At 50 with love

It’s a dreary morning in the boatyard. The wind is the only one on duty today.

Grey. Swirling. Boats under flapping tarps. Dreams on hold. 

I’ve left it too long. My hair hangs around, sadly, leaning on my shoulders for support. It’s futile. I can’t write. I should write. Writing is my wind. It whistles through my ears. It is the voices I hear. It is my own voice.

My hands are pale. The pores, the brown spots. The veins are on duty. They are prominent. They exert authority above my docile keyboard. These are fifty year old hands.

Weeks ago the day came. The ‘officially old’ day. But before that I was reminded. My eyes. Blur. The tiny font on labels taunting me. My one dollar glasses, stuffed in every pocket and purse. Lenses smudged, scratched. In the mirror, the dark circles of age framing the failing eyes.

My hair, in clumps sliding down my body into the drain. Thinning. Duller. Older

But I was alive. Moving. Traveling. Fishing for my passport in the backpack with that sinking feeling each time, it might not be there! Then reassured. Removing my shoes for security machines. Setting my liquids aside in a ziplock. Worried. Excited. Alive.

And before that I was stood in blue, in a park near the boatyard, between friends. I was reminded. I am lucky. It was a ‘colour of the sea’ themed barbecue. It was a gathering of a certain type of people. A family of my choosing. Age, culture and country melting away over pop songs sung off key in unison. The food! Cake. The speech! The two hour drive for some. None of it taken for granted. All of it swirling in my mind, my heart. This family of my choosing. It’s fluid. People come and go. We come and go. 

I’ve slept in 26 beds between September and today. 26 pillows. 95 days. 11 flights. 6 countries. I’m moving. 

SO MANY PRICELESS REUNIONS.

Sitting on a plane to Zurich with South African elephant dung in the grooves of the soles of my shoes. Clung to my soul.

The joy in Emma’s eyes as she cuddled Rainbow the rhino. In the Gredos mountains of Spain, a little blond, blue eyed girl with a South African father who is American too, spends her days running and jumping through forests of wild mushrooms and chestnut trees. She is our grand daughter, and her tiny warm hand in mine, led us through her little life, while she held her rhino. Brought from Cape Town, with love. 

We’ve indulged, sampled the world - pizza, fresh fish off Cape Town’s shores, slap chips, meat pies, Spanish Iberica ham, blood pudding, roasted chestnuts. I’ve slurped aromatic sauces through my fingers over a bed of injeera in an Ethiopian restaurant in downtown Vancouver with my son and his girl and a dear old friend. 

Special moments. Burned into me. Carrying me beyond 50.

Carrying me back to this boat. Climbing the makeshift stairs. Working and waiting for the day she is gently returned by hoist into the sea where she belongs.

We will keep moving. South, away from cold. South to where the sun shines most days. Banishing grey. Places where the sun is always on duty. Where we have chosen to be. We will meet the friends who are family in different places. There will be more barbecues. There will be sand. Sunsets.

I will sweep my thinner hair up into a clip to let the breeze onto my sweating neck. I will splash my weathering face with cool water to start the days.

I will hold all these memories of our travels. Of the faces. Smiles. Loving the life I have.

I will write. It’s a promise I need to make to my fragile heart. I will put it all into words. The magic of sorrow and the flashes of beauty.

Here’s to life beyond 50.

When you don't have an address - the flip side of paradise

My nose is an icicle. Apart from my icy forehead, it’s the only part of me exposed to the artic air. Beside me the captain lumbers. He is a hibernating bear. If it wasn’t for his body heat, I’d have died during the night.

Outside there is the constant thwap thwap of some boat’s halyard’s and then she howls – the wind, through all the masts in the boatyard. It’s eery. And it lets me know it’s going to be even colder outside. God forbid one of us has to use a toilet. The walk across the yard is unfathomable.

 A week ago we arrived back in Florida, back to our boat. As we drove, we peeled off layers of Canadian winter clothes, migrated from coats, wool hats and leather boots to rubber flip flops. I announced the rising temps on our dashboard as we made it further and further south. And when we arrived, there was a full week of shorts and t-shirts and big silly grins on our faces.

But then winter followed us here, and it does not care about our lack of insulation. It doesn’t give a damn that when boats are on dry dock and you are silly enough to live onboard, you cannot use your own toilets and have to walk half a kilometer across the yard to use the grimy public ones…

We thought we were quite clever back in August, buying a car to take on an epic road trip – all to avoid working on the boat in the excruciating heat. We’d come back in January, we said. We’ll do the work in the cooler weather we said. Well here it is. I was far warmer in Canada on the minus 21C days. At least there was heat.

There’s a boat behind us that sits quietly for days at a time, waiting for it’s sensible owners who come down from wherever their home is, when the weather is good. And they work on her a bit, getting her ready for a season in the Bahamas, and then they go home again.

Home. It turns out that it’s not just a concept. Home is where the heart is, and all that. Nope. Those of us who have no home – except one that floats – come face to face with this all the time. “We live on our boat!”. “But where is ‘home’ really?”

For JW and I, the issue is even more serious. We have never lived together in either of our home countries. If we wanted to, it would involve a lot of immigration red tape. We lived in Ghana, we live on a boat. People thought it was exotic when we lived in Ghana, but this living on a boat?! We’re practically insane.

And to border patrol agents, we’re a couple of potential drug smuggling, tax evading, dirty-hippie, good-for-nothings.

