Boaters in the balance: paradise between storm season and a deadly virus

 It’s the aftermath. All is calm. The skies are dull and muted and the trees sway with a soft lilting that betray nothing of their hectic weekend. The cicadas are back and screaming as they do.

Post Isaias in the Berry Islands is very uneventful. It’s Emancipation Day under lockdown.

Today, though there are no parties or flags flying around the little town, there is much to celebrate. We are all free from the ‘could have beens’ and ‘would have seens’ of Isaias.

For us, this marks our first hurricane experienced and survived. There was all the hype and the preparations and the waiting game we played; the two days where everything was put away, secured, our lines were tied and we were as-ready-as-we-could-be and we had literally nothing to do but watch that huge red spinning blob heading toward us, courtesy of the weather media. Friends far and wide sent messages of hope and prayers and worry and concern.

Meanwhile we took advantage of the trappings of the marina life. Long showers. Laundry. Then the tropical storm had strengthened and had been upgraded to a hurricane. We added more lines. The boats started to look like a spaghetti junction.

The next morning Isaias had strengthened further and was expected to make landfall as a Category 2 hurricane in the Berry islands. Our eyes widened. We received text messages that warned we better find shelter onshore. 

 

Since we are hurricane virgins and were a bit slow, we learned that everyone else had anticipated this and all the local accommodation was booked. And so, we resigned ourselves to face this on our boats.

The marina staff came by and said we could expect the surge to come up 8 feet from low tide and cover the jetties. Our eyes widened some more.

But the night came and went with some gusty winds and a lot of rain. We spent the night with our eyes closed. Phew. That was definitely a hurricane-lite!

 

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We have survived hurricane Isaias here in the protected marina and now it’s time to venture out. We are a couple of the only private sail boats left in the Bahamas, as hurricane season is now in full swing. Others have headed up the US coast or way down the Caribbean island chain to Grenada.

Here, the sea is dotted with huge floating hunks of metal. Ships. Cruise ships. They are empty but for a skeleton crew who lurk somewhere deep inside. The colourful slides and pools on deck are silent. Dead.

We are anchored off Great Harbour Cay in the Bahamas. The government has allowed these monstrosities to anchor here and wait. Wait for Corona virus to end? For the tourism industry to resume? Each day it’s looking less likely. A massive industry, one that employs thousands of Bahamians and feeds thousands of families here, is in big trouble. It is everything the Coronavirus loves. Lots of people in close proximity. And so it’s all on hold.

Bahamas has set a new total lockdown. We need to get away. Back to our reality during the earlier lockdowns where we frolicked in the remote Ragged Islands.

We spend the first night in a surreal spot. We drop anchor between two islands. We soon find out we are not allowed ashore anywhere here, not even in the water off the beaches. Because these are not normal beaches. These have been dredged and carried and placed in exactly these spots by the Norwegian Cruise Line Company who bought and renamed the islands years ago. There are winding slides and rides and a 40 ft high balloon with the company logo – all the garish colours and plastic eyesores of Disney are here, surrounded by hundreds of miles of ocean and a few modest islands of Bahamians. It’s a tad revolting. It’s creepy. It’s definitely surreal.

 

And now, since there are no tourists to lay out on the sun loungers or sip the rum punches through colourful straws, the place lies dormant. A random digger moves about, a security vehicle patrols – for what?! Against what? We find out we are on the list of threats. Venture out in the dinghy to cool off and we are literally chased away by a security guard. “You are too close! This is a private island!” “Can we just swim here, near the beach?” “NO! You are too close!”. We get it. Time to move on.

And so we have found another little piece of unspoiled paradise to explore and play in. We stocked up as best we could from the mailboat back at the edge of the little town of Bullocks Harbour and now we can survive quite well for weeks out here. Providing all the storms flying off the coast of Africa swing away!

 

So day to day, we read of the world’s atrocities, the covid numbers climbing everywhere, especially the Bahamas, and when we just can’t face any more of the bad news we unplug and set out in the dinghies. Blue holes to swim in, turtle ponds to marvel at, rocky hikes and beaches to explore. While the weather holds, we are holding on to paradise.

