly up to snuff yet. I’m afraid that my buoyancy has increased over the months on the boat. I haven’t exactly kept up on my yoga, and exercise is hard to come by in these closed quarter. Finally, now, I’m able to swim, but I’m fairly out of shape.
It’s very frustrating for Karl, I’m sure--his chronic ear infections mean that he shouldn’t really get his ears under water or dive. He’s risked it a couple of times and when he does he dives easily, almost effortlessly. Of course, his body-fat percentage is a lot lower than mine. I keep agonizing about all the things I should be doing on the boat--pushups and squats, not to mention yoga and my writing, which always seems to get shoved to the bottom of the pile.
A lot of people say they have a hard time while cruising because they have the leisure, money, and time to live this kind of lifestyle while surrounded by others in such poverty in the countries they visit. I’ve had that haunt me at various times, although I don’t think we’ve actually seen people who are that poor yet. Most Bahamians seem to live a fairly good standard of living, with most of their income coming from tourism. Then again, Bimini is all that we’ve seen so far.
I keep justifying my leisure by my writing, even this little blog, thinking that if I can tell the stories of the places I go and the things I do, that that alone will be enough to provide purpose to our journey. I want to make art, too, specifically fiction--that’s been my ambition since I was a little girl. That was one of the reasons I wanted to move onto the boat, to have the time and energy to write. But so far that hasn’t happened, and I’m not sure how to make it happen.
So today, at least, I practiced my diving. I’m getting better, and I’ll continue to get better as I practice more. Already I can dive to at least touch the anchor, and when we tried to set a second anchor, our Danforth, I was able to pick it up and try to dig it in. We eventually decided, though, right at dark, that we were dragging and we moved with much trepidation to a different part of the anchorage where we hoped to have better holding. We set our anchor-drag alarm and seem to be holding, but it’s still a little freaky. I hope that all of the anchorages in the Bahamas aren’t like this.
Wind: NE 10 knots
Latitude: 25°05.00’N
Longitude: 077°12.70’W
Our stay in beautiful Bottom Harbour south of Rose Island has been marred somewhat by anchoring hassles. I dove on the anchor yesterday evening and thought that it was partially dug in, but today it became clear that it had not. I practiced my diving, making repeated attempts to pick the CQR up and dig it in, but my diving skills are not exactly up to snuff yet. I’m afraid that my buoyancy has increased over the months on the boat. I haven’t exactly kept up on my yoga, and exercise is hard to come by in these closed quarter. Finally, now, I’m able to swim, but I’m fairly out of shape.
It’s very frustrating for Karl, I’m sure--his chronic ear infections mean that he shouldn’t really get his ears under water or dive. He’s risked it a couple of times and when he does he dives easily, almost effortlessly. Of course, his body-fat percentage is a lot lower than mine. I keep agonizing about all the things I should be doing on the boat--pushups and squats, not to mention yoga and my writing, which always seems to get shoved to the bottom of the pile.
A lot of people say they have a hard time while cruising because they have the leisure, money, and time to live this kind of lifestyle while surrounded by others in such poverty in the countries they visit. I’ve had that haunt me at various times, although I don’t think we’ve actually seen people who are that poor yet. Most Bahamians seem to live a fairly good standard of living, with most of their income coming from tourism. Then again, Bimini is all that we’ve seen so far.
I keep justifying my leisure by my writing, even this little blog, thinking that if I can tell the stories of the places I go and the things I do, that that alone will be enough to provide purpose to our journey. I want to make art, too, specifically fiction--that’s been my ambition since I was a little girl. That was one of the reasons I wanted to move onto the boat, to have the time and energy to write. But so far that hasn’t happened, and I’m not sure how to make it happen.
So today, at least, I practiced my diving. I’m getting better, and I’ll continue to get better as I practice more. Already I can dive to at least touch the anchor, and when we tried to set a second anchor, our Danforth, I was able to pick it up and try to dig it in. We eventually decided, though, right at dark, that we were dragging and we moved with much trepidation to a different part of the anchorage where we hoped to have better holding. We set our anchor-drag alarm and seem to be holding, but it’s still a little freaky. I hope that all of the anchorages in the Bahamas aren’t like this.
Friday, May 04, 2007
Bird Cay to Bottom Harbour, Bahamas
40.5 nm
Wind: E, shifting to NE 5-10 knots
Seas: 1-2 feet
Latitude: 25°05.03’W
Longitude: 077°12.78’W
Maximum speed: 6.1 knots
Maximum speed under sail: 5.2 knots
Average speed: 4.4 knots
It’s our anniversary today. Three years! I can hardly believe it. It feels like a blink of an eye since we met under that tree on the Appalachian Trail. I can’t even believe it’s been two years since our Pacific Crest Trail adventure, when we slogged down a mountain in the snow to get a pizza in Idyllwild with Flippy for our anniversary. Last year, we spent $100 on a sushi dinner at Turk’s in Mattapoisett. A hundred bucks. We could probably live on that for a month this year. We haven’t spent a cent since Bimini--there’s been nowhere to spend it. At this rate, I worry we won’t be able to use up all our Bahamian currency before we leave.
