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.

On the days we must be mad...

... (because what would a blog look like all full of pristine beaches, turquoise seas and rum punches?!)

 2 am as we lay panting in our tiny mosquito occupied chow-zone of a cabin in the stifling heat, not a breath of wind, sweat trickling down our necks and pooling on the dampened pillows beneath us, the random slapping of limbs breaks the relative silence of the dull hum of a useless fan. I thought ‘this couldn’t get worse’. (Note to self – never say those words, even in your head).

After weeks of prepping for our friend’s visitors in perfect Bahamian weather, they have arrived. And since then the whole climate’s gone for a ‘sh*t’.

They brought booze!

The visitors on arrival day

2:30 am the distant rumbles of thunder have caught up with us two lonely little catamarans in Cherokee Point, the vulnerable bay, exposed to all the oncoming fun and games. The sky lights up to the brightness of day in shocking zaps and we are up.

It’s like a colossal game of electrified ten pin bowling right over our heads and everywhere around us. The lesser gods are on a bender and they are at the lanes, drunken and disorderly. The ball rumbles along above us, barreling through the great black clouds and then the crescendo – a teeth clenching, boat-shattering smash as the thunderous ball hits the pins. Over and over again, as I wince and squeal. JW has turned off the main power to the boat, knowing we are at the mercy of these lesser gods as to whether we’ll take a direct hit and potentially lose all the electronics on board. 

They are obviously in the mood to have some fun with us. They’ve stirred up the ocean as well, so the boat spins and bobs madly in this rain drenched mayhem.

I retreat inside, brushing aside the mosquitos who are just as frightened I’m sure. They’ve taken such a back seat as the bad guys, they might as well retreat completely and come back with their blood sucking intentions another day.

And here I sit – making sure not to hold on to anything metallic just in case – and I focus on JW’s silhouette in the door, lit up like a photo negative in the lightning show. I know he is worried, and that the soul crushing feeling of being helpless in a situation furrows his brow.  I squeeze my eyes closed after each bolt snaps down from the clouds and see the jagged designs behind my eyelids over and over.

The truth is that we are in the vicinity of some serious danger. Boats are lightning attraction devices with their tall masts, and we’ve come to a bay where there is nothing around us but surface rocks, beach sand and a tiny settlement of one story homes nearby. So we are IT if it comes down to the wire. Worst case scenario the lightning passes through the boat, leaving a gaping hole below the water line and we sink. Total loss.

I think of the storms we’ve slept through on land, the light and noise a mere inconvenience with the secure feeling of insulated and sturdy walls protecting us. Out here it’s all raw and real. We have no mosquito nets, we have no lightning protection. It’s yang to the ying of the paradise we live in. It’s the other side of the coin. It’s real and it’s 5am and we’ve been up for hours.

As I rub my red sore eyes I realise this lifestyle has no middle ground. There is no ‘mildly amusing’ or ‘slightly annoying’ in our vocabulary. It’s all ‘OMG!’ or ‘WTF!’ Extreme beauty, extreme fun, extreme danger. Big joy, big problems.

On the boat next to us, a family has flown thousands of miles to see what we see. Experience what we call normal life. This is their vacation. They swat at mosquitos, wince at the storms and hopefully will experience some of the big joys over the next few days.

As the storm passes, the game has moved on and left us with some big winds and big seas. That means ‘anchor watch’ (to keep an eye that we don’t drag into the rocks behind us), so no sleeping yet. Until the sun rises and the benign morning negates the heightened fears of the night and promises a new day of extreme beauty and yet another adventure. Zzzzzzzz

 

New Years and warm tears

This morning when I woke, there was a magical transition going on between night and day. A handover from darkness to light. The full moon, weary from his long night shift, sat at the water’s edge, sagging ever so slightly, ready to slip in. And when he slipped away so quietly, the sun called my attention to the other side of the sky, bringing up the new day. I felt a tingle, the privilege of the early riser, to witness something grand and divine that happens every day.

Of course I was not awake of my own accord, in normal circumstances I think it’s obscene and unnatural to be up before the sun! But this morning my mother left the building. Or the boat to be more accurate. We barreled along to shore in the dinghy with her luggage in tow, and handed her over into a pink car, and a tired looking cabbie who was getting off night shift. She has begun the day long journey on buses and planes, back to the bitter cold of home.

A few days ago I stood by a shuttle bus, choking back the inevitable hot tears as we also said goodbye to my son.

These are the realities of living ‘somewhere else’. We live hundreds and at times thousands of miles from family, but the moments we have together are special. They are held together in a finite number of days, a holiday, a visit. They can be calculated on a calendar but not in our hearts. There is no earthly definition for that kind of love. 

And love it, we did. Great holiday. We’ve been living on Shiloh for three years and finally at least some of the family have seen our home and experienced a snapshot of our lifestyle. I really hope it was fun. I know we’re not going to create any converts in my land lubbing family, but at least they had fun. No seasickness, no problems with the quirks of boat life (limited water supply, must dinghy to shore, wakes from boats, side on swells). Go family! 

We’ve made it down to Key West and it’s the kind of place everyone loves. You just gotta. It’s a milestone as the Southernmost (is that even a word?) point in America. Of course as we cycled around the town yesterday we saw the Southernmost café, the Southernmost bar, the Southernmost hotel and even the Southernmost beach hotel. So everyone is milking that for what it’s worth. Key West has a million restaurants, bars, café’s, drag shows, beaches, busker shows, and people. It’s the people. Weird and wonderful sums it up. Everyone should come here at least once. Preferably during their FantasyFest!

It’s the end of a season, of a lot of bucket list visits under our keels, and a finale with family. Couldn’t have asked for a more amazing 2014.

And 2015 is a blank canvas with so many adventures to be written. We have graduations and new babies in the family and in the meantime, sailing adventures to places and countries new and old.

So my tears today are joyful though sad. We’ve chosen a life far away, a life of new and scary and exciting and fun, but a life without mom and boy nearby. A life where my niece and nephew grow in leaps and bounds in our absence. Where babies are born and life goes on ‘at home’.

We’ve untied the bow lines and left the sight of our shores and I don’t regret it for a second, but when I have the chance to see my Mom’s green eyes light up, hold my boy tight, hear their laughter, those precious memories fill me up and I cherish them, I see them in every sunset and sunrise we are away.