 

 

 

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.

Mailboats, masks, beaches and bonfires: Ragged Isolation

We are becoming professionals at this. Masked, dinghy bound, box toting professionals.

 It all begins with grocery wish-list emails to a supermarket in far off Nassau. Maybe they’ll have avocados?! Cherry tomatoes? We dare to dream… WhatsApp photo messages of food items follow with accompanying text “Is this what you want?” and “We only have this brand” etc…  Days later, our relative peace is interrupted. There is a palpable frenzy amongst the small tribe of boaters in the anchorages… the mailboat is on his way!

Then the chain of events unfolds in starts and spurts. Rumours, actual second hand info on VHF radio, WhatsApp messages with a few local ‘contacts’, sometimes I get a voice message from the Captain himself! Then I’m really at the epicenter of life here!

And then, either on the expected day, or perhaps a day before or two days or a week later, someone spots the huge blue metal ship that makes it’s way down to this remote island chain from Nassau weekly, or nearly weekly, or whenever he’s not encumbered by storms or faulty engine parts.

When he does arrive, the boats lift anchor, leaving our favourite beach front spots and make their way around to Gun Point, the one port in the Ragged Islands, on the only inhabited island, where the 30 or so fishermen who live here eagerly await their provisions, fuel, alcohol, propane and other goodies along with us boaters.

This is our 10^th week in the Ragged Islands and about the 6^th week living under Bahamas Emergency orders. Some boaters in the world found themselves adrift when Covid-19 spread and countries began closing borders. Some were asked to leave their host countries. We have been so lucky.

The Bahamas has literally shut down and their number one industry, tourism has understandably come to a grinding halt. The annual cruiser population, those of us that have not fled to America, make up the small remaining foreign population. We have been told that we must adhere strictly to the lockdown and that there will be no medical services for foreigners ashore, under any circumstances. This was a tough one for many. Those of us who stayed are taking that risk. 

The pay off for us, down in the most remote part of this island chain, is a day to day life literally unencumbered by Coronavirus. The beaches here line many uninhabited islands. There are rough trails cut through and across many of them. The reefs are still teeming with coral and pretty fish, the blue blue water is still warm and inviting. There are shells and sea glass to hunt and collect, and fish to catch for supper! Each night brings a breathtaking sunset...

The tribe has organised parties here for birthdays and anniversaries and is now even looking to ‘secure’ some of the local wild roaming goats for a beach curry day.

We all have desalinating water makers, we hand wash clothes (and towels and sheets! Ugggh), and gather power from the sun via solar panels and small portable generators.

It’s quite easy to ‘shelter in place’ now that we have developed from nothing, a system that meets all our daily needs. The only exposure we have beyond the finite group of us boaters is the weekly mailboat encounter. Hence the masks and box washing…

We have been given visa extensions online. There is no need to leave our paradise.

Except for the elephant in the distance.

Hurricane season is now imminent. The calm, sunny, peaceful weather days are now spotted with rain and crazy wind systems and the inevitable thunder and lightning storms. They foreshadow how vulnerable we really are out here, hiding behind islands that are so small you need to zoom in on a map or chart.

In the big scheme of things, we could be in trouble. We will need to leave soon, to start heading north or south. We had hoped to make it down to Grenada this year. It sits just below the hurricane belt and it’s a great place to stay onboard for the year.

But getting there involves a lot of stops down the Leeward and Windward islands. The joy is in the journey! We wouldn’t want to sail past the British Virgin Islands without stopping for a few weeks to see Dev, our son, the capable Moorings captain. We wouldn’t want to sail past Guadeloupe with it’s fresh baguettes and chocolate crossaints and wine and cheese! I mean really?!

But the virus has forced most of these countries to close their borders. And if and when they open, it will most likely be too late to head that direction with the prevailing trade winds kicking up…

So as we sit under the thatch roof of the Hog Cay Yacht Club, cold beer in hand, sand between the toes, we contemplate our insecure future. 