This year, to celebrate our anniversary, we had three-day unrefrigerated soup and fresh homemade bread, which was more than a little melted after rising causing it to flatten and become cracker-like. I have yet to perfect my bread-baking on the boat. I may need to follow my recipes more precisely instead of winging it. And factor in the heat.
Still, though. We had bread and half-melted cheese and wine and our own little celebration in this harbor right outside of Nassau. It was a beautiful day of sailing, although we were beating the whole day and we continue to have engine problems. Karl may have to bleed the diesel for a second time. The good thing about engine problems is that it forces us to sail, even if we have to tack, although we had luck today and the wind shifted to the north just as we were heading into our cut. We even sailed onto anchor, a glorious beam reach, close to hollowed rock cliffs with perfect blue waves beating against them. It was exhilarating, dodging coral heads under sail, as Karl called out instructions to me from beside the mast where he could see the dark spots in the water. I just wish someone had been there to see us and be impressed.
We had thought the dark patches were mainly just reeds rather than actual coral, and we’re a little bit freaked out to discover, upon jumping in the water that we had anchored about 100 feet from a huge patch of coral swimming with fish. I guess we’ll be a little more careful next time.
So, three years. It’s been a good three years, and I continue to believe that we share more intimacy than most couples do in a lifetime. I always used to say when we were hiking that every couple should have to thru-hike together as a prerequisite to marriage. There would be a lot fewer divorces. Now I say every couple should have to thru-hike and live on a boat together. The joke for cruisers is that retired couples move onto their boats to sail the world, as has been their life goal, and have their marriages dissolve because they’ve never been forced to spend that much time together in such closed quarters, not to mention in such stressful conditions.
We mesh together more every day. We can anchor (the true test of any couple’s teamwork) with three or four hand signals and much of our communication is unspoken--an ability to read and respond to the needs we see on the boat. Then there’s the other kind of intimacy that comes from living in a bare 100 square feet with another person and a partially functioning head. People who fantasize about the romance of live on a sailboat have never had to deal with the traces of poop left in the toilet by another person, not to mention the transparent plastic grocery bag full of used toilet paper, cooking in the enclosed, hot space of the head. Greater love has no man than this.
Not to gross you out or anything. I’m perfectly content, and have even reconciled myself to the lack of flushing. Especially when Karl performs an act of true love like he did today and bleaches the head. Some girls might want flowers or jewelry, but that’s enough for me.
Wind: E, shifting to NE 5-10 knots
Seas: 1-2 feet
Latitude: 25°05.03’W
Longitude: 077°12.78’W
Maximum speed: 6.1 knots
Maximum speed under sail: 5.2 knots
Average speed: 4.4 knots
It’s our anniversary today. Three years! I can hardly believe it. It feels like a blink of an eye since we met under that tree on the Appalachian Trail. I can’t even believe it’s been two years since our Pacific Crest Trail adventure, when we slogged down a mountain in the snow to get a pizza in Idyllwild with Flippy for our anniversary. Last year, we spent $100 on a sushi dinner at Turk’s in Mattapoisett. A hundred bucks. We could probably live on that for a month this year. We haven’t spent a cent since Bimini--there’s been nowhere to spend it. At this rate, I worry we won’t be able to use up all our Bahamian currency before we leave.
This year, to celebrate our anniversary, we had three-day unrefrigerated soup and fresh homemade bread, which was more than a little melted after rising causing it to flatten and become cracker-like. I have yet to perfect my bread-baking on the boat. I may need to follow my recipes more precisely instead of winging it. And factor in the heat.
Still, though. We had bread and half-melted cheese and wine and our own little celebration in this harbor right outside of Nassau. It was a beautiful day of sailing, although we were beating the whole day and we continue to have engine problems. Karl may have to bleed the diesel for a second time. The good thing about engine problems is that it forces us to sail, even if we have to tack, although we had luck today and the wind shifted to the north just as we were heading into our cut. We even sailed onto anchor, a glorious beam reach, close to hollowed rock cliffs with perfect blue waves beating against them. It was exhilarating, dodging coral heads under sail, as Karl called out instructions to me from beside the mast where he could see the dark spots in the water. I just wish someone had been there to see us and be impressed.
