Lightning and Blunder - a hobbling adventure

Rain pours in sheets around, over, into us. A badly designed rain cover that we’ve dragged out in desperation crinkles and stretches over the winches. Rain clots and streaks and zig zags across my line of vision. Visibility is impossible. We are hobbling along against a raging current on one engine; the other overheated, steaming and pouting in it’s room.

Shiloh plodding along under stormy skies today

It's yet another stormy day and we are headed up the ICW, motoring in slow circles, waiting for a Bascule bridge to open. I have no chart plotter for navigation, I have no idea of the wind speed or exactly what direction it’s hitting us from.

Since Shiloh’s lightning strike days ago, we have been crippled. And now we are blind. The latest – engine fail – just adds insult to injury and will require JW to descend into the muddy soup of ICW water to investigate later…

Despite our predicament, I ponder what I can make for supper. Except earlier I’ve discovered all the condiments left in the dormant fridge have been invaded and are slowly disappearing under a fuzzy green colony of mold. The freezer is warm and gives off a slight gym sock, haunted attic scent.

Our choices are cans of fish or meat, some soft bruised tomatoes, a few iffy eggs. Not gourmet then. And no ice cubes for the whisky. Big sigh.

We’ve had better days onboard.

A week ago, watching our last Bahamian sunset fall gracefully into the sea, I knew we’d miss the bliss. The turquoise, the sand, the bizarre little towns. The simplicity.

We crossed a smooth, indigo ribbon of sea for 28 hours and arrived in the land of bureaucracy, choice and bling. Excess. Oh, and as a minor trivia fact - the lightning capital of the world.

After our initial customs and immigration hassles we anchored in Cocoa and headed to the shopping mall – of course! Faced with a head splitting, apparently life altering array of voice and data packages, we somehow came away with a fancy Internet wifi hotspot device and a working phone. And then the lights in the mall flickered. And the thunder permeated the building.

‘The boats!’

‘We better get back!’

But mother nature was fierce and the buses were delayed, hovering somewhere else or caught in the traffic. And we watched from the frosty halls of the mall as the skies threw down. High voltage strikes amidst the torrential rains.

Shiloh was alone. And under a violent grey sky, wind whipping, earth shuddering claps of thunder, she was struck. And 1 billion volts of electricity hit the top of her mast, flinging or disintegrating the VHF antenna before heading down through her hulls, and frying the electronics, batteries, lights, fans, fridge and freezer before exiting into the water.

The telltale smell greeted us – an acrid smoky evil. All the electronic displays were dead. An ugly quiet settled over the boat as we discovered each item and system that no longer worked.

Then came the calls and mails to the insurance company and the days of waiting for the surveyor, while the reality and severity of our injuries sank in. For me the missing stereo and TV are major. I like a soundtrack to my life. The starter battery charger is probably more important for JW. And the Raymarine and autopilot…

Luckily we were approved for moving on to St Augustine where Shiloh will be hauled out and a full survey completed. Hulls, rigging, sails, each failed system. 

But then the ordering of replacements will begin. I see weeks if not months of this ahead.

And the impaired sailing, along with camp life aboard are not ideal. A f*cking hassle in fact.

But it’s an adventure. We’ve got some great friends in St Augustine and I’m sure we’ll find fun. We’ll bring fun! We can’t control the things that happen to us, but we can control the way we deal with them. We write our life story based on our attitude.

I’m writing an adventure and this is another chapter.  A wet, thunderous and exciting chapter.

Bahamas, USA: I choose adventure

People ask ‘Don’t you get bored’?

People gasp when we say we’ve been in the Bahamas for 6 months.

They scratch their heads and roll their eyes and say things like ‘Really?!’

Last night padding along yet another long white sand beach, we plotted and schemed – could we stay the whole season? – why not head further south in the Bahamas and enjoy a few more months? – what would we do in a hurricane? 

Weather plays a huge role in our lives and the storms of late have certainly kept us on our toes. Lightning, thunder and predictions of tropical storm development all around us.

In the end we resigned ourselves: we will go. America beckons. We will lift our anchor midday and set off across a little section of the Atlantic ocean and leave this expanse of paradise behind us.

By this weekend we’ll have replaced the dodging of jellyfish in the water, with dodging traffic - grocery bags in hand.

We will have the tangible memory of turquoise in our minds as the boats float in a broth of brown and grey…

A sea of turquoise off Little Sale Cay

No more searching tiny towns for the one onion and the last bottle of fresh milk in the fridge. Shopping will no longer be an adventure. Choice will overwhelm and bury us…

Organization and street lights; order and civilization, will take the place of stars in a vast sky, beaches and rocks and the distant sound of soca beating.

