Grey to blue: a year in review

Across the tropical shores of the world, boats lie dormant. Bobbing, listing, withering, moulding. Birds gather, disrespectfully gossiping up on the spreaders, shitting on the abandoned dreams of the deck below. Some boats are bound in shrink wrap, as if to protect them from the inevitable decay. In the court of nature’s wrath, the all powerful sun, wind and rain beat them down for months, years. Voiceless, no creaking of footsteps, no parting of waves below their keels. Once majestic sails lie torn and shredded, threadbare. Deep inside, ecosystems thrive. The mould and insects that sense death, take over the coffin. The ugly, grey process of decomposition takes hold.

Each one has a story. It’s a story of family or of finance. One phone call, one diagnosis. A mother or a child. The anchor of land cannot be ignored. Sailors are recalled. Life on the water, with it’s fantastic highs and extreme lows, falls away.

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A year ago today, my grey clammy skin recoiling from the harshness of mirror and light, I brushed my teeth. I gulped down coffee coloured liquid. I dressed in borrowed clothes, pulled on a thrift store pair of boots and faced the bitter cold, the slush, the highways. 

On autopilot we drove to and from suburbia to the city. Between the traffic, blurry hallways of hospitals welcomed us, inspid, assaulting all senses with the smell of bleach and urine and promising a set of heartwrenching hours ahead. It consumed me literally; entered my bones and my soul. 

It could have been any day.  Every one as grey as the last. My stomach cramped, echoing the hopelessness, the ache, the circles under my eyes. It wasn’t about me at all. But life’s knocks are blows. They wipe out families and communities and leave us all bruised and whimpering in a cold wet puddle.

My mother’s illness brought me ‘home’, only to discover that she was my home. That I am only from a place, but not OF that place.  Twenty something years away are lifetimes and lessons that add up to a stranger. A stranger in her mother’s house, weeping over the piles of things that will never be used again. Buried. 

Filling, carrying, handing over endless boxes of things in the back alleys of bleak parking lots. Wasted hot tears, spilling, heaving despair for a life that is over, despite the living breathing, suffering woman in a hospital bed some miles away.

A stranger in thrift clothing was I, living a year in turmoil, displaced and heartbroken.

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A month ago today I woke to the gentle lapping of the dinghy and the cool breeze of a Bahama spring morning. I peered into the mirror at the brown Sunkist face, wiser for the extra lines. Drenched in sunlight through the hatch above, washed the sleep from the corners of my eyes in the cramped little ‘head’, excited to step up into the day.

Turquoise bombarded my senses – swimming-pool-blue ocean waters and periwinkle skies met my gaze as I devoured each indulgent sip of rich dark coffee. The warmth entering my bones, embracing my soul. 

It could have been any day. Every one as blue as the last. I don’t keep track in terms of day names. They are all blissfully soul nurturing. There are fluffy clouds and random storms and the hugs from friends. This is all about me. It’s the tear that slips down past my sunburnt cheeks, into the ocean. Heartache blows. It’s what you carry over the sea and share it’s burden with the sky above. 

My mother’s death taught me what I always suspected. That things are useless and pointless and that it's the choices we make and the perspective we embrace that lead to exactly where we find ourselves. We can’t control the wind or whether our mother will be waiting on the other end of the phone when we need to share. It’s life’s bitter twist. It’s inevitable. Life challenges us to find the beauty.

I am not a stranger here. You can’t be a stranger in your own life. If you are living your life. 

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Shiloh had a story. She sat patiently if reluctantly bobbing between pilings, tied up and tugged by ropes, abandoned for a year. It took effort to bring her back from the brink. But there is life within her hulls again. The people who call her home know that everything is a fragile balance. There are a billion colours and smells and tastes to find and touch and taste and explore. Lemon sharks may be swimming below you, tropic birds chirping above. 

The stars shine most brightly when they are not obscured by the false lights of a city.

Paradigm shifts and ocean drifts

Stopping for a coffee at any time in any place; pushing through the capitalist octopus of limbs inside, reaching the registers and the underpaid baristas, contrived terminology, over-priced products of Starbucks and it’s imitators.

Fresh milk.

$9.99 a day rental cars

Cars.

Friendly efficient waiters at restaurants

Restaurants.

$1 stores

Stores.

These are some of the things I will miss when we set sail and leave the USA behind us. It’s a count down now in days. A simple 40 mile crossing to Bimini, but a paradigm shift in many ways.

For the past six months we have been observing, indulging, following, frolicking, partying to the tune of America’s drummers. We have sacrificed swimming, snorkeling, solitude for all of this. Glamour, glut, buy-one-get-one.

It’s so easy, being from such a country, to fall into the routine of surplus and safety. Where all your needs will be met. Where you can demand what you want and have the right to receive it. If I’d never ventured away, I’d probably question why anyone would ever want to leave that. But we have, and so we are now members of the global wanderers, maritime squatters, compelled in some way to keep moving, even when there is so much we’d be leaving behind. So much to do, so much to buy. So much of everything really.

But we’ve spent all our money now. We have new TVs, full freezers, matching towel sets. It’s time to go. Back to the quiet beaches and jaw dropping sunsets that mark the days and nights of life in the Bahamas and beyond. Back to the parts of the world where the US coast guard and Towboat US will not be waiting around every corner to help. Where we must judge the weather and maintain our engines and take care of ourselves.

Time to pack away the thick denims and heavy soled shoes. My toes long for cool sand and the hunter in me longs to find sea shells instead of bargains now.

The oil and the filters have been changed and the boat survived. Oil smudges notwithstanding.

Our charts are up-to-date and will hopefully keep us from running aground in the Bahama shallows.

The sails are in tact. The chain has perhaps another year before it will crumble into a rusty pile of salt induced oblivion.

So, no reasons left not to leave.

We’ve visited all the friends, pet the manatees, seen the alligators, partied in the coolest places, and danced to ‘Troprock’ with the Parrotheads. 

This year we need to find some new horizons. Maybe we will head to the Western Caribbean. To Belize, and further. To the San Blas islands where there are no shops nor electricity. No cities or governments. It's been fun in America but it's time for dinghy rides that don't lead to Publix and pubs. Time to close the door on consumer choices and fashion trends. Time for salty hair and sandy bedsheets. To places where mystery and nature are in charge and not Mr. Starbucks...It's time to float and be free. Time to cast off the lines and leave these beaches behind.

To borrow from one of the Troprock icons Jack Mosley, a toast, whatever happens, and wherever we end up:

“to small boats on big oceans, and dreams you can’t drown”.