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.

A tale of cranes, cronies and pink bunnies

I’m elbow deep in a muddle of cables, wedged sideways, half under our saloon table, obeying the gruff instructions barked from outside at the base of the mast.

“Pull red!” “Now blue” “Pull the thin grey one. Not THAT thin grey one!” etc. It’s re-wiring 101 onboard today.

The men in hard hats and the massive crane came bright and early this morning and our mast has just been re-erected. Shiloh is almost a sailboat again!

A few weeks ago the reverse procedure happened. 

 

It’s late October and we’re still awaiting the delayed delivery of an inverter from Europe – of course we couldn’t source one here – that would be too easy! It’s late October – just letting that sink in, just a week over two months since Shiloh was hauled out for lightning repairs.

“We’ll only be here a few days” we told the yard manager, infinitely naïve and hopeful.

“Just put us near the lift. No need to take Shiloh to a back corner as we’ll be here such a short time.”

And so they did. We’ve had a front row vantage point watching all the other boats wheeled by and launched, day in, day out.

Until the morning came, about a week ago, when the familiar noise of the lift came a bit too close and our hazy morning minds perked up immediately. I jumped out of bed only to find the lift coming directly for us!

“It’s too soon! What are they doing?!” Convinced they’d lost the plot and come for the wrong boat. Before I knew it, our trusty mast that lay beside us was gone. Whisked away by three men with a wheelie contraption. The slings of the huge travel-lift looming ever nearer. 

Turns out the boat behind us needed moving and we were in the way. Our ‘short term stay’ had run out, and without warning the yard master decided it was time to send us for detention, to a dank corner, far far from electricity, water supply, washrooms, showers, relative civilization. And that is where we will stay until our inverter arrives, all the re-wiring is complete, and testing of batteries and new equipment is completed. Only then will we be allowed back into the water where we belong. This might be in a few days. It might be in a few weeks. JW told me to pick out a Christmas tree here…

But there is another side to all this trauma and chaos. The side where I lean on my Walmart cart and barrel forward, dodging Walmartians who scowl. I, on the other hand am almost giddy. Halloween is coming up and I’ve been focusing all efforts on getting JW to agree, and then put the components together for his debut as a pink bunny. I’ve been riding the free Cruiser Shuttle to Walmart every week for weeks and I spotted the full length adult front zip one-zies ages ago. Apart from the usual super heros, there were Minions and Cookie Monsters, but none compared to the pink bunny. It called out to me and I knew it had to be. Today I bought it while JW managed the mast back in the yard. I also bought a pink fluffy shower sponge – perfect tail. And little ribbons to tie to his flip flops. I can hardly wait. Once I stop laughing I know I’m gonna love him in this costume. I got a $10 space girl costume and a pink gun, so I am going to town as a ‘bunny-chasing-galactic-space-goddess’. That works right?

We’ve had our share of fun. No, really. We made it a Greek Fest, an underwhelming Oktoberfest, movies, yacht clubs, cruiser events, rooftop concerts at a winery and a free distillery tour - to name a few. And the circle of cronies in our quest to make the best of our time here grows wider each week. We’ve made new land lubber and cruising friends, met up with cruiser friends we knew years ago in Grenada and Trinidad, and friends of friends of friends who all know how to party. We know the deal of the day in this town – pick a day – I’ll tell you where the happy hour is the best.

At the awesome Corazon Theater - drinks and a movie!

At Ann O'Malleys

Never grow up - it's a trap!

The rugby armada

Old friends from Sea Schell - saw them last in Grenada 2013!

The GANG at White Lion

One day soon that lift is gonna come back for us. It’s gonna take us right over to the launch and Shiloh’s bottom is gonna be wet. We will be excited and nervous and thankful on that day.

But in the meantime we are going to walk the half mile to the dirty boatyard toilets with smiles or at least without too much grumbling. We’ve learned as we so often do, it’s the people you surround yourself with, and the perspective you have that make a can change the experiences you have.

The difference between adventure and ordeal is attitude. And a pink bunny suit doesn’t hurt.

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

 

Beaches Breezes and Fox Town Feeds Us

We’re in Fox Town only there are no foxes here, neither the animal or urban dictionary type.

Fox Town has a population of just over 200 people. It has a church (of course), and a restaurant/town bar called Da Valley with it’s own dock. And one table.

Next door there is a Shell station which consists of two ancient pumps next to the road. No building, no shelter per say. But the fuel hose reaches all the way down to the dock to serve the few local speed boats.

There is no bank or ATM for 60 miles.

There are three stores. These are not stores in the traditional sense. There are no signboards or overhead fluorescent lights. Each store is the front room of a house with one domestic fridge and two or three hand crafted wooden shelves displaying whatever they have. 

Yesterday we arrived and scrambled to shore to shop!  Between the three stores we were able to get one sweet potato (last one in town!), a dozen eggs, two tomatoes, a green pepper that was only half rotting, and a head of lettuce. A head of lettuce!

No cabbage or fresh milk or salami or dark chocolate (haha!!), or anything much else for that matter. Judy of Da Valley, drives the 80 miles down to Marsh Harbour randomly, and comes back with items to sell in the shops. No one can tell what day or week she might go. 