We came through the border from Canada, like all the day trip shoppers in the queue of cars. And then we pulled up to the little window, handed over our passports and said those fateful words. “Where’s home?” “On a boat!”

“Please pull over to the right and enter through door 2.”

Oh no! And so we did. As all the people with homes drove through without incident.

Three hours later, we emerged from that interrogation shaken visibly. I wanted a cigarette and I don’t even smoke! I wanted a whisky too but had to make due with warm Diet Pepsi that I’d left in the car when we went through Door 2.

The moral of that story was ‘NEVER SAY YOU LIVE ON A BOAT.’ Even if it’s true. And if you are part of a couple where neither is legally allowed to live in each other’s home country, just give two separate addresses. Even if it’s not true.

It turns out that our officer-de-jour was hell bent on catching us out, proving we were smuggling something, evading something, living illegally in the states. Because no one lives on a boat, so we MUST be lying! In order to catch us out he interviewed us together, then threw a piece of paper at me and shouted, separated us and interviewed us with the same questions in different forms.

“Where do you work?”

“We don’t”.

“What do you mean you don’t work?!”

“Ok then, where do you pay taxes?”

“We don’t.”

“What?!!!! How can you not pay taxes?”

“Well neither of us work or own any property in either of our countries of origin and since we don’t live in any of those countries…”

“Stop, stop talking.”

“So,” He asked, with a snide demeanor, “you say you live on a boat?! Where is your home port then?”

“Toronto, in Canada, but the boat has never, and will never go there.”

“Why not?!”

“Well it’s too cold, and we’d have to pay duties and taxes…”

Eyeroll.

“So where are you going in this boat when you get to it?”

“Bahamas.”

“WHERE in the Bahamas?!”

“Well it’s a sailboat, so hopefully lots of places.”

That was obviously taken as insolence. He was sooooo unimpressed.

“Where will you dock the boat? What will be the marina base?”

“None. We anchor everywhere.”

Big big eyeroll. “Go sit down!!!!”

He then called me up alone and asked me “what contraband items am I going to find out there when I search your car?!”

So, shaking in my seat, I admitted to the bag of pitted dates I’d bought at Costco a week before…

“What?! Dates?!” He guffawed, rolled his eyes and dismissed me. And the dogs descended on our car.

So nearly three hours after it had begun, he called us both to his desk and admitted he could find nothing to hold us for or deny us entry. And he confided in us, “If you don’t want this to happen every time you come into the states, don’t say you live on a boat!!!”

So there it is. Our lifestyle is socially and legally unacceptable.

And it sucks when we are in a boatyard too. Way too hot or in this case, bloody cold. I can see my breath as I write and my fingers are seizing up. Also, when we are out there on the ocean there are storms and bad seas. Lots of things suck.

It’s definitely not always paradise. But it is amazing. It’s freedom. And when it’s good it’s nature and beauty and long walks on uninhabited beaches. 

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But not today. Not this month. All this work will lead to one of those days, though. And then it will all be worth it.

Life on the hard - boatyard blues

I share my evening showers with a huge gangly cellar spider (commonly known as the daddy-long-legs), and an adorable frog, smaller than my fingernail. I’ve only seen them face to face once, and the frog bolted. 

Mother nature is interesting and complicated. So is a boatyard shower stall where germs are multiplying in the sweaty humidity and heaving toward you from every direction. You tip-toe within the 2x2ft stall in flip flops and try in vain to touch nothing, while finding a place to set down your bag, towel, soap, dirty clothes, new clothes. And you hope to come out of there cleaner.

Amidst this awkward ballet, I mustn’t step on the frog who hops around with a dilemma of his own, trying desperately to escape drowning in shampoo suds. The spider in her nest just waits. Patiently. Each night she is there in the same place on the wall in her complex webbing. I hope she’s been eating the mosquitos, who could use a culling!

This is my life. I’ve forgotten what it is to be out on the water, let alone sailing. A boat yard will suck that vibrancy, that zest for freedom right out of you. Temporarily that is.

We move between ‘the room’ as we affectionately call the captain’s lounge, and up the rickety ladder to the boat, and to the public toilets, and on special days, we walk into town.

The weeks are bleeding into one another in a gravel paved existence as we wait in the syrupy slow world of insurance claim procedures and contractors delays. We. Are. Still. Here.

This is ‘post-lightning strike drama (PLSD)’ and we are suffering through it.

But there is another side of life here. The chicken wing and cocktail specials, free distillery tours, live bands EVERYWHERE, quaint neighborhoods with haunted houses to walk through and devise creepy back stories and scenarios, parties at local land lubber friends’ houses, meet ups with cruiser friends staying in nearby towns, even the free cruiser shuttle to Walmart and other choice destinations!

We make the best of this place. You have to. This is home for now. It’s another wild adventure, just a bit different from swimming with stingrays and watching for squalls out on anchor.

Now we dodge raccoons in the boatyard garbage bins by night and watch TV for hurricane updates. We couch surf with the investment sharks on Shark Tank. It’s how we get through the days of frustrating e-mails with insurance brokers who misunderstand on purpose, and contractors who raise our hopes and then disappear for weeks.

Tomorrow we’ll be off to the local yacht club for their Friday night soiree and Saturday we’ll be watching the World Cup rugby on the TV here, courtesy of JW’s streaming genius. It’s not that bad being on land.

It's just a punch we're rolling with, spiders, frogs and all.