It’s a difficult trade off for people who’ve decided to make the sea their home. It’s like deliberately moving from a holiday resort to a concrete jungle.

It’s like choosing the mall over the beach.

But we’ve got landy pleasures planned. We’ll surely munch beignettes on Bourbon Street in New Orleans and comb the streets of tiny towns in Alabama. We’ll feel the breeze in our hair as we fly down a highway in the USA. It will be a rush.

Sure, we’ll have boat repairs and laundry and more lightning storms to endure as well.

But will we ‘get bored’??

I don’t think so.

#low carbin' in the USA

Being on a diet that is highly restrictive, full of fat and pseudo-Paleolithic is just soooo North American. ‘It’s a lifestyle’ we’re told. The fact that it’s nearly impossible to follow in an age where even cows are fed corn and everything is loaded with high fructose corn syrup just makes it more fun/challenging. But in response, the ‘healthy types’ have created a demand for grossly over-priced supposedly organic supermarkets that are popping up everywhere… so it’s a good thing we’re here in America when we decided to join that gang.

As humans we tend to categorize sections of our lives. For us there was the Caribbean phase, then the heaven that was The Bahamas and then there was the US East coast phase. Then it all hit us like a ton of bricks or a ton of weight. On the hips. And the tummies. All this carb rich food and rum squall partying had finally caught up with us.

Enter the post-indulgence phase.

We’re back from a lot of land-lubber life, car rental, road trips, restaurants. Restaurants. And sorry USA, but the inland waterways are NOT tempting as far as swimming goes. The boat is floating in a swamp brown stew, staining our hulls like a 30 year smoker’s teeth. Swimming? No thanks. Not to mention the reports in the news of dangerous bacteria lurking in the Chesapeake.

So, there goes our main form of exercise. We do walk, but hey, not enough. My jeans can confirm.

Now we are moving on the water again – New York City here we come!

But now it’s different. There is no bread. No pasta dinners onboard. No fast food burgers and fries. And the limitless cokes… ha! Not even packaged food of any kind. We’re eating meat and veggies and nuts and a few fruits. We may or may not be allowed dairy, but we’re eating cheese anyway, I mean come on. Who can live without cheese?

We’ve taken to reading every label, so our trips to the supermarket have become day long events. We stop in adorable little towns and have to walk quickly by the local creamery, and if we do stop in a pub to hear the live band, we drink a lot of water and sip one glass of red wine while drooling at the cool refreshing pints of our neighboring tables. And think to ourselves smugly of course: ‘if only they knew!’.

Its’ been at least 10 days. I don’t think we’ve lost any weight. When does that start then? But we’ve convinced ourselves we’re feeling healthier and thinking clearer. I’ve forgotten what a sandwich or a handful of potato chips tastes like.

Instead I’m living on the excitement of our imminent arrival in New York City, sailing right up under the Statue of Liberty. We may also take a road trip up to Maine to eat some lobster (that’s allowed), and tick that off the bucket list.

We’ve got some ocean sailing to do over the next few days, and I’m looking forward to that wide open feeling, sails up, deep breaths. That’s what it’s all about.

Maybe there will be a Trader Joe’s where we can buy some almond butter and organic avocado oil? Ooooh! Maybe they’ll have Stevia sweetened sodas in the fridge. It’ll be a $200 tiny brown paper (highly recyclable) bag of groceries, but we’ll be happy that we have the choice to eat healthy. Cuz this is America – land of the free, home of the #glutenfree, #lowcarb, #eggless, #dairyfree, #sugarfree, #soyfree, #grainfree, #vegan, #sodiumfree pancake mix.

Crystal Clear - the cycles of poverty and ignorance

I used to think that the situations on the Jerry Springer show were staged. But that was before we visited Daytona Beach.

I used to believe that the sheer ignorance and depravity of the people on that show were faked for some sick pleasure of the audience.

But that was before we visited a local laundromat in Elizabeth City. Where we met 'Crystal'.

One thing I love about cruising is meeting people from all walks of life. In every type of place imaginable.

And then there are the ‘Crystal’ days. When I marvel at this world and all it’s made up of. America, fabled land of freedom and opportunity. Where Crystal is a 25 year old blond, blue eyed, toothless, clinically obese girl, sipping on a McDonalds Big Gulp trying to get her laundry done ‘cuz she works 7 days a week at Hardee’s’ fast food up the road. 

Why does she work so much? Cuz she “loves money, sho’ nuff!”