Judy of Da Valley

Unless you are a desperate clan of cruisers who arrive on the verge of scurvy, having spent the better part of two weeks without a fresh vegetable, and who beg, I mean inquire, as to when she would go next and would she entertain the idea of taking our shopping lists. It’s either that or sail two days through some tricky shallows and come all the way back…

And as it goes, Judy said yes!!! So we wait until Monday when she will go and bring us some food. And hence we find ourselves anchored in Fox Town on a Sunday. Nothing is open but the church, so there’s no point going to shore.

Since the local fishermen feed the black tip sharks in this bay, there will be no swimming either. 

We have been spoiled by walks and leisurely swims on beaches and nightly braais (barbecues) on said beaches for the past two weeks. 

We visited Allen's Pensacola Cay which has bushes and beaches and a Hilton sign painted on a shack. It has a few trails that lead to huge trees, littered with boater's names and dates of visiting. Those who'd come before us. And so we set to making our own sign to leave a legacy of plastic beads and good vibes. While our friends and family afar worked at desks, we worked on our sign and we hung it with pride.

And then that task was completed and the beaches had all been walked and inhaled and photographed. 

We haven’t been to an island with more than 6 people as it’s population. It’s been refreshing and special and peaceful.

But we crave a bit of civilization after a while. And even a burger. Last night at Da Valley we sat at the one table and gasped and moaned in gastronomic ecstacy as we gobbled down burgers and fries. And yes, they are NOT on our diet but every rule has been thrown out the window as we emerge from the beachy wilderness into the cosmopolitan metropolis of Fox Town.

Fun times with friends at Da Valley

Today, with no agenda, we’ll probably take the dinghies out in search of a deserted beach…

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”.

A serenade to the beauty, the decay, the vastness and the diversity that is the Bahamas

A cacophony of birds serenades, and the warm sun pokes at my shoulder through the cabin hatch, waking me to yet another magnificent Bahamas scene.

Shiloh sits, eerily still in mirrored glass water, if there wasn’t a depth meter to say otherwise, I’d be convinced we’re on terra firma. We’re surrounded by pine trees and the smell of a campfire. I feel as though we’ve been transported to a Canadian lake, only if I dip just one toe in this luke warm water, I’ll know different.

This is Port Lucaya, an unplanned stop for us, and yet another one of Bahamas surprises. Highly developed with many marinas, duty free shops, cruise chips and their thousands of pasty pink skinned, camera happy passengers. It's a change, and like Nassau, a hub of human activity among a largely uninhabited set of semi-tropical isles.

The landscapes are changing, the birds are different. We have moved north. For us, this is the end of the Bahamas. Our last stop before hitting the gulf stream and Florida’s east coast. I can’t believe it really. Two months ago we arrived in sweltering Mayaguana at the southern most end of the Bahamas, to a desolate little settlement. Since then we have visited thousands of worlds within themselves. So many unique little gems with indescribably blue waters, turquoise reflecting on the clouds above. A few with tiny, friendly populations, but many, many with none. Places that feed your soul. 

It’s been a whirlwind tour of opposites. Of islands grouped together by colonial conquest. Places that are beautiful or troubled in their own right. Islands in the ocean, like us. 

From weeks of no shops, no internet, no other human contact in the Exumas, to huge supermarkets and bustling casinos. We’ve been screaming down adrenaline gushing water slides in the opulence of Atlantis resort. 

The Bahamas can’t be described. Many have tried. It’s beautiful, it’s amazing. Some of the islands belie secrets of an opulent past, where the rich made their playgrounds. In their place now, are decaying, crumbling buildings, nature quickly reclaiming their territory. Norman island, the former private fortress of infamous cocaine dealer Carlos Lehder is one of them. It really happened and wasn’t just a scene in Johnny Depp’s movie Blow. And we were there, crunching through the dead leaves that line the floors of the old rooms, imagining the parties and the killings. 

And there are so many ‘almost developments’ – places where visions and dreams were half built – marinas, hotels, huge mansions – all left for dead. Investment lost, lives changed forever. As a transient on the sea sailing past, we can only imagine the stories that surround each place.

And the next day, surrounded only by warm blue waters and sting rays and turtles and white sand beaches -you pinch yourself and wonder whether all the rest was an illusion.

This is the ‘off season’ better known as the hurricane season where the cautious leave this part of the world, holiday cottages, condos and boats all locked up and stored away for the dangerous season, while summer awaits back home in the US or Canada. It means we’ve had so much of these places to ourselves. The only boats in an anchorage, the only ones swimming in a blue hole, the only patrons at a rare bar/restaurant up the chain. It’s been our own paradise and I wouldn’t trade the experience for the hustle and bustle of tourist season at all.

Face to face with an 80 pound grumpy faced grouper in a natural aquarium,  swimming along with a graceful sting ray, sand combing with ancient dragon-esque iguanas, catching a flourescent, majestic dorado for supper setting up a ‘braai’ on our own island for the night, watching the flaming sun sink down into the ocean on another night in paradise…. These are the memories I’ll carry away from the Bahamas. A magical and largely unspoiled place. A place of dreams and a glimpse of times gone by. 

But it’s time now for even us stragglers to head out of the hurricane zone, leaving behind the grumpy groupers, the lobsters and parrot fish. The turquoise clouds to build up with weather fronts, for mother nature to rip through this chain of paradise for another season… 

We’ll sail out of Port Lucaya, with her blocks of closed up condos, and bid farewell for now to an enigma. The wonderful Bahamas. And off to a whole new adventure – America by sea!