Georgetown, Exuma, Bahamas

0 nm
Wind: E-ENE 15-20 knots, gusting higher in morning thunderstorms

Karl and I woke up this morning still tense from yesterday’s stress. Our nerves are drawn taut over all of this, as we try to convince each other to get to town and of our priorities. We had larger goals today: last-minute groceries from the dratted grocery store, much-negotiated-over ice blocks, a few desperate attempts for phone calls, zincs, and charts. I felt like I was holding my breath all day until around three, when Karl took a deep breath and said, “Let’s just give ourselves the day off.” I had had vast plans for this week--everything done by Monday, giving us a chance to go anchor off one of the nice beaches on the other side for this week of bad weather--but I think I was too ambitious. This anchorage has been stressful for us, as has this town time, and we need to take time and just be happy with each other and the boat.

Admittedly, we’ve had plenty of time in Georgetown to try to do that already, but we’ve spent it all being stressed about all the stuff we should be doing. Today, we took one of our fabled “zero” days, so named because that’s what we called days on the Appalachian Trail when we hiked “zero” miles. Sometimes we need zero mileage days, even on the boat.

So we read, and talked, and listened to Bob Dylan, and I made huge salads with the end of our slowly going bad unrefrigerated romaine lettuce. Karl proposed that our food stays good by faith, and I can posit no better reason. Who would have thought romaine lettuce would last for more than a week, unrefrigerated, stored in the sauna of an un-iced fiberglass icebox? All it needs is a couple of black leaf edges plucked off and it’s crisp and delicious as ever. Not so carrots, that wilt in the space of a day.

Still, both made it into our dinner pile of vegetation, with a full tomato each, a can of tuna, a special-occasion can of blue-cheese-stuffed olives, a hard-boiled egg, homemade balsamic vinaigrette, and a splurge half of tortilla. Best salad I’ve had in forever. After dinner, I finally had my good cry at sunset, to the tune of Bob Dylan’s “You’re A Big Girl Now.”

I love that song. I know it’s off Blood on the Tracks, allegedly a breakup album, but it seems to be written to a couple in the throes of conflict. I can think of no sadder line in a Dylan song than that one where he sings, earnestly, “I can change, I swear.” The moment that got to me tonight was when he says, “I can make it through--you can make it too.” He’s not generally that up front, but tonight he was singing to me. I can make it through, through the mess of this urban sludge, back to the other side where we sail, with widespread wings, from island to island in the sun.