We had thought the dark patches were mainly just reeds rather than actual coral, and we’re a little bit freaked out to discover, upon jumping in the water that we had anchored about 100 feet from a huge patch of coral swimming with fish. I guess we’ll be a little more careful next time.
So, three years. It’s been a good three years, and I continue to believe that we share more intimacy than most couples do in a lifetime. I always used to say when we were hiking that every couple should have to thru-hike together as a prerequisite to marriage. There would be a lot fewer divorces. Now I say every couple should have to thru-hike and live on a boat together. The joke for cruisers is that retired couples move onto their boats to sail the world, as has been their life goal, and have their marriages dissolve because they’ve never been forced to spend that much time together in such closed quarters, not to mention in such stressful conditions.
We mesh together more every day. We can anchor (the true test of any couple’s teamwork) with three or four hand signals and much of our communication is unspoken--an ability to read and respond to the needs we see on the boat. Then there’s the other kind of intimacy that comes from living in a bare 100 square feet with another person and a partially functioning head. People who fantasize about the romance of live on a sailboat have never had to deal with the traces of poop left in the toilet by another person, not to mention the transparent plastic grocery bag full of used toilet paper, cooking in the enclosed, hot space of the head. Greater love has no man than this.
Not to gross you out or anything. I’m perfectly content, and have even reconciled myself to the lack of flushing. Especially when Karl performs an act of true love like he did today and bleaches the head. Some girls might want flowers or jewelry, but that’s enough for me.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Bird Cay, Bahamas
0 nm
Wind: E 10-15 knots
We did more work on the boat today, more scraping, more snorkeling, and we attempted to tune our rig for the first time alone, obeying our rigging book to the letter as we tightened our standing rigging and our backstay. Karl was able to get a bend out of the mast that’s been there since we restepped it in Marion, and then he raked it back one degree so we can sail better into the wind. Now the door to the head won’t close with all the tightening, but that’s a small price to pay.
We also went for a walk on land. We swam to the little beach we’re anchored near, scared only once by a giant nurse shark that seemed to be making for me with Karl 100 yards away. Or it might have just been a ray, but Karl was sufficiently concerned to insist that we swim together on our way back to the boat.
The beach wasn’t that great--a little rocky and weedy, with no palm trees for shade, but exciting ruins built right out over the water. Karl, of course, wanted to explore, so we picked our way, barefoot, down the abandoned stone-strewn dirt road that led up from the beach, scalding our feet, sweat pouring off our heads, shoeless and thirsty. I felt like David Livingstone. Unfortunately we discovered little of interest: some miniature crab claws scattered in the sand, weird horseshoe-crab-like prehistoric animals grown into the rocks, and thousands of red-pocked dangerous-looking sea urchins.
Still, it gave us a feeling of overwhelming accomplishment. I have that feeling all the time now. Even though we’re barely 100 miles from Floriday, we got out, and that’s half the battle. We keep talking about hauling the boat in Georgetown and returning to the States to earn some funds, but it doesn’t matter. We’ve already won.
When I was talking to my sister before we left (and I hope she doesn’t think I’m dead, because I haven’t been able to call anyone in my family, and it’ll be weeks before I can post this), she told me that one of our friends had commented recently on how different all our lives had ended up--my sister and brother and me. I’m a boat bum, making a desperate attempt to circumnavigate, or at least get to the Turks and Caicos. My sister is a young wife and mother, with a condo in the suburbs, a stockbroker husband, and a vibrant church community. My brother is a pure ivory-tower academician, a linguist going for his Ph.D. at Harvard, of all places.
On the surface, you couldn’t get much more different. But deep down, we all know that our goal is the same: escape. When we were kids growing up in Thailand we used to have endless debates over the dinner table: if there was a war, who would we fight for? America or Thailand? If we had to pick one kind of food to eat, or one place to live, for the rest of our lives, what would we pick, American or Thai?
Inevitably, without even too much effort, we’d always come down on the side of Thailand. Sure, we’d contemplate, it would stink giving up pizza and spaghetti and our cousins and grandparents, but it would be ever so much worse to give up curry and rice and coconuts and beaches and the sun and the ocean and the monsoons adn the markets and the mangoes and home.
But what did we do then? We all, all three of us, gave it up. We moved to the States and became aliens living in a strange land, disguised so that no one knows we don’t belong. Erica and I are even partnered now with strangers who can’t completely understand, who would have as hard of a time dealing without autumn and falling leaves and snow and New England winters.
We still, though, all of us, strive to get back, and I’ve succeeded now partially. If I’m lucky, Karl will fall in love with this climate and the delicious feeling of foreignness, the way he fell in love with me. Eventually, if I’m even more spectacularly lucky, I’ll be able to sail home, to Thailand, and live there until my wanderlust returns.
