Ragged elements

Somewhere in a large body of water, there are a jagged, randomly lying set of tiny, ragged islands. Little rocks peeking up into the world, ants on the surface of vast oceans. 

Little ragged islands whose beaches are the receptacle of the human race’s discarded things. Bright yellow bottles, Jordan flip flops, the severed heads of dolls. 

These little islands are oblivious to TikTok and Trump and pandemics. There are no restaurants, no radio stations, no roads, no people but for a handful of die-hard fishermen and Jolly who runs the Ponderosa on Ragged Island.

And then there are the cruisers. A motley mix of boats from Scotland, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Germany, USA. It doesn’t matter where they come from. Whether their boat is big or small, old or new.

Down here in the Ragged Islands is a world unto itself. There is no source of water nor fuel. There is nowhere to pop in for eggs or milk. No convenience of any kind.

There is just you, your crew and your boat. What you brought is what you have. There are sunsets and beach hikes and salvaging washed up treasures.

Mostly, there is just nature in it’s omnipotence. Sure, they’ve built a small straw hut on one beach and called it a yacht club. We all love the irony. Sure, the loose group meets at 4pm there every day for ‘sundowners’. For a sense of camaraderie. For a semblance of community.

It’s our small fraction of humanity’s way of keeping the elephant at bay. The harsh reality that all society’s layers are peeled away. Nothing can protect us from the rawness of nature. We are literally at it’s mercy.

The wind howls. There are no buildings to take shelter. The waves mount and roll and rise. The next batch of random plastic is thrown violently onto the beaches. The little boats can only scramble between the ragged islands to find shelter. And as the wind clocks, so do the little boats…

Somewhere in the world, people are emptying supermarket shelves of hand sanitizer and toilet paper and breathing through masks in a panic.

We are looking at the waves and the wind direction and trying to decide whether we should face the 8 mile trip from this one anchorage back to the other. We’ve lost our protection here and the boat is creaking and groaning as the waves hit. Wind sings through our rigging. It’s over 30 knots. And we need to move. The sooner the better.

Our little armada gets engines going and with trepidation, head out from the warmth of our saloon cocoon to face the weather.

An hour later we have come out around a huge shallow bank and we can see the protected anchorage ahead. Only 3 miles. But we must turn directly into the wind that is peaking at 35 knots. The waves have grown and they fly up at us. Salt water assaults the boat, our faces, our sanity. We have slowed to 2 knots against the onslaught of weather. At this rate it will take an hour to reach that safe(ish) place ahead, where friends in other boats sit cuddled up with cups of coffee in their respective cocoons.

But then the banging starts. Smash, bang. Splash. Our bright green stand up board, tied to the trampoline on the front of the boat has come loose on one end and has joined forces with the enemy. Between the wind, the waves and the board, Shiloh and crew are losing this one.

John dons a flimsy jacket and tries to head to the deck to secure the board. Wave after wave slams him. There’s not much to hold on to up there and I’m on the helm, face full of wind, screaming ‘Be careful!’. I’m so sure he’s going to fly off. And then I see that the board has loosened our unfinished trampoline that now hangs flapping into the water. If John loses grip and slips, there’s nothing up there to hold him.

Internally I’m swearing at Posiedon and then begging for this all to calm down or be over, but alas no luck. John makes his way back to me. A wet rat, dripping. He shouts against the wind “We’ll have to cut it loose. It’s smashing the hull and I can’t secure it in these conditions”.

He heads forward again – rising and falling and sliding, hair blown sideways and matted to his face. I hold my breath. “Turn around!” he shouts.

I turn the boat 180 degrees and after the wobbly side waves, we fall into a much smoother wave surfing. I take the engines out of gear yet we’ve picked up speed now. We are flying along at 6 knots in the wrong direction! We are losing the tough ground we made by the second.

John crawls out to the front and lies precariously out over the anchor chain. He saws and saws and finally the rope splits. The green board slides below and I watch as it comes out between the hulls, bobbing along on the waves below.

John is back in the cockpit and we look at each other, then down at the sea, which has taken a little piece of us.

A shrug and then back to the grind. I swing the boat back and we start again. Up down, smash splash…

An hour and a half later we slide into the lee of the island and find our place among the other sheltering boats.

And we live to see another 4 o clock happy hour at the yacht club.

As the crowd toasts and shares their stories of the day, my mind wanders. Maybe our bright green board, lost but not forgotten, has washed up on a beach in Cuba. Salvaged and loved once more.