My mouth feels like a crime scene.

It’s as if a herd of wild garlic wandered in to find shelter but instead died a slow pungent death. Rescue workers, armed with toothpaste, have been unable to quell the stench.

On the up side, no vampire would venture within miles... I’m just hoping that Coronavirus is equally repelled.

We went out last night. Yes, in the age of Covid. Yes, in Florida, where cases are off the charts. And yes, there were a group of us NOT FROM THE SAME HOUSEHOLD.

We risked the deadly virus to laugh and walk and browse and finally sit all together in a restaurant. Not just any restaurant though. It was THE GARLIC.

A whimsical wild place where trees grow through ceilings and the garlic is roasted by the hundreds of bulbs in an open pizza style oven, where the fire shines and pops and sizzles as you pass on your way to be seated.

 

 

 

And is it coincidental that their mascot, the pervasive logo, is the ‘plague doctor’ from Italy’s Commedia Dell’Arte?! Presumably his mask was meant to protect against the garlic smell, but in 2020 it takes on a much more sinister connotation.

 

The fresh bread was served with a whole garlic for spreading. My supper was succulent lamb, roasted in garlic, with garlic mashed potatoes. 

 

There is a theme here. An aromatic, funky, smelly, delicious theme. It was a wonderful evening. It’s a place you can’t forget as the scent follows you home, sleeps with you and then escapes slowly through your pores the entire next day. And maybe the day after that…

We did wear masks. Except while eating! And drinking.  And that was a lot of the time to be fair.

We’ve been wearing masks. We’ve been trying to stay outdoors. But we have not been sitting inside our boat, completely isolating. I guess we were spoiled during the first wave of Covid 19, where we sat aboard in the remote, uninhabited Ragged islands of the Bahamas. We walked the beaches, we swam, we sat with cocktails, immersed to our shoulders as the sun went down, naturally socially distanced by the water… There were no shops full of masked people coughing and sneezing. No temptations of restaurants, just our tiny gang and the turquoise waters.

 

Here we are unequipped. Mentally, emotionally. We wander, masked, through the throngs of Walmartians… still in awe at the plethora of choices, the prices, the way life carries on. Here, you have to remind yourself every few minutes that there is a global pandemic and you are at risk here. Each masked cougher in the narrow aisle, cruising along in their electric wheelchair carts is spewing aerosol particles that could make you a statistic. 

But there are many many other days. Days where we walk our nearby parks and watch the turtles and alligators in the lakes and ponds, doing their thing, basking in the sun, oblivious to 2020.

We are tied up on a dock in Titusville. A town that sits between other towns. It’s not Cocoa or New Smyrna or Orlando, but it links them all. There’s not much to write about in Titusville. But the end of our dock, where Shiloh and Alleycat currently live, is the perfect viewing point for rocket launches. We are just a few miles north of Cape Canaveral, and between Nasa and Spacex, we are treated to the most spectacular unobstructed view of these fiery sky-bound displays every few days. 

We will be here for at least another month. Bahamas remote beach anchorages will have to wait. Covid testing and retesting and health visas for entry will have to wait. For now, Shiloh is crippled. Her port engine is being replaced. And all her little cosmetic issues are being lovingly attended to. The dinghy is leaking air, the anchor is rusty. The caulking is mouldy. The boat jobs, they never really end. One day you just decide you’ve done what you can do for this season and the Caribbean sea calls.

Until then, we will try to feel the Christmas season. We will celebrate carefully and sparsely. We will love each other and try to stay alive. Good riddance 2020, may the next year bring vaccines and hugs and friends unabashedly being together – even with garlic breath!!!

 

 

 

Egg-sactly WhatsApp? Pondering the pitfalls of remote shopping in paradise

The problem with ordering groceries over WhatsApp from a remote island is that you can’t walk through the aisles and be tempted by things you don’t need.

The problem is that you have to order a week in advance, as you need to allow time for the order to be processed and the remote shopper to do her thing, then you have to be available on your phone on some random time and day in between the order and the delivery, to approve the check out and see the printed out bill on your phone screen.

The problem is that you have to wait for an undetermined number of days for the delivery boat to make his way back down to your remote island, weather and his mood and boat repairs all notwithstanding.

The problem is that you have to up anchor and move your floating home to another island to go and retrieve your goods. And when you see the mailboat is docked in the harbour you make the silly mistake of thinking he might be ready to offload all the boxes within an hour or two or three…

The trouble is that the whole process takes up about two or three days of your life.

Or so I thought.

The real trouble is this:

Lost in translation. As I had each order cycle before, I ordered 12 regular eggs (for baking etc.) and 12 organic eggs (for frying etc. as JW has an allergy to the regular ones).

When JW returned with our goodies from the dock there seemed to be too many boxes. And then he broke one open and there were the eggs. Endless eggs. 24 dozen eggs. An entire 3 foot by 3 foot box full of fragile yolky cargo.

“Nooooooooooo! Oh my God. What the hell?!?!” I shouted and squealed as he passed me each box, and all the other boats wondered what on earth had been delivered to Shiloh. 

The problem with ordering groceries over WhatsApp from a remote island is that by the time you receive the items, they are a week old and to return something would add another week or so before it made it’s way back to the store.

But the real trouble is that English is a tricky language. 12 means a dozen when it comes to eggs, surely? Apparently in the Bahamas, over WhatsApp texting, to our designated shopper, not.

After much ado about the language and the misunderstanding and my absolute horror at discovering we had unwittingly purchased USD$100 of eggs that we would never be able to eat, a solution was found.

The store agreed to take back what we didn’t want, couldn’t use, as long as they arrived back in ‘a good condition’. Our credit card would be refunded at that point.

So off the boxes went, in the dinghy, back to the mailboat, repacked and left in the hands of the crew. Please make sure these find their way back to Nassau, safely, unbroken, fresh, safe.

It’s been nearly a week. I have no idea the fate of the many dozens.

We are about to leave the last of the Internet signal from Duncan Town as we make our way through the Ragged and Jumentos Islands. It might be weeks before we find out how they fared.

Hurricane season began a few days ago and there has been a mass exodus of boats.

We had a couple sentimental ‘last sundowners, last supper’ at the Hog Cay yacht club as the last stragglers leave. 

 

Some put their sails up and head off to the west, days of passage ahead. We’ve moved to a new anchorage eight miles north. The next one will be three more miles. And then maybe a 10 mile journey to the next. We will continue to explore the beaches, finding shells and sea glass, we will swim in the blue waters by day, and sip sundowners in the evenings. 

It’s going to take us a while. And if the weather cooperates, that’s exactly how we like it.

There will be no more mailboat orders from Duncan Town this year. The next time we buy eggs there will be no room for colossal misinterpretation. We will be entering a real physical store, with masks and social distancing and all the trappings of the Covid-19 reality of 2020. 

I’m a bit nervous about that.  We are months behind the rest of the world in coming to terms with the crazy new reality. I think I might prefer 288 eggs delivered in error and omelettes forever.