Erica’s trying to escape, too--she’s in graduate school for public health, so that when she goes she can actually help people instead of being a bum like me. I know she’d give it all up in a second (more likely than not), her beautiful home and her lovely village that I still miss intensely and her friends and her exotic wine tastings to be where I am right now. And Peter spends every summer doing linguistic research on tribal people on a beach in Thailand, eating bizarre crustaceans grilled alive on charcoal fires and being paid (and paying others) to just talk to people and record their language.
So we’re all different, but we’re all the same. I’ve been fighting for two years to get here, and here I am, someplace other, someplace where I belong. I can rest now. I’m away. I’ve escaped. I’m home.
Wind: E 10-15 knots
We did more work on the boat today, more scraping, more snorkeling, and we attempted to tune our rig for the first time alone, obeying our rigging book to the letter as we tightened our standing rigging and our backstay. Karl was able to get a bend out of the mast that’s been there since we restepped it in Marion, and then he raked it back one degree so we can sail better into the wind. Now the door to the head won’t close with all the tightening, but that’s a small price to pay.
We also went for a walk on land. We swam to the little beach we’re anchored near, scared only once by a giant nurse shark that seemed to be making for me with Karl 100 yards away. Or it might have just been a ray, but Karl was sufficiently concerned to insist that we swim together on our way back to the boat.
The beach wasn’t that great--a little rocky and weedy, with no palm trees for shade, but exciting ruins built right out over the water. Karl, of course, wanted to explore, so we picked our way, barefoot, down the abandoned stone-strewn dirt road that led up from the beach, scalding our feet, sweat pouring off our heads, shoeless and thirsty. I felt like David Livingstone. Unfortunately we discovered little of interest: some miniature crab claws scattered in the sand, weird horseshoe-crab-like prehistoric animals grown into the rocks, and thousands of red-pocked dangerous-looking sea urchins.
Still, it gave us a feeling of overwhelming accomplishment. I have that feeling all the time now. Even though we’re barely 100 miles from Floriday, we got out, and that’s half the battle. We keep talking about hauling the boat in Georgetown and returning to the States to earn some funds, but it doesn’t matter. We’ve already won.
When I was talking to my sister before we left (and I hope she doesn’t think I’m dead, because I haven’t been able to call anyone in my family, and it’ll be weeks before I can post this), she told me that one of our friends had commented recently on how different all our lives had ended up--my sister and brother and me. I’m a boat bum, making a desperate attempt to circumnavigate, or at least get to the Turks and Caicos. My sister is a young wife and mother, with a condo in the suburbs, a stockbroker husband, and a vibrant church community. My brother is a pure ivory-tower academician, a linguist going for his Ph.D. at Harvard, of all places.
On the surface, you couldn’t get much more different. But deep down, we all know that our goal is the same: escape. When we were kids growing up in Thailand we used to have endless debates over the dinner table: if there was a war, who would we fight for? America or Thailand? If we had to pick one kind of food to eat, or one place to live, for the rest of our lives, what would we pick, American or Thai?
Inevitably, without even too much effort, we’d always come down on the side of Thailand. Sure, we’d contemplate, it would stink giving up pizza and spaghetti and our cousins and grandparents, but it would be ever so much worse to give up curry and rice and coconuts and beaches and the sun and the ocean and the monsoons adn the markets and the mangoes and home.
But what did we do then? We all, all three of us, gave it up. We moved to the States and became aliens living in a strange land, disguised so that no one knows we don’t belong. Erica and I are even partnered now with strangers who can’t completely understand, who would have as hard of a time dealing without autumn and falling leaves and snow and New England winters.
We still, though, all of us, strive to get back, and I’ve succeeded now partially. If I’m lucky, Karl will fall in love with this climate and the delicious feeling of foreignness, the way he fell in love with me. Eventually, if I’m even more spectacularly lucky, I’ll be able to sail home, to Thailand, and live there until my wanderlust returns.
Erica’s trying to escape, too--she’s in graduate school for public health, so that when she goes she can actually help people instead of being a bum like me. I know she’d give it all up in a second (more likely than not), her beautiful home and her lovely village that I still miss intensely and her friends and her exotic wine tastings to be where I am right now. And Peter spends every summer doing linguistic research on tribal people on a beach in Thailand, eating bizarre crustaceans grilled alive on charcoal fires and being paid (and paying others) to just talk to people and record their language.
So we’re all different, but we’re all the same. I’ve been fighting for two years to get here, and here I am, someplace other, someplace where I belong. I can rest now. I’m away. I’ve escaped. I’m home.
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