As a full time live-aboard sailor, life is by nature unplanned and insecure. And weather has always been our master. It has ruled our movements every season. This year however, with Coronavirus in the mix, we are up against something new. We don’t like our freedoms curtailed. But when there are no flights, countries are closed, the virus is spreading hard and fast in the states, we are left with a very small set of options.

But for now, for today, the mailboat has arrived. Fridge is full. Beer is cold. Beach is calling…

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.

The one percent - storms and sentiment

We pulled over for the night at a random little town on the Intracoastal waterway in Florida for the night. Checked ‘Accuweather’ which is a clever little play on the word accurate. Hah. They reckoned we had between 1 and 7 percent chance of rain for the eve, overnight and morning. Pretty good odds for a dry peaceful night!

The eleven p.m. deluge was ok, didn’t last long and cleaned the boat. Right? Ok, so they got that one wrong.

At 6 am as I stood looking out at the dark grey angry mix of clouds and ocean, not able to see land, cringing at the incessant lightning bolts attacking the water surface, thunder assaulting my ears, rain rivaling the days of Noah… I was happy we were relatively safe in our little ‘ark’. I realised we must be that one percent!

And then, just like that, nature swung it all around and sucked it all away, and the morning sun poured in. Pours in now. In fact, I have to try to find a tiny corner in the boat where I can stop squinting and see my screen. It’s a life of extremes. In weather, in experiences, in emotions.

On the upside, we discovered a cute little town called Melbourne Beach that we had never stopped at before. Walked to the beach, found a family run grocery store that had wine tasting – hello! We liked that store a lot. 

Yesterday we were in a town further south. Tonight we will be in a town further north. Precisely 18 miles further north. We are not moving quickly. That’s not what ICW (Intracoastal waterway) travel is all about. The moving, the trawling (because it’s definitely NOT sailing!) is actually quite boring. Navigate a very narrow channel through a wide expanse of shallows, lined with mansions, shacks, trailer parks. The water is brown. But it’s full of dolphins and fish and crabs and shrimps and pelicans duck and dive around us. They provide the entertainment for the trip.

What the Intracoastal waterway provides, is the chance to peek into all the little towns that line the shores. 

It’s an open ended adventure. We accept the challenge. It’s been a while. Haven’t been on these waters in three years! Last year Shiloh waited patiently for us in the Bahamas, the year before that we also kept her in Georgetown in the hurricane season and missed this part of the yearly migration.

We should be up in St Augustine in a couple weeks. Shiloh needs a good bottom cleaning and some systems checked. So we will haul her out and leave her on stilts for a few months, fingers crossed there will be no major hurricanes. In the meantime, we seem to be the only cruisers left out on the water. All the boats are tucked up into marinas, clinging to that false security of ‘protection’ from the storms. We all know there is really no such thing. When a hurricane comes barreling at you, there is no prep that is going to save you. It’s a sobering thought. When Irma hit the BVI’s in 2017, the massive fleet of Moorings boats had been tied up and stored with meticulous attention to detail and safety. In the aftermath of Irma, the photos showed chaos, carnage. Boats strung across the island, crushed, shattered, sunk, upside down on hills…they lost 95% of their fleet.

Right, so this is fun! No really, it is. Boat life in this part of the world does carry with it some serious risks, but nothing good in life ever comes without risk.

Boat life has been so much more than the storms and risky endeavours. It has opened up a world of opportunity to meet and embrace the most amazing people. Literally. We have made so many friends who are family. Friends from everywhere who we meet anywhere and pick up where we left off.

We've traded the remoteness and turquoise waters of the Bahamas for Walmarts and FM radio stations and cheap gas. But this trip up the ICW is full of reunions and meet ups and catch ups and it is the gel that pulls together everything we do, and why we do it. Boating has brought us a richer life with a tapestry of people that have forever changed and enriched us.

Maybe in terms of luck, we really are ARE the one percent!