Like us, Crystal is complaining about the laundromat. For me, it’s the thick layers of grime on the walls, floors, and pretty much every machine. I’m worried the clothes will leave this place dirtier than when I brought them in. Crystal says the dryers don’t work and it’s a rip off and the place should be ripped down. I agree.

But we are drawn together in this place, out of necessity.

For Crystal, it’s because her landlord refuses to fix a leak at her apartment and she is refusing to pay her water bill. So presumably the water’s been cut off. She assures us that she ‘ain’t payin’ the rent neither’, so presumably she’ll be on the streets again soon.

This won’t be the first time. She points a stubby finger through the grimy window across the street. “I was staying in the shelter beside the Taco Bell” for a while when I had my kids.

Crystal has two children. Their names are tattooed boldly on each arm. The girl is Nevaeh (heaven spelled backwards) and the boy, Isaiah. She explains that they have been taken away by Child Services and have been adopted by some ‘army family’ who live across the country. They have been gone two years. But she is sure that she’ll get them back one day.

“It’s my family’s fault. They’re racist bastards. They hate black people and my kids are mixed race. They called Child Services on me and had my kids taken away lotsa times. Charged me with neglect. But they never helped me with ‘em. The last time they went to the day care and stole ‘em. Haven’t seen ‘em since.”

Crystal pulls out her fancy Samsung phone and finds some photos to show us. Staring back at me on the smudged screen is a frail 3 year old in a torn pink t-shirt, a huge smile. It breaks my heart.

Crystal tells us that the adoptive family has changed her kids names – both first and last names. At 4 and 6 years old. This sounds absurd to us, along with the fact that she pays child support monthly or it’s garnished from her wages.

She lives with her Haitian boyfriend who she repeatedly calls ‘crazy’. They have his 7 year old boy with them. What about the father of her own kids? “No where to be found. He don’t care, don’t look after them, never did”.

She hasn’t seen her own family in over a year, though they all live in this town. All 14 siblings. According to her, they’re all racist. Except her brother. But he’s been on the run for 9 years.

What for? “He done did some things he shouldn’ta done. Robbed some warehouses…”

Crystal smiles as she remembers, “he robbed Honey Bun warehouse one time, showed up at my sister’s house with a whole heap of donuts. Snacks. Like a whole truck full! We said ‘where you get all them donuts from?! And he’s like don’t y’all worry, just give ‘em to all the kids. Next thing you know the cops show up and tell us we gotta give back all them snacks!”

Crystal also tells us about her other 2 kids, and when JW almost falls off his chair, she explained that they were dead. She casually describes being beaten at 5 months pregnant, at a house party, with her daughter standing by.

It was two women and a man and they kicked her repeatedly in the stomach. As we gasp, she laughs. I guess it’s been a crazy life! But anyway, my daughter was cryin’ after me, and later I jus’ started bleedin’”.  She lost the twins within a few days. Later she was ridden with infection and had to have a full hysterectomy. Maybe that was a good thing. Is there anything good in this story?

She showed us her scar ridden, gelatinous belly. That was the icing on this dismal cake. The life of the uneducated, repeating the mistakes and patterns of their parents before them…

She was taken away from her mother when she was a kid as well. She has never been happy, never felt loved. I saw her in her daughter’s eyes.

And then she was gone. And our laundry was done and we moved on. Untied from this city dock, and headed out. 

Shiloh, tied up on the city dock in Elizabeth City - even had our own gate!

Junior Captain at the helm, up the 'ditch'

Tying up in a lock

What lies ahead and to either side of us?

As we snake our way up the ditch, trees lining our path, I wonder what human stories are lurking, the pain and heartaches, the innocence of the children. The sordid details that are making their way to the next Jerry Springer line up.

What?! This blog’s not gonna write itself? Musings on diners and the ditch

When you travel up the US coast on the ICW, you can stop in places like St Augustine and visit Tammy’s Comfort Food diner where the sign that greets you on entering the small greasy ‘prison brick’ swamp green walled diner, says “I’m running out of reasons not to stab you.” 

The emaciated adolescent waitress actually has a great sense of humour and apparently 2 young boys at home. She claims she’s known around town for filling her pick up truck with trash. At Tammy’s you can get deep fried pork chops and battered and fried okra with fried hash browns and … well there is a theme there. 

Friendly and one of a kind, it’s on the main highway along with Walmart Supercenter and the Piggly Wiggly. You could also walk the quaint historic downtown with it’s cobblestone streets and ghost tour operators beckoning. You can also make yourself literally sick with free samples from the rivaling fudge and praline shops… not that I know by experience!

Main tourist street St Augustine - the guy on the right never moved. For days.

You might stumble upon the 4^th of July celebrations and be treated to the best fireworks on the planet and share the experience with thousands of patriotic Americans. In fact, you may be caught up in the spirit of it all, and a 2 day stop might become a week!

And then, to make up time, you might decide to head out to sea through one of the inlets where rip currents well, rip. Where the seas could go from a couple feet to 10 feet in minutes and the wind could pick up to 25 knots directly against you. The sky could be building a plethora of monstrous storm clouds to usher you along, with the constant threat of lightning strikes and torrential downpours to compliment the wind and the big seas…

You could be out there on an overnight sail – because up the ICW you just can’t drive in the dark and you have so many hundreds of miles to cover – and of course only as darkness descends, the storms become a mass over you on your radar and in reality, and the crew will huddle inside as the rain beats and whips your boat as it surfs high, then plunges into the caverns between the waves. If you look out your windows – which Shiloh has many of – you will see only grey, sea foam and buckets of rain making it all a ‘perfect storm’ blur….

And this could be your reality for the whole night. Hours of rain and waves and no sleep to be had. You will realise you haven’t eaten the whole day and that it’s not only due to your queasy stomachs, but also the fact that you could barely pour water to drink, let alone grab food from the fridge or spread anything on bread. Cooking?! Hah!

But when you arrive in the next port, 130 miles further north, drop your anchor right in the channel at 6am and pass out ‘til noon, you wake revitalized and convincing yourself that was the much smarter thing to do. By that evening you could be walking around a neighborhood amusement park with rickety rides and an outdoor bingo hall and you could be enjoying it all as much as the locals.

Oh yeah! Outdoor Bingo!

You might forget for an hour or two that you still have the dream of sailing into New York, waving at the Statue of Liberty from your humble boat below… and that it’s more than 500 miles further north.

You have, after all, covered 4 states in the last few weeks, and have started counting when you’ve washed your hair by the state…

You may decide to ‘do a couple days up the ditch’ as the ICW is affectionately known locally, marveling at the endlessly long jetties that reach out from the swampy shores toward you, the millions of homes that line the banks, shacks to mansions and of course the trailer parks, and the smiling waving people in speed boats and jet skis that whiz past. There are the friendly, clean and helpful marinas that fill your always hungry diesel engines (since you can’t actually sail), and the endless supply of free water – gone are the days of .90 cents a gallon like Bequia and the Bahamas. Here, there is everything in abundance.

Historic houses

Local houses

Lovely marina for a fuel stop - Fernandina Florida

There are the rare but lovely uninhabited islands like Cumberland where wild horses roam the expansive beaches, and the trails are beautiful and so well maintained… Then there are the huge factories pumping out smoke and stench and are less than picturesque…

Walking over to the beach - Cumberland Island

You might be tempted to snicker as the boat in front of you hits the shoaling ground just off the marked path, only to hit it like a ton of bricks yourself the next day, all 15 tonns of your boat meeting thick, black, immovable sludge, and though you manage to back up ‘real fast’ to free yourself, you’ll feel much better about that investment you made in ‘TowBoat US’ you made when you first arrived…

But however you slice up your journey, it will NOT be boring.

You might find yourself in Swansboro at Yana’s Ye Old Drugstore diner, plastered as it is with 70’s wood paneling, dusty Elvis and Marilyn paraphernalia, and hungry local fishermen and their families on a Saturday morning, earnestly gulping down hot grits…

There will be many more towns and taverns and some sailing out there as well. Each night you will be in awe as the sky dazzles red orange and fuschia as the sun sets over the anchorages and towns. And as it all chocks up to an experience, you will never for a moment wish you were anywhere else.

Welcome to America

I’ve got a foam mustache so I fit right in, a Big Gulp sized draft cupped in two hands, while the ancient ferris wheel and the Tilt-a-whirl wheeze and groan behind us. Bright lights blink ‘Funnel Cakes’, ‘Candy Floss’, ‘Saltwater Taffy’, while the sirens, bleeps and rings of the arcade games serenade us. Just beyond the boardwalk where throngs of people wander and pose and stroll, the beach stretches on forever, lined with hotels, motels, Holiday Inns…

We are in Daytona Beach, the main beach strip and this is America on a Saturday night. T-shirts in the trinket shops exclaim, “Redneck Paradise – Daytona Beach” and they don’t lie.

Just a few blocks away, off the beach that brings the Atlantic ocean to America’s shores, and away from the flashing attractions, there are city blocks of gun and pawn shops, many of them offering both services together.I don't know where the beautiful teens of Daytona's Spring Break infamy are, but they are not here.