Bahamas beyond the brochures

We were the only boaters in Fox Town yesterday. The only visitors in fact. We nearly outnumbered the locals in Fox Town yesterday.

This is our seventh month in the Bahamas. The cruising season ended nearly two months ago. In droves, they hoisted sails and headed south to the relative safety of Grenada or north to the marinas and boatyards of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas as the hurricane season approached and insurance companies demanded.

The tourist season in the Abacos ended just over a week ago with a bang. The annual Cheeseburger in Paradise party, on the tiny sliver of land called Fiddle Cay, overrun by vendors and signs and t-shirts and caps and winding lines for free burgers, hot dogs, margaritas, beers, rum etc etc etc… with the bikini clad model types writhing to trap rap aboard the slew of rafted Trump-flag-waving candy coloured speedboats with matching hunks of glistening horsepower. Giant blow up unicorns and pink flamingos and blow up dolls literally, are spotted across the water. Bodies meander, gyrate, fluorescent plastic cups overflow with libation to the gods of excess and indulgence…  This spectacle of a party is unmatched in the Bahamas and no doubt far beyond. 

It is everything that Fox Town is not. We are less than 15 miles and a week away, and we are in another world. The small town life of the real Bahamas. Minus the American glitz and glamour. There are no looming buildings of Atlantis hanging over us here.

Just a couple of 10 year old local boys with dusty scratched knees and a bucket of stinking conch chunks and a fishing line, standing on the end of a dock with a friendly hello. They’ve caught three mutton snappers. Two tiny ones and a decent sized one too. That will be supper for the family. It’s enough.

A walk down the main and only street of Fox Town reveals what many small towns here do – of the 20 or so buildings, many boarded up, at least three are churches. And they are in the best shape. A recent paint job, a welcoming sign. It’s the hope that keeps the few remaining residents around.

The residents are industrious. What looks like a gas station, promising us a refill of diesel for our jugs, turns out to be everything but. The diesel hose, like a dead snake, lies curled on the ground, unused, with it’s fate unknown. They don’t have the ‘Take Away’ food promised on the sign in the yard either. However the shop inside has a working fridge with cold drinks and beers, melted chocolate bars, a 20 lb jar of pickles… in the other half of the shop, Nautica brand clothing and some seriously un-church-like ladies outfits. When I turn around in the tight space, I’m greeted by a barber’s chair complete with a full price list on the wall. A hair salon too!!! Too bad about the diesel though…

The residents are friendly. Genuinely. Out front of the non-diesel-carrying gas station we meet the son of the proprietor. He says, ‘let me make a call’. A few minutes later we’ve handed over our empty jugs and some cash and he disappears down the road in his old red pick up.

We are not worried in the least. We’ve forgotten to get his name but we know where he lives!

An hour later we are at Da Valley – Fox Town’s claim to fame – the only restaurant here. It’s known in cruising and local circles for it’s cracked conch. Not for it’s décor. We are sipping cold beers and eating burgers and such when who should appear but red pick up man with diesel filled and here. 

This is the real Bahamas. It’s nothing like the brochures. It’s definitely not what friends and family imagine when we say we are ‘living on our boat in the Bahamas’. There is zero glamour here. No tourism, no beach, no umbrellas in the cocktails. No cruise ships dock here. But it’s where Bahamians come from. It’s where they are ferried home to after a hard day’s work at a tourist resort, watching the revelers frolick on the best beaches and eating the most expensive lobster dishes. This is home.

For us it’s a lesson in contrast. In humility. It allows us a glimpse of life beyond the brochure.

We feel the contrast too in our small way. Looked for a vegetable or two, just to tide us over the couple weeks before we sail back to the land of plenty. Only one working store here. She had a box of non-rotting tomatoes. That was it. Perhaps an onion or two. It’ll have to do. We will have to open cans of mushy over salted vegetable remnants. But we can leave. We can move, we can experience it all. From Fox Town to Atlantis to nature’s wonders like Conception Island. We get to experience the whole Bahamas. And here, anchored off quiet Fox Town, there is plenty of time to contemplate our luck.