Daytona is our second stop in our new adventure of cruising the ‘ICW’ – Intercoastal Waterway that winds it’s way just inland on America’s east coast. We made landfall just a few days ago at Cape Canaveral, an industrial port, world famous for the rocket launches that help the USA’s image as the world’s most powerful country. A few miles north and south of the Launchpad however, lie the neighborhoods that give away the secrets of financial ruin and despair. Offices, gas stations, houses, abandoned, decaying... Apparently with cut backs in the space program, 12,000 jobs have been lost in recent years and it shows.

We anchored at Titusville on our first day and ventured inland to get ourselves ‘hooked up’ with a phone and a high speed Internet package. What we got was a full day of frustration with the many providers and their convoluted communication ‘plans’ and hours of riding the public buses. The bus trips provided the most entertainment. 

Our tour guide Mr James - out front of the far far away mall

Everyone is friendly. Beyond friendly. On our first bus we met Mr. James, a retired Vietnam Vet who offered to ‘show us around’. And just like that, without provocation we had a won’t-take-no-for-an-answer tour guide who dropped whatever it was he was doing for the whole day to show us the struggling communities of Titusville and Cocoa. The mall he suggested we visit, turned out to be nearly 30 miles and 4 bus transfers away. Past the local jail where the prisoners board the bus during their day passes, past the meth clinic where the meth amphetamine addicts board the bus coming to and from out-patient treatment. The ‘faces of meth’ are not pretty.

On one bus we met Tammy and her friend coming from the beach. They were not pretty either. Tammy explained to us, through smudged mascara, greasy auburn hair that fell over her eyes and her child-like freckles, that she was 20, she was five months pregnant and she was ‘high class homeless’. By that she meant that she lived in the woods just outside of town in a 3 room tent with a generator and a TV. Until last week. Recently she and her fiancée had rented an ‘efficiency’, a room in an old motel. Her friend piped in that it was just a hole in the wall. Tammy retorted that at least she had gotten an engagement ring, even if it was a $45 ring and necklace set from Walmart. They laughed. The friend, tall and blond and at least 50 lbs overweight looked Dutch or Swedish but to clear up any confusion she had a faded and very roughly home-etched tattoo on her chest that boasted “MADE IN USA”. JW asked them if they worked, and they laughed again. Tammy explained that she dropped out of school in grade 9. So, no jobs for a homeless pregnant drop out. Friend was also out of work and her excuse was that she had to babysit. Beside the two sat a little blond boy and girl, the friend’s nephew and niece. JW asked the boy how old he was and what he wanted to do when he finished school. He said he was four. He just wanted to finish school. Everyone laughed. Then JW asked Tammy if she was looking forward to having her baby. She looked down. “No! Being around these two (pokes her stubby finger toward the little ones) has made me dread it”.

At the transfer point, where we’d all piled off the bus into the stagnant Florida heat to wait for another, Tammy and her friends headed off toward their motel room/home, but she turned back to wave as she lit a brown cigarette and inhaled deeply. I sighed for her and the next generation. Our self appointed tour guide Mr. James shook his head and said he sees it all the time.  

On the next bus a woman in front of us twirled her greasy thinning curls and swayed gently as she sang Hallelujah, a defense mechanism perhaps, as the world around her threatens to implode. To her right a toothless man with an uneven afro shoved a hunk of chewing tobacco into his cheek. I sat pondering where he would then spit, only to discover what I did not actually want to know, as he spit neatly into some sort of pouch in his backpack.

The characters were too many to recall here. Not a one will be forgotten though. Like it or not, they are etched in my brain now for a very long time.

Daytona’s main strip only provided more and more. The Harley Davidson crowd took over the street party, toothless ladies in their 60’s in tight leather and denim, hubbies with ample beer bellies and skull imprinted head scarves. Bodies of all shapes and sizes stuffed into lycra, creating lumps and bumps and crevices that no one should see. T-shirts that exclaim ‘Eat Shit and Die Motherfucker’ greeted us as we strolled along. And street mobs doing the Electric Slide. You can’t make this stuff up. It was a people watching frenzy. It was bizarre and depressing, but fun and festive at the same time.

I have no idea what the rest of America’s east coast will offer. But at this stage, having been used to remote and deserted islands, blue waters and fishes as friends, this is all a bit of a sensory overload. I find solace in knowing we can still head 20 miles out to sea and pick up the Gulf Stream, no lycra, no meth clinics, just the fresh breezes of deep